Australia Post workers resisting attacks

Vanguard December 2012 p. 5
by Alice M.

Australia Post workers and their union the CWU (Postal) are angry.  At the same time as Australia Post announces a 16.6% increase in profits in the last financial year, it intensifies attacks on the jobs and conditions of postal workers.

It sends out a warning to its workers to expect “wage restraint” (that usually means less than the rate of inflation), and hacks back the essential public service provided to the community for more than 100 years.   

The main reason for the windfall in the increase of Australia Post’s profits is the measly 1% annual wage increase that was meted out to Australia Post workers in 2010.

This is where most of Australia Post’s 16.6% rise in profits came from. Australia Post made $281 million in the after tax profits, and after paying the Federal government dividend of almost $214million. Ahmed Farouh, the ex-CEO of NAB and current CEO of Australia Post pocketed $2.78 million salary, including $874,000 in bonuses.  Most Australia Post executives earn over $1million. 

More casual, part-time jobs

Community services cut

The increase in profits also comes at a time of cut backs in retail and delivery services to the community.

For the 33,000 Australia Post workers nationally who are the sole creators of these profits, it comes with a stronger push by Australia Post for wider casualisation and part-time work, and fewer permanent workers.

For the community, it means cuts to services, closure and privatisation of more suburban and rural post offices and contracting out the rapidly growing parcel delivery services at lower rates of pay and inferior working conditions and entitlements for contract workers. 

While the volume of letters is shrinking, replaced by emails and electronic transactions, the volumes of domestic and international parcels have increased exponentially over past two years. 

Preparing for privatisation?

Australia Post management and the Federal government have no interest in continuing to provide an efficient national public service to the community. The Government wants to maximise Australia Post’s dividends in its chase for a surplus budget to be used only to benefit big business.

Both want to turn this public community service into big business, not unlike the big four banks.  This will only gut one of the last few remaining national, publicly owned infrastructure services. 

Waiting on the sidelines are big foreign corporations and financial institutions ready to pounce on the most lucrative operations of Australia Post.  The TPPA will clear the way for privatisation of Australia Post.

Squeezing and bullying

Australia Post workers are squeezed hard.  Australia Post has an unrivalled reputation for the largest numbers of work related injuries in a national public instrumentality. All sorts of tricks are used to deny injured workers their rights to workers’ compensation. This includes pressuring workers to attend their own company paid doctors for medical assessments.

In its latest scheming to cut jobs in retail shops, Australia Post concocted a time and motion system to measure individual workers’ productivity. The fake model is designed by top managers, lolling around in their skyscraper glass offices, demanding  counter staff should only take 41 seconds per transaction to process bills, down from present 70.  This is a cynically designed excuse to axe jobs.  

Australia Post retail workers and their union have settled in for a prolonged fight to protect jobs and prevent closure of retail shops. For workers and the union the battles with Australia Post never stop.

During the 2010 EBA, the previous national union leadership tricked many postal workers into believing that they would receive a 3% increase annually. The Victorian branch of the union saw through the deceit and the lies of the old leadership and strongly campaigned against accepting the insulting wage increase that in reality was only 1% per year. Alerted by their union, workers in Victoria overwhelmingly voted against the agreement.

After two and a half years the bitter truth of the paltry 1% increase has been exposed, and postal workers are angry.

Australia Post workers, their union and the community have common interests in the fight to defend a public service and its loyal workers. It is part of a growing people’s movement to build Australia as a society that provides efficient community and public services that work in the interests of the people, and respects and looks after workers.