Shooting the Messenger

By Chris Leach

Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton earns £200,000 a year for working a two-day week. The postie who rises at 5.30am to deliver the mail gets £230 a week. Guess who is painted as the industrial dinosaur and who as the third-way icon?

When over 20,00 postal workers walked out complaining about bullying and intimidation they may have expected some sympathy. Instead the mainstream media and the government poured out the bile on the "wildcat" strikes ands behaviour.

The media said it was the 1970s style union culture alive and well. Leach sees it as the softening up of the workers as the government prepares to privatise the service. Breaking the back of the union to make the service more attractive to private sector leeches is the strategy.

(Red Pepper, Issue 114, December 2003)