The Post Office work to rule

Writing while the struggle is still going on it is nevertheless possible to see that the Post Office workers’ demonstration of solidarity in their work-to-rule surprised this Postmaster-General and the Government as well as hampering this users of the services.

The Post Office first dismissed the holdup as being due to the snow and frost, but though the weather improved the service did not, and the Post Office had to cancel a central London delivery and appeal to the public and business firms to limit their postings. The next move was the costly one of imposing overtime to clear the mountains of delayed mail, and switching mail to other offices for sorting. This, too, proved adequate and on January 10th, while asserting that only a fifth of the postmen were working-to-rule (a statement denied by the Union) the PMG had to announce that the inland parcel service in and out of London had to be suspended.

At the same time the Civil Service Clerical Association planned its own work-to-rule for mid-January, not specifically about a pay claim but in protest against the Government’s interference with the right of the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal to fix operative dates for the payment of awards.

The Post Office workers movement arose out of a claim they lodged in July for an increase on the ground that their pay had been falling progressively behind the average levels in manufacturing and some other industries, a factor which the PMG declared to be irrelevant since, according to present methods of fixing civil service pay, the governing basis is the pay of workers doing comparable work. He held that factory work is not comparable work for Postmen, Telegraphists and others. He could not deny that Post Office pay had in any event fallen another four per cent. behind the Ministry of Labour index of wage rates, and that this is a relevant factor and had been admitted to be so in the four per cent. increase granted on that ground in January, 1961. But he had another argument, that even if he admitted that a claim had been made out it would have been barred while the Chancellor’s pay pause lasted. It was on such grounds that the Post Office justifies only paying the lowest grade, the men Cleaners, only £8 16s. a week, because there are many other employers who pay even less.

Post Office workers and other civil servants take industrial action under the shadow of the declaration of succeeding governments that they will take strong action against any civil servants who strike. It was Sir Hartley Shawcross. Attorney-General, who declared in 1946 that the Labour Government would dismiss any civil servant who went on strike, with consequent loss of pension as well as the job.

The whole affair was also overshadowed by the manoeuvring between the Government and the TUC about the proposed National Economic Development Council, the Government trying to entice the TUC to join and the latter standing out for concessions about the Pay Pause and other matters.

Those who still think that Nationalisation is a solution to the workers’ problems, and that being employed by the Government takes the workers out of the wages struggle, should note the PMG’s frank admission that the Government was hitting at Post Office workers in order to keep the general level of wages from rising.

He said in a Press interview on January 10th:

“If the Postal workers, through the action they are apparently taking, were to receive an adjustment of pay then the movement would spread like wildfire throughout the whole of the public sector and throughout British industry.” (Evening News, 10.1.62.)

If thinking that the Government is more generous than other employers is one illusion, another is taking an exaggerated and unrealistic view of what industrial action can achieve against the employers and the State. It has been possible in the last twenty years of inflation to get the idea that employers (and the Government) are not really able to resist strong trade union pressure backed by strikes. What has been happening is that though governments have encouraged employers to resist wage-claims, they have usually been willing, each time serious industrial unrest threatened, to give a further boost to inflation, thus putting up prices and profits and making it comparatively cheap to give wage increases. Most of each wage increase was not a real gain but only compensation for higher prices.

But if the Government came to the determined conclusion that the process of inflation had to halt and be replaced by tough resistance to wage demands irrespective of the cost in the form of strikes and interrupted production, there should be no illusion about their power to do so. As has been shown so often in the past, including the post-war Labour Government’s proclamation of Emergency Powers and the use of troops to do the work of strikers, the Government, if it thinks it worth while to use it, in any particular case, has the power to defeat workers’ industrial action. This is not saying that industrial action is useless, but that its usefulness is limited. It can be effective in favourable circumstances when employers may give a wage increase to avoid production being halted, but it cannot meet on equal terms the wealth of the employers and the powers of the State.
H.