As soon as billionaire Daniel Kretinsky became official owner of Royal Mail, he went ahead with the plan to cut the 6-day a week Universal Service Obligation (the obligation to deliver letters to the all 32m addresses in the country). No surprise there, of course. For sure, the RM Board, representing shareholders, has been wanting to shelve the statutory USO since Day 1. And to "ease in" this cut, they now want to reduce 2" Class deliveries to alternate days. They've also got Ofcom to agree that only 90% of 1% Class post needs to be delivered the next day... A trial of this new regime is about to begin.

    Kretinsky and his RM underlings claim that a cut-down USO won't affect jobs. And the Communication Workers" Union, which has been going along with the worst cuts in postal workers' jobs and conditions ever, is singing in unison with the bosses. But that's no surprise either. The union leadership has agreed to the loss of 12,000 jobs since 2022, and now they're collaborating on the pilot to get rid of the USO. In the 37 Delivery Offices where it's meant to start, local managers are already making cuts.

    Of course, the getting rid of the USO is a way for Kretinsky to move fully into the profitable parcel delivery business, without the unprofitable drag of letter delivery. It will be the end of a postal "service" as we know it. And the precondition is to strip postal workers of the terms and conditions we have won in the past through our struggles.

    If we are to prevent this attack from going any further, we will need to start by refusing to participate in the USO frial. And since the CWU is officially going along with it, it is up to us to do this without them. That is, to organise our own meetings - and not just where the pilot is to take place, but everywhere, in all offices around the country - to co-ordinate our action. It's a very long time since postal workers took their struggles into their own hands. But we have done it before and we can do it again. And it could be the first step in the fight to take the entire postal service back into public hands - and moreover, under workers' control!