TECHNOLOGC
POST OFFICE
UNION FOR SOCIAL AND AL PROGRESS the basis enterprise.
The leaders of the Post Office Engineering Union mounted weak, halfcartel prolest agallist luc new Act. Once it became clear that the Tories going to steam-roller through leaders adopted a new tack.
that were now in compelle environment' and had to gear ourselves up to the competition.
Meanwhile, they have been busy feathering their own nests. They have come up with a plan to CItale bureaucrats' paradise a federal trade union based Telecom.
The proposed federation embraces the posts and telecoms section of the civil servants union, the CPSA. . No-one on the left of the union objects to ON 3 November, 35 mainly electrical workers COCO cupied the factory of Davy Instruments in Sheffield action jollowed the announcement management that 34 out of workers and 4t out of 105 staff workers were getting the boot.
According the bosses the sole reason for the closure of Davy Instruments that labour costs are too high.
Formally, Davy Instruments is an indeperThe British Telecommunications Act came into force on 1 October. This new Tory law split the Post Office in two, creating the new British Telecommunications Corporation. It also laid for the hiving-off of parts of the highly profitable telecoms business to private Emerging with our fellow Ccucal WUlKCIS We do object to merg ing with our bosse - the third partner in the Society of Post Office Executives, SPOE, represents • our engineering supervisors.
The left, organised by the POEU Broad Left, is campaigning hard to prevent a merger with SPOE, which would cripple any joint union.
The Broad Left is also campaigning against the proposed federal ture. The POEU national executive claims that the federation provides the adyallance 'size autonomy'.
What it really provides for is all the disadvantage of size and none of th benefits of unity.
A cumbersome federal council, federal conference and federal officers' structure will be created, a whole second dent company. Actually it forms part of the Davy.
Loewy Group and situated on the same site as the large Davy-Loewy factory in Darnall, Sheffield.
Both D-L and DI are prosperous comounties despite the recession. They have recently received number of large export DI is about to merge with Davr Systems 1o form. compars which plans io shed the -2.. 2.luring side =0517 tier of bureaucracy removed from the rank and file members it will work mainlv bi consensus thus allowing the minority of supervisors to block action.
There will be no rank and file unity, • because the existing branches will re main they are separated into ing, clerical and visory at the local level.
Most importantly, this is an attempt by the trade union officials to carry the split in the Post Office into the structures of the trade unions themselves. Leave The new union would be based mainly in British Telecom. It would include a minority (about 10 per cent) of POEU members who work in Posts, but would be essentially a BT would leave the Union ot Communications Workers UCW (formerly the UPW) as the main union in Posts It would create a situation of two power blocks one in each business, with emphasis on computors Control methods and analysis.
It is also planned that the manufacturing needs of the new company will be met by sub-contract labour presumably reduced costs.
Management have so far refused even negotiate ihe furure of ite Ithe inevitable pressure !c: further 'rationalisatior within each business. fu:. ther reinforcing the split Rita UCW Annual Conference voted for a single, union core:
Posts Telecoms ars their subsidiaries.
composite
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