Consignia Confirms 15,000 Job Losses

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Consignia Confirms 15,000 Job Losses

Oppose the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act!

Communist Movement:
Letter from RCPB(ML) to 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Denmark M-L
Letter from RCPB(ML) on 80th Anniversary of Founding of PCdoB

Consignia confirmed on Monday that it plans to make at least 15,000 workers redundant. This represents about 7 percent of the workforce.

Most of the job losses will come at the loss-making Parcelforce Worldwide business as managers implement a "radical restructuring" initiated by the government to save up to £1.2 billion. The Parcelforce "restructuring" will generate estimated savings of £370 million, while the changes to the transport network will save a further £90 million.

Parcelforce will cut back on its services, halting three day plus delivery options and transferring its universal parcel service to the Royal Mail. And fifty Parcelforce depots from Glasgow to Exeter will be shut down. Other cuts will come in the company's transport infrastructure, with the current 40,000 vehicle fleet being cut by 2500. Four of the 16 current mail distribution centres will close in the next year, though a new Midlands hub will be built to take on work from the three existing Midlands sites by the end of 2003/04.

Amid reports that the company is also set to close more than 3,000 urban post offices, Consignia chairman Allan Leighton said the latest announcements were "just the start". Consignia is already piloting plans to drop the second daily delivery and replace it with a single delivery to businesses between 7.00am and 9.00am while urban households should receive mail between 9.00am and 1.00pm and rural areas would receive post by late lunchtime.

"Parcelforce Worldwide has been out of step with the marketplace and its business model does not work. Most of our costs and losses are tied up in keeping an infrastructure for non time-guaranteed services which customers are moving away from and which we cannot make profitable," Allan Leighton said.

"These programmes, together with other savings to our management, operations and support services, mean that around 15,000 jobs will go over the next three years including anticipated natural turnover of around 2000 people," Allan Leighton said. "We have more work to do and more announcements regarding other parts of Consignia will be made as we agree detailed plans."

"The announcement about the job cuts isn't surprising, but they seem to be accelerating the restructuring,'' said Robin Byde, an analyst at Old Mutual Securities. A further 20,000 jobs at least are said to be in the pipeline throughout the Post Office.

Increased competition

The announcement comes as the company faces the prospect of increased competition as the postal services market is liberalised by the regulator, Postcomm.

Postcomm has proposed that beginning in April this year competition should be introduced for bulk mailings containing a minimum of 4,000 items, with the aim of full "liberalisation" by March 2006.

The regulator says that its plans will both promote competition and maintain services throughout Britain, given that "universal service is a commercial imperative as well as a social necessity".

Companies including Hays Plc and Business Post Group Plc are already offering some postal services.

Union Response

The Communication Workers Union has blamed underfunding for the job losses, and has pledged to resist any attempt to force through redundancies.

Pointing to growth in the mail delivery market and a failure to raise the price of deliveries in line with inflation since 1998, the union rejected suggestions that the Post Office was in decline.

Billy Hayes, general secretary of the CWU said jobs could be saved if a price rise was agreed today.

"The government can no longer have the postal service on the cheap. Any attempt by the Post Office or the government to force through redundancies will be resisted by strike action," he said.

Amicus joint general secretary Roger Lyons said: "This announcement has come as a body blow for the thousands of loyal workers in Consignia and we will work tirelessly to ensure that there are no compulsory redundancies. Consignia has signed the death warrants for thousands of jobs."

The director of the Child Poverty Action Group, Martin Barnes, said: "Post Office closures will hit the poor and most vulnerable the hardest. It will not be places like Hampstead and Richmond that will lose out. Instead, it will be areas already hit hard by poverty and deprivation."

Hewitt: Consignia job losses should be a "turning point"

Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt had the nerve to describe the 15,000 job losses at Consignia as a "turning point" in the postal service's fortunes.

In a statement that sought to place the blame for the job losses on the Conservative Party, Patricia Hewitt said that the restructuring was needed because of Parcelforce's "failed business model".

Announcing the permanent appointment of Alan Leighton as Consignia's chairman, the industry secretary said he would "get a grip" on the future of the company and "transform the Post Office's performance".

Patricia Hewitt said the Post Office used to be admired across Europe, but other postal services had modernised and invested during the 1980s and 1990s. The "restructuring" of the company would result in a more efficient service, said the Trade and Industry Secretary, but she warned there could be worse to come. "There will be further, unavoidable, job losses over the next three years," she told MPs. The government would do what it could to support those who were losing their jobs.

"I am confident that the path we are pursuing is the right one. Great commercial freedom, strengthened management, universal service enshrined in primary legislation...Today marks a turning point for the company," she said.

Speaking in manner indistinguishable from every CEO of big business who throws workers on the street claiming it is for the common good, she said: "I know that today's news will come as a blow to many workers, but these changes, painful as they are, are unavoidable. Today must be the first step towards renewal and towards creating a postal service that justifies the pride and lives up to the expectations of the millions of people in Britain who depend upon it every day."

There has already been strong criticism of the plans from the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, reflecting the fears that rural services will be hardest hit.

The SNP’s chief whip in Westminster, Pete Wishart, accused Tony Blair of "washing his hands" of the job losses. "The run-down of our postal services and the loss of thousands of jobs – with no guarantees against compulsory redundancies – are the price of Tony Blair's Thatcherite economic agenda," he said. "The Post Office is a central public service in the public sector – it is high time that the government accepted responsibility for the enormous damage that their policies are doing."

Plaid Cymru's economic development spokeswoman in the Welsh assembly, Elin Jones, also warned of a further deterioration of postal services in Wales. "If Consignia continues to make huge losses, it will be impossible to stop price increases, closure of post offices and access to services," she warned. "The national assembly should be demanding that the present high standard of our postal services are not compromised and are available to everyone, regardless of where they live at an uniform cost."

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman confirmed on Monday that the government had "no intention to intervene" and pointed to the fact that that Parcelforce was losing £15 million a month. The wider issue of speeding up the opening of markets to competition was "a matter for the regulator" he said.

Workers’ Response

Workers have spoken of the need for the organised workers themselves to take the initiative in response to the massive job losses. It was necessary for workers and their unions to look at the "broader picture" said one. The time has come to end the situation which has been going on for years where the only focus has been day to day issues, while the main issue of the direction of society has not been addressed.

There has been an unholy alliance between the regulator, acting on behalf of the government and the EU, the private companies which are hungry for the market, and the monopoly-controlled media. In this, the workers have had to contend with the situation where attacks on their livelihoods have been mainly coming from the Labour government.

The workers cannot accept any longer that the situation is "business as usual", a worker said, while public services are under such attack and the Post Office faces cataclysmic break-up.

Oppose the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act!

Wednesday 27 March, 2002: 7.30 pm

Essex Hall,

1-6 Essex St, London WC2R 3HY

(off the Strand near Aldwych)

Speakers include:

Fahim Ahmed (SLP Youth, criminal defence lawyer), Les Levidow (Campaign Against Criminalising Communities), Mark Littlewood (Liberty), Paul Feldman, (editor of Common Cause) and others.

This second of a new series of meetings of the London Political Forum focuses on building the opposition to the new Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act and the government's plans to criminalise dissent and attack the right to conscience. The meeting aims to develop the discussion on the need for a modern definition of rights and on how the rights of all members of society can be defended and guaranteed.

Come and Participate in the
London Political Forum!

The world is currently facing great dangers and increasing instability brought about by the agenda of neo-liberal globalisation and the so-called 'war against terrorism' pursued by Britain and the other big powers. The Labour Government has played a key role as the champion of this programme of globalisation and the chief ally of US imperialism. Under the pretext of acting as the 'peacemaker', upholding so-called 'civilised' values and the 'war against terrorism', it is justifying aggression and intervention throughout the world, and threatening and bullying all those who refuse to accept its aims and values.

In Britain the government has stepped up its programme of gearing the economy solely towards making the monopolies successful in the global market, and as the economic crisis deepens the government's response has been to more actively hand over health, education, other social programmes and vital sectors of the economy to big business. At the same it has taken a range of measures of a racist and reactionary nature to attempt to create divisions amongst people and to criminalise political protest and dissent, while seeking to impose an official ideology and set of values.

This situation has deepened people's conviction that a different world is possible, that an alternative must be found so that the people can become the real decision makers in society. As part of its work to organise for this alternative and build the workers' opposition to Labour's 'Third Way' RCPB(ML) warmly invites everyone to participate in a new series of meetings of the London Political Forum. The Forum aims to raise the level of political discussion in the capital, strengthen the coherence of the forces in London determined to stop the 'Third Way' programme being carried through, and to discuss how the people can themselves become the decision makers.

The London Political Forum is held on a regular monthly basis. Invited speakers share their experience of organising for the alternative and building the workers' opposition.

Next Month’s Meeting in April –

Wednesday, 24 April, Essex Hall, 7.30pm

The London Region Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) is contactable at:
170 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LA.

Tel: 020 7627 0599; e-mail office@rcpbml.org.uk

The Communist Party of Denmark M-L (DKP/ML) will celebrate its 9th Congress in Copenhagen from March 28 to 30. The main topics on the agenda of the Congress will be:

a) the class structure of the present Danish society, especially the composition of the working class, the determination of its most advanced strata and the relation and unity between the workers of the private and the public sectors;

b) the tactics of developing a broad front against the new rightist government, its confrontation policy against the working class movement and the frontal attacks against the remaining "welfare state";

c) the role of the Communists in the construction of this front and its place in the perspective of the struggle for socialism;

d) the tasks of the Communists and other democratic and anti-monopolistic forces during the Danish presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2002; and

e) the further struggle for the reunification of the Danish Communist movement.

The 9th Congress will also adopt a number of important resolutions on the present tasks of the Party on a national and international level and will finally elect the new leadership.

Chris Coleman, National Spokesperson of RCPB(ML)’s Central Committee has sent the following message to Jorgen Petersen, Chairman, and Sven Tarp, International Secretary, of the Communist Party of Denmark M-L, on this occasion.

Dear Comrades,

On the important occasion of your 9^th Congress we send to you our warmest congratulations and best wishes for its success.

Your Congress convenes at a time of renewed challenge for the working class, for its communist vanguard, and for all the progressive forces worldwide. It is a dangerous time when the United States and its allies, under the fraudulent banner of the "War on Terrorism", are renewing their attempt to impose the rule and penetration of the monopolies in all walks of life on the whole world, are laying aside all the principles of international relations established at the end of the Second World War, and are unleashing or planning to unleash cruel war on all those countries who have refused to bow to their dictate. Simultaneously, in many countries including those of the EU all political dissent is being criminalised and the very right to conscience denied. Despite this, the movements against privatisation, against neo-liberal globalisation and against war begin to grow anew.

Such a dangerous but developing situation underlines the importance of your Congress. We note with great interest and fully support that you will be deliberating on such vital questions as the present situation of the working class; the role and tactics of the communists in developing a broad front against the attacks on the working class movement and the public services, and its place in the perspective of the struggle for socialism; the tasks of the communists and other democratic and anti-monopolistic forces as regards the EU and the further struggle for the reunification of the Danish communist movement.

The relations between our two parties stretch back now over 20 years to the very beginnings of our organisations. We greatly treasure these relations, hold your struggles and many victories over all these years as our own, and assure you of our continued solidarity and our conviction that these relations will continue to strengthen in the future too in our common cause.

Once again, all success to your deliberations and to the implementation of the decisions of this important Congress.

With warmest revolutionary greetings.

Chris Coleman, National Spokesperson of the Central Committee of RCPB(ML) has sent the following message to Jose Reinaldo Carvalho, Vice-President Responsible for International Relations, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), on the occasion of the Party’s 80th anniversary.

Dear Comrades,

On the great occasion of the 80^th anniversary of the founding of PCdoB we send to you our heartfelt congratulations and best wishes.

The friendship between our two parties now stretches back over 20 years since we first met our dear comrades Joao Amazonas and Renato Rabelo in Albania in 1981. Beginning then we learnt about the great history of your Party, its struggles to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism and its heroism and sacrifice in resisting the savage onslaught of the fascist regimes. We have also since then followed at first hand and from afar with great sympathy and enthusiasm your painstaking work for the interests of the Brazilian people, for the victory of democracy and national independence and for the cause of the socialist ideals.

On this occasion, we assure you of our continued fraternal friendship and we wish you all success in your great work in our common cause, the cause of socialism, the future of humankind.

With our warmest greetings.