UK

CWU’s Dave Ward takes apart Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson on BBC Breakfast

Basit Mahmood Today
Left Foot Forward

“What he’s putting in front of our members no union, no worker would accept.”

The general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, Dave Ward, has taken apart the Royal Mail’s CEO Simon Thompson during an appearance on BBC Breakfast today, which has earned widespread praise.

CWU members are currently on strike over what it says is a bad pay deal as well as over plans to alter the way the service is structured, as inflation soars and the cost of living crisis worsens.

Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Ward was asked whether he was ‘holding Christmas to ransom’ a claim made by the CEO of Royal Mail. Ward replied: “It’s completely untrue, the people who are destroying Christmas and the Royal Mail forever not just this Christmas, is the guy you had on earlier on (Thompson) who’s completely out of his depth.

“He doesn’t tell the truth about what this dispute is about, sorry to correct you, this is about thousands upon thousands of jobs, the most brutal attack we’ve seen on a very popular group of workers in the UK for decades, it’s also about financial mismanagement of the company by Mr Thompson and the board and the board really need to step in now because this company is being destroyed before our eyes and it doesn’t need to be this way.

“What he’s putting in front of our members no union, no worker would accept.”

Ward went on to add that thousands upon thousands of members were being sacked while at the same time the company was bringing in self-employed drivers on 20% less pay, while also retaining 11,000 agency workers.

He urged the government to step in and said that the Royal Mail were determined to abandon the ‘AM delivery period’ and were set to turn the Royal Mail into another ‘parcel courier company’, wanting to end the universal service it offered.

Asked about the losses that the company was incurring as a result of the strikes, Ward replied: “There’s £567 million he gave to shareholders, there’s over £400 million he’s cut away from the Royal Mail from the international acquisitions by handing that over to shareholders rather than supporting Royal Mail, that’s a huge amount of money that would’ve seen us through these difficult times’.

His comments came after Thompson appeared on BBC Breakfast earlier, and was asked on five separate occasions whether he’d attended the last stage of talks with the CWU but refused to say so.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward