- The privatization of Royal Mail is one of the biggest scandals of recent times
- The obvious and correct answer is to renationalise Royal Mail.
- But a Conservative or Labor government is not willing to contemplate this situation.
It may seem very unusual for a union leader like me to write a column for the pages of Daily Mail City, but these are unusual times.
I run the Communication Workers Union, which represents 110,000 jobs.
We are fighting to save one of the UK’s most iconic companies.
Let me get straight to the point: the privatization of Royal Mail is one of the biggest scandals of recent times.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a year that once returned to the Treasury now go into the pockets of mainly wealthy and often offshore shareholders.
Is the writing on the wall?: The CWU has developed a plan to restore the universal service obligation to deliver postal services to all addresses for the same price, to the same standard.
Service, once the best in the world, is on its knees.
The Royal Mail Board has overseen the destruction of the service and an all-out attack on its own workforce. All readers have felt the impact.
The Board’s actions have prepared Royal Mail for a takeover and now, with a bid from Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, we are on the brink of a takeover.
The obvious and correct answer is to renationalise Royal Mail. But a Conservative government and even an incoming Labor administration are unwilling to contemplate this.
Therefore, the CWU has developed a plan to restore the universal service obligation to deliver postal services to all addresses for the same price and to the same standard.
Our plan will regain the trust of the UK public and businesses and win back tens of thousands of postal workers who have been demoralized by company leadership by giving them a meaningful stake in their businesses.
We call for a new ownership and governance model for Royal Mail.
We want workers and customers to have a serious influence and a genuine voice in the direction of the company. We will campaign for this politically, industrially and in our communities.
I often hear that we need to see more patriotism from our politicians.
This isn’t Nigel Farage parachuting into a community he’s never been to before, or Rishi Sunak flying planes to Rwanda when he can’t even oversee a train network running on time in the UK.
Patriotism is taking the opportunity to create an alliance between the public, businesses and postal workers so that a key part of the nation’s infrastructure can be saved and rebuilt.
Royal Mail has the largest fleet in the UK. It has workers in each community. Imagine what the great business leaders of the past would have done with that competitive advantage.
There are those who claim that the union is holding back modernization, but nothing could be further from the truth.
We are the ones who ask for growth, we demand investment and we are willing to innovate.
It looks increasingly likely that Daniel Kretinsky will own Royal Mail in its entirety before the end of the year. He says that he wants to own the company for the rest of his life.
In that case, we need commitments to our members and customers that match that level of ambition.
In the coming weeks we will have a unique opportunity to place this issue at the center of the electoral debate. We’ll push it every day and ask you, as readers, to do the same.
There’s nothing more British than the Royal Mail. And this may well be our last chance to save it.
- Dave Ward is general secretary of the Communication Workers Union.