FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS ON ROYAL MAIL PRIVATISATION AND WHISTL
The Government announced late yesterday afternoon that 15% of the shares in Royal Mail (half of its remaining stake) has been placed with a number of city institutions to be sold to institutional investors. The process for this took place overnight and this is clearly a further demonstration of the Government’s total disregard for a public voice in the company. It brings to the fore the very real threat to the continuation of daily delivery services and the Universal Service Obligation in the UK. Furthermore, the haste in which this has been carried out clearly denies any debate or scrutiny of the government’s proposals.
We understand that the Chancellor also confirmed in a speech last night that a further 1% of shares would go to employees. At this stage we have no further detail on this.
In response to these developments the union has made it clear that public or private the CWU is going nowhere and prospective institutional investors should know that we will defend our members’ terms and conditions by all means necessary. These events strengthen our determination to campaign for stronger legislation to protect daily deliveries and the universal service.
In a separate development yesterday Whistl confirmed that following its 30-day consultation the company is pulling out of its entire UK delivery operation.
It can be seen from the aforementioned that events within the postal sector are moving at a very fast pace and it is more important than ever that the union has a co-ordinated and effective response and our approach to this will be fully discussed at next week’s briefing on the 19th June.
Finally, we can also confirm that the Union will be holding a parliamentary event before the summer recess and further details on this will follow in due course. Although the parliamentary event will focus on postal industry issues, it will be our intention to open up this event to CWU Branches across both constituencies.
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