Midlands Division Defending The 4 Pillars Agreement – October 2019

Midlands Division

Defending The 4 Pillars Agreement – October 2019

It’s a Massive 97% ‘YES’ Vote

 

We have recently announced the industrial action ballot resultin our dispute with Royal Mail Group. The result of the Group wide ballot is below:

 

Number of ballot papers issued:     110,292

Number of papers returned:       83,704

Ballot turnout:       75.9%

Number of YES votes:       81,232

Number of NO votes:         2,421

Percentage voting YES:                     97.1%

 

This is an outstanding result. To achieve a 97.1% YES on a 75.9% turnout is nothing short of miraculous!

 

To put these results into context; a 75.9% turnout smashes the legal requirement of a minimum 50% turnout, it is a higher turnout than in any General Election in modern times and it beats the turnout in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.

 

A 97.1% YES vote is the highest YES vote achieved in any national industrial action ballot since the Trade Union Act became law. More importantly a 97.1% YES vote is the clearest possible rejection of Royal Mail’s position and future business plan.

 

This result has only been possible due to the fantastic loyalty of you, the members of the CWU, together with the incredible hard work of every one of the CWU’s army of Reps. A massive thanks to all of you.

 

What Happens Next?

 

The Union and Royal Mail are currently in mediation meetings, as required by our Dispute Resolution Processes. The final mediation meeting takes place this week. The CWU are not confident this will resolve the dispute.

 

There will then be a 3-week period where the Mediator writes his report and this is considered by Royal Mail and the CWU to determine whether this report forms the basis of resolving the dispute.

 

If the dispute remains unresolved then the CWU are free to give notice to Royal Mail of our intention to take strike action. The law requires that we give Royal Mail 14 days’ notice of our intentions.

 

This means that it will be towards the back end of November before we can legally take strike action.

 

The CWU remains committed to negotiating an agreement that resolves all issues in dispute, without the need to trigger the ballot. We have done it before, and we can do it again. Given the emphatic ballot result the ball is now very much in Royal Mail’s court.