Royal Mail Dispute: What Can We Learn? Professor Shaun Tyson Steve Macaulay They used to call strikes the British Disease, but that was 25, 30 years ago and then it seemed to have gone away. Now we have got the Royal Mail dispute. To discuss this and put it in context is Professor Shaun Tyson. Now, Shaun, you have got many years, as I have, of living through these things and you have got a researcher’s perspective, too. Have strikes gone away? Are we about to see a new era of strikes? Shaun Tyson In the postal services we have had quite a lot of disputes; the recent dispute, the one that is just happening now where they are on strike at the moment, is really an outcome of the previous dispute which ended in 2007. And at the end of that dispute, there was supposedly an agreement between the trade union and the employers that there was a need for change, and that was indeed agreed. Beyond that, there is a dispute about what was agreed between the trade union side and the management. The trade union side say that’s all that was agreed and that there were further negotiations to take place to determine change to working practices and so on; whereas the management said that was implicit in the agreement that they had in 2007. So that was the origins of the existing dispute. Since then, of course, the trade union has also accused the Royal Mail of bullying and of harassment and of being really disinterested in the trade union’s role in change and in riding roughshod over the views of the workforce. Now I don’t know the truth of that, and I don’t suppose anybody outside the Royal Mail does, but clearly there is a feeling amongst the workforce that they were not involved in the change sufficiently. Steve Macaulay So isn’t that rule number one really, involve people if there is going to be big change? If we look at this whole big idea of modernisation then clearly big job cuts, big investment in new modernisation and so on? Shaun Tyson I think there are two aspects to this; one is in the public sector in particular there has been a failure of management to communicate directly with the workforce. One of the characteristics of industrial relations in the public sector is that communications typically are through the trade unions, and this has maintained, of course, a kind of rather old fashioned status of the trade union relationship. Also the adversarial aspect of it. Knowledge Interchange Online© Cranfield University October 2009 1 Professor Shaun Tyson
In the private sector employers, well way back in the 1980s and 90s, realised that they needed to open up direct communication channels with the employees; not necessarily just completely ignoring the trade union, but certainly making sure that their messages got directly through to the workforce. There are several aspects, but in particular there has been a failure to actually get the employees themselves actively involved in the change programme. Steve Macaulay The argument is with modernisation, equals job cuts, equals turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Shaun Tyson Yes, well it is quite possible that that might be the case. They have in fact made quite substantial job cuts in the Royal Mail and with a large organisation you can of course manage some of that through natural wastage, but it is true that individual employees wouldn’t necessarily want to vote themselves out of a job. But what they would want to do is to improve the efficiency of the organisation and it is up to the management to handle the redundancies, if there are any, with sensitivity and of course it does mean paying for them. Steve Macaulay Some people say that what has soured the whole thing is the spectre of privatisation and political interference; how much do you think that has played a part? Shaun Tyson I suppose it is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the Royal Mail in the eyes of the workforce. Once again, nobody has spelt out what privatisation would mean. Steve Macaulay Finally then, if we were to take some fairly straightforward steps forward, what would you say they should be? Shaun Tyson First of all I think that if anybody is talking about privatisation they have to say exactly what that means for the organisation and for the people in the organisation. And I think that ought to be voted on as part of the manifesto of the Conservatives and in fact that is what they intend to do. Secondly, I think that in the long term the company management have to spell out what it means to become a modern postal service. What it is that it would look like; what would the employees be doing? Would they be doing anything different? Would they be asked to do anything different? Would they be working with more technology? If so, what would the technology do, and so on? I think they have started to do that in their change programme, and it hasn’t really been dramatically different from what they © Cranfield University October 2009 2 Professor Shaun Tyson
are doing now. So I think that is one of the issues which is perhaps rather more of a fear in the eyes of the members, rather than a reality. The other thing which has to be done is there has to be a resolution of the pension problem, because they have a massive pensions deficit in their pension scheme. And somebody has to – and it’s going to be the government really – has to fill that gap. My suspicion is the government – whichever government it is – will do that on condition that certain changes are made and that, say, privatisation is accepted, or whatever. So I think that is the way forward, it is not an easy way forward, but it means leadership from the management; clarification from the government and a willingness on the part of the trade unions to negotiate and come to an agreement. Steve Macaulay For all our sakes, we hope this dispute ends soon and that they set forth on a new path. Thank you. Shaun Tyson Thank you. © Cranfield University October 2009 3