Royal Mail is far from a bankrupt service costing the state a huge debt. The company’s operating profit increased a massive 26% this year to £404million. This move by the Tory/Lib Dem government is to hand their friends in the private sector millions of pounds annually in profit.
The privatisation of our postal service will only benefit big business who will make a fortune while our postal services disintegrate. Royal Mail currently delivers a service to all parts of the country, with delivery services six days a week. TNT, one of the private companies previously lined up to take over parts of Royal Mail operates postal services in some parts of the Netherlands which only has deliveries twice a week!
Privatisation will also lead to higher prices. For example, a 50g letter costs nearly twice as much to post in the Netherlands than the United Kingdom.
The Socialist Party stands for defending our postal service from privatisation. The Communication Workers Union must now launch a campaign to fight for its members for whom everything is now on the line. The current Royal Mail management has already launched attacks on the workforce in preparation for privatisation. The trade union movement must act now to stop this and other attacks on workers and their services.
Opposing the privatisation of Royal Mail must now become one of the central demands of the protests taking place on 29th September as part of a Europe-wide day of action.”
For more information on 29th September Belfast Protest against cuts click here.
The biggest demonstrations against the Egyptian government in over 30 years have stunned President Hosni Mubarak’s repressive regime. The demonstrations were called on Police Day, January 25, a national holiday that marks the 1952 struggle by the Ismailia police against the British Occupation. Mubarak’s police force today is the very opposite of a liberation movement! It is used to violently prevent workers and youth from demonstrating their anger against the corrupt and fabulously wealthy ruling elite.
On 26 March 2010, NIPSA has organised a special meeting for delegates from across the union as part of its "Public Service Defence Campaign". This meeting comes at a time of government attacks upon, not only on the pay and conditions of public service workers, but the public service itself. The Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson, has recently announced a massive £365 million cut in the budget of the Northern Ireland Executive.
Medical secretaries in hospitals across the Belfast Health Trust are fighting against attempts to cut jobs and pay by £3,000 per year. As a result of the decision by the Assembly Executive to make cuts of £318million in health since last year, frontline services such as those carried out by medical secretaries are being decimated.
Speaking about regeneration in his Sunday Independent column in December of last year, Willie O'Dea spoke of how many working class families in Limerick had left behind established communities in the inner city "for the promise of good housing in a good environment. That promise was betrayed."