POSTIE XMAS STRIKE?
Deliveries under threat as 89% vote for walkouts in pay and pension fight
ROYAL Mail faces its first national strike since privatisation four years ago, which may hit Christmas deliveries.
Communication Workers Union members voted by 89% for industrial action over pensions, pay and jobs. The vote on a 73% turnout easily passed the 50% threshold test in the Tories’ new Trade Union Act.
CWU leaders will meet this week to set possible strike dates after giving Royal Mail 14 days’ notice of any action.
The union blamed cost-cutting, the end of the final salary pension and closure of offices. Union chief Terry Pullinger blamed a “massive failure in trust”.
Royal Mail said last night it was “very disappointed”.
Strikes over axing guards hit Southern, Merseyrail, Greater Anglia and Arriva Rail North yesterday. More follow tomorrow.
THERESA May denying she’s a robot in a TV interview and insisting that she has feelings, ahead of her big speech today, won’t revive her or her faltering party.
The empty seats and lack of new ideas at a very flat Conservative conference in Manchester leaves the rudderless Tories marooned and looking fatally clueless – puzzling how and when to try to remove the Prime Minister from Downing Street.
Even chief plotter Boris Johnson, the face of Tory treachery, failed to find his top notes in a shallow address, wrapping up disloyalty as loyalty. If he’s the best the Tories have, they’re in worse trouble than we realised.
Confidence is a valuable political currency. Labour and Jeremy Corbyn possess it in spades, an enthusiastic mass movement for real change. The Tories and May are terrified of their own shadows and at a complete loss.
Tory incompetence and in-fighting are criminal when Brexit’s so crucial and the economy’s misfiring – with low wages and living standards inflicting hardship – and the country’s crying out for strong leadership.