What good will strike achieve?

I WAS shocked to read (Post, March 24) that DVLA staff had voted to take industrial action, including strike action. What will such action achieve?

Are the workers doing themselves more harm than good? What is my interest? I am a paid-up member of the PCS Union (retired member) and its predecessors and have been continuously since 1961; I was an elected union official for around 23 years; I worked in DVLA from 1969 to 2001 and have friends and relatives working there now.

I was one of the leaders of the long strike at DVLA in 1981. There was much heartache and suffering but the strikers went back to work, after several months having achieved nothing. Since then, following the crushing of the miners, taking industrial action is not an easy route and laws have made it more difficult. I do not believe that any more than 50% of DVLA workers are union members. Nonunion staff are not able to strike.

Any industrial action is unlikely to stop the agency from working, and production will continue but bearing in mind the complexion of the present government is it likely to raise the question, “If they can carry on without many workers, why does it need them?”

There have been several articles in recent months about the supposed prob

lems at DVLA during the pandemic but the management appear to have carried out all precautions required by the Wales Government and Public Health Wales. A cluster of cases was identified in the call centre but this was dealt with and has not reoccurred.

The overall number of cases in the 6,000 DVLA workers was probably no different than the rates in the overall population and no data has been issued which can tell us whether these cases were the result of transmission in the workplace or contracted in the domestic environment.

You have repeatedly used the figure of 100 staff per floor as an illustration of overcrowding but with no comparison to the normal numbers on the floors. In the tower block, well over 200 people would normally be there, in my recollection.

The chief executive, in her evidence to the Select

Committee, stated that they receive some 65,000 items of mail a day, including numerous identity documents and passports from people claiming a driving licence. If these were not opened, sorted and distributed promptly the whole operation would grind to a halt.

There are numerous tasks which cannot be done “at home”.

I believe that DVLA is a good employer. Of the 6,000 workers, none has lost wages or benefits during the pandemic. Can this be said of all local employers?

DVLA has been a major employer in Swansea for 50 years and tens of thousands of people have benefitted from working there. After 50 years in the city, we should be proud of DVLA not regard it as some unwelcome intruder. Let’s all put our weight behind keeping DVLA in Swansea and enhancing further its reputation

as a highly efficient and effective organisation.