CWU STATEMENT:ON COURT JUDGEMENT

Royal Mail Dispute – High Court Judgement

CWU members will be and are extremely angry and bitterly disappointed that one judge has granted Royal Mail an injunction to invalidate our ballot for strike action.

We balloted over 110,000 members and they voted by over 97% in favour of strike action in a massive 76% turnout.

Not one single person out of 110,000 who were balloted complained to Royal Mail that their right to vote was interfered with. Not one single person out of 110,000 who were balloted complained to the independent scrutineers that their right to vote was interfered with. The electoral reform society who conducted the ballot confirmed it was run in full accordance of the law. And after over seven weeks since the ballot commenced, not one single person has complained to the certification officer who is appointed by the government to regulate trade unions.

Yet despite all of this – with no evidence supporting their claim from any employee – Royal Mail can come to this court in what is a cowardly and vicious attack on its own workforce – and through a witness statement of one manager can be granted an injunction to stop our right to strike in defence over 100,000 jobs and the very future of UK postal services.

We have run a fantastic modern day campaign that combines face to face meetings with use of social media to engage willing members to maximise the yes vote and turnout. Members participated and cast their vote of their own free will. To suggest otherwise is to insult the intelligence and the integrity of thousands and thousands of good hard-working people.

We will be considering the judge’s detailed reasons for this but we want to make it clear that the only thing this union, its representatives and its members have done – is to run a fantastic modern day campaign to engage and encourage workers to defend their jobs.

We want our members to know that we will not be moved and we will be doing everything in our power to oppose the company’s industry destroying plans and this decision, including appealing against the judgement once we have taken guidance from our lawyers, re-balloting and launching a huge leverage campaign with major shareholders against the company’s actions.

This injunction is not only a massive injustice to our members it’s also an injustice to every worker in the country.

We all need to wake up and recognise that this Tory government has deliberately stacked the rules against workers in favour of the constituency they were born to serve – which is big business and the establishment.

We appeal to the TUC and workers everywhere – in what is a call – to arms that it’s time for us to fundamentally shift the balance of forces in this country back to working people and remove these draconian laws once and for all.

To Rico Back and the Royal Mail Board we say you cannot face away from the reality that your victory in this court will be short-lived. You cannot face away from the reality that you have completely lost the confidence of the workforce and as a result there is no way you will ever be able to fully implement your plans for the future.

This union and our members will not be moved.

We will be communicating further on this issue directly to our members and representatives prior to the end of this week.

Any enquiries on the above LTB should be addressed to gsoffice@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely

Dave Ward
General Secretary

Tony Kearns
Senior Deputy General Secretary

Terry Pullinger
Deputy General Secretary (Postal)

19LTB659 – Royal Mail Dispute – High Court Judgement

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