We played part in Middle East crisis

YOUR readers may have read about a potential strike at Royal Mail by the Communications Workers Union (CWU).

Our postmen and women have the best pay – and the best terms and conditions – in our industry. They do an amazing job in all weathers – rain or shine. Average pay is 45-50% above the National Living Wage. None of that is changing. There are just no grounds for a strike.

Previous strikes at Royal Mail meant we let our customers down. Some of our major rivals today were actually established because of those strikes. There really is no point shooting ourselves in the foot.

So, what’s at issue? Well, not the great terms and conditions postmen and women have, as I said before. On pay, we have made a very good offer. That follows a 10.8% pay rise in the four years since privatisation. That compares favourably with the 6.4% UK national average earnings increase over the same period.

On pensions, we know how important pension benefits are to colleagues. Our proposal would be by far the best pension scheme in the industry – and one that benchmarks well to other large employers. Many of our postmen and women are in a Defined Benefit scheme - 63%, in fact, compared to just 6% of workers across the UK private sector. We do need to change to a different type of Defined Benefit arrangement. That’s because - every year - it would cost us at least three times more than the cash we generate just to keep the existing pension open. No business could do that.

Royal Mail is a very good employer. We provide great terms and conditions. We are working hard to keep improving our services to customers in a very competitive industry. There is no need to strike. We want to work with our postmen and women, our great ambassadors, to keep being the best delivery company in the UK. Liz Law Royal Mail Director East Operations PERHAPS DJ Beck would like to investigate, for example, the indiscriminate US shelling of Druse villages in Lebanon in the 1980s and then consider apologizing and withdrawing such inflammatory comments such as “the unchecked immigration ..(into Britain) ..of peoples who have presided over the destruction of the Middle East.”

Does he imagine that the crisis there has nothing to due with British and US meddling and provocation over many decades?

Does he believe that Brexit should mean the repatriation of millions of law-abiding Muslims?

Not even the most extreme Brexiters who promised the Gullible a new hospital a week promised that - and I assert that Mr Beck has simply exposed his own ignorance, the xenophobic unpleasantness of the Brexit position - (he refers disparagingly to the EU as a “mishmash” of countries) - and, more seriously, Islamophobia, in that he blames immigration for terrorism.

I am surprised, dear Editor, that you published such an offensive letter,

John Payne