CWU - Royal Mail Privatisation Unconstitutional

10 March 2009 by Sarah Sharpe - © Hellmail.co.uk

The Communication Workers Union said this week that plans by Lord Mandelson to part-privatise the Royal Mail conflict with the British constitution.

The union launched hundreds of balloons in Manchester last week, one for each year of Royal Mail’s history, to mark what it sees as a significant sell-off despite what it says was a clear committment by the Labour party to keep Royal Mail in public ownership. The union says that the protection of postal workers pensions is being used as a sledgehammer to drive privatisation through.

Billy Hayes, general secretary of the CWU, said: “The Labour Party came to power with a manifesto commitment to keep Royal Mail wholly publicly owned.

“According to the Salisbury-Addison convention, the Lords will not vote down manifesto commitments. Therefore, if the British constitution is to remain intact, the move to privatise Royal Mail will stop tomorrow.

“The CWU supports modernisation of Royal Mail and supports Lord Mandelson’s Bill, with the exception of the privatisation element.

“The solution here is to remove the element of the Bill that calls for privatisation and endorse the rest. We want a successful modern Royal Mail in full public ownership and we want the British constitution to remain intact.”

The CWU’s stance is backed by hundreds of Labour MPs who say they will vote against the plan to introduce a minority shareholder.

Lord Mandelson fought back this week, saying that the Royal Mail would still remain in public ownership but that there was now a desperate need for a more commercially-driven management structure and that the public would not stand funding the Royal Mail on top of a pension deficit now thought to be in excess of £6bn. He said the investment raised through a minority partnership would enable the business to modernise and that he could not walk away from the problem.