From the Front Line

From a postman in Merseyside
Today we returned to our office after the weekend to find all fittings had been changed and we had lost 6 walks plus a driving duty. Executive action was served last month by R/M expiring on the 28 august ( yes we haven’t reached the 28 august yet) but they saw it fit to ignore this law binding agreement and implement their changes anyway. All staff saw this as unacceptable and sat in the canteen. We were given 10 minutes to return to work or R/M were classing it as unofficial action. Once the 10 minutes were up we were told we would have to leave the premises .By this time our area rep had arrived and was informed by management that he could not address the lads in the canteen. This went down like a lead balloon and he told them he would address us and he did. He asked us what we wanted and we informed him we wanted fittings to go back to how they were on Saturday and that we wanted to pick our own duties going down the seniority list and we would return to the shop floor. R/M chose not to allow us this so on the gate we went. Today still R/M are refusing to talk to the union and tomorrow we are on the gate again .What they have done as we refused to pick duties is they picked them for us and the ones that did refuse regardless of there seniority, gave them either a reserve duty or a floating duty and gave less senior postmen half decent duties. What is now happening in our area is that come tomorrow an office close to ours is coming out in support of us and hopefully this spread locally. We did make the local news papers, local radio stations and the local news on tv. We also had present on our picket line today two community police officers, why I do not know. Before they arrived we had the police attend our picket line to find out what was going on when i told them they did inform me that their inspector was on his way to see me. He understood the position we were in and had no objections to our picket if the numbers were kept to the correct number (6) we did try this but it didn’t last and nothing was said by the police which was great because they could have easily have kept to the letter of the law and broke up our picket line so its back on the gate tomorrow and may be the day after or even longer until R/M decide to talk to us. How stupid of a big employer like R/M refusing to talk to the union. What I believe they are trying is starve us back to work but so be it.........
  This is an update … just to let you know how our unofficial strike action is going. Well its day two and we are still on the gate, held talks with very senior managers today and divisional and area reps present. We explained to them allow the staff to pick there own duties starting today as the seniority list dictates and we shall return to work immediately. Sadly R/M decided that they would only allow us to return to work once we were back on the shop floor and working as normal but would only allow us to pick duties in 2 or 3 weeks time .This was not acceptable to the office workers and the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of staying out until we are allowed to pick our own duties and not have these dictated to us by R/M. So on to day three tomorrow and back on the gate. Will keep you updated tomorrow............