A postal worker at one of the 35 delivery offices piloting USO “reform” spoke with the World Socialist Web Site this week. Their name and location have been withheld to prevent victimisation. The pilot scheme was drawn up by Royal Mail and Communication Workers Union (CWU) deputy assistant general secretary Martin Walsh to trial the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM).

The ODM is a workplace regime aimed at dismantling the universal mail service. USO reform was rubber-stamped by regulator Ofcom on July 28 based on alternate weekday delivery for second class and “non-priority” letters. Contrary to official claims, it also downgrades first class letters with watered down quality-of-service targets, allowing delays of up to three days.

Walsh and the CWU postal executive agreed to trial this gig economy delivery model last December as part of a Framework Agreement supporting Royal Mail’s takeover by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group. CWU members had no say. It replaces fixed duties with “core” and “combined” routes, leaving three postal workers to perform the work of four, increasing delivery spans to five hours and call rates by 30 percent.

Walsh publicly attacked the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) and the WSWS for “interference” after a campaign taken up at delivery offices to scrutinise the pilots and organise a collective struggle against plans to deploy the ODM across all 1250 delivery units nationally.

In the face of rank-and-file opposition, the CWU had insisted there was “no alternative” but to accept the pilots. But they have now been forced to admit the ODM is unworkable and have submitted an “alternative model” of cost-cutting to the company which they are trying to sell to members.

The disastrous outcome of the pilot scheme has vindicated the stance of the PWRFC. The committee provided a crucial platform for workers to speak up and expose the truth, breaking through the lies and misinformation spread by the CWU bureaucracy and their partners in EP Group, Ofcom and the Starmer government.

As the results of last month’s national ballot showed, the CWU bureaucracy has no mandate for its pro-company collusion against postal workers and the mail service. Over half of CWU members did not vote and only one in three voted to accept the pay deal. There is growing anger toward the CWU’s imposition of sweatshop conditions, but this opposition must be mobilised in an overdue rebellion against the pro-company apparatus.

The following interview is being published to contribute to a vital discussion among postal workers and as an appeal to attend this Sunday’s online meeting of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee: “After the ballot: the way forward for postal workers”. Register here

What pressure were workers in your pilot office placed under by management and CWU officials to make the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM) work? How does your unit compare before and after ODM?

There was major pressure on workers from day one at the delivery office. Senior managers and CWU officials descended on the workplace to tell us there was no Plan B. This included CWU Divisional Reps. An example of the type of intimidation was one Divisional Rep who told us that the unit could face closure, and we would be out of a job unless we cooperated. Before the pilot we had been completing our mail delivery more or less, but as soon as it started, we were failing. Several of our colleagues, long serving postal workers, quit because they could not face the increased workloads—about 10 percent of the office. Decades of service ended and no acknowledgement from management. The company even avoided paying voluntary redundancy. They brought in agency staff at first as a temporary fix and then other staff from nearby offices because the workloads were unmanageable.

Martin Walsh claimed the CWU would test the ODM against key criteria: improved quality of service, fair workloads, management of fatigue, better attendance patterns, and improved staff morale. Was the pilot monitored by the CWU to ensure these standards were met?

No, it has been ad-hoc, shambolic. There was no transparency, recognised methods of recording, no results were made public and the workers views were not taken into account.

The CWU promoted ODM on the grounds that it would improve attendance patterns (e.g., additional Saturdays off). Based on your experience, has this really compensated for the additional hours worked during the week and the expanded delivery spans and workloads?

CWU officials used the promise of improved Attendance Patterns to claim that the ODM would benefit us. There was a workplace ballot and the majority voted for 2 in 5 Saturdays off, replacing the normal 1 in 6. But this in no way makes up for what we have been put through by the extra hours and miles spent pounding the streets. The delivery spans have increased by around 40 minutes per day, up to 5 hours and this is during the light period of the year. Posties are even more exhausted now – both physically and mentally through stress. My colleagues say by the time they finish work all they want to do is sleep. They have no time to spend with their families.

The CWU agreed with management for the use heart monitors to measure fatigue. The CWU has never publicly admitted it involved bio-metric testing. When postal workers heard about this from the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, many said if it had reached this point the ODM should be scrapped

Workers took part in wearing the heart monitors, a small device like a chip the size of 10 pence piece which we wore as an armband. This was conducted by a private health firm but the guy in charge seemed to be out of his depth as far as medical expertise was concerned. On an individual basis we were told that there were sharp fluctuations in our heart rates during our walks. If this had been a serious exercise it should have involved tests before and then during the pilot to measure patterns of change in terms of stress and physical exertion. But no results or summary has been produced. It was just a box ticking exercise with no outcome in terms of ensuring our health and safety was not being placed at risk.

Did the CWU ensure any measures to reduce injury, ensure fair workloads, and manage fatigue?

This is the crux of the matter for me. Any change to working arrangements should be subject to risk assessment as a legal requirement to eliminate hazards with results published for all workers to view and none of this was done. CWU officials claimed ignorance of company policy such as weighing bags and using sliding scales during delivery spans to reduce manual handling injuries when this was raised. They have allowed it to become redundant in the workplace. The preventative value of this was ignored and the reality is we were left to struggle with the consequences.

In its August 22 letter to branches, the CWU stated the ODM is “unrealistic”, with delivery failures at the majority of the 35 units it has been implemented between February and June. But during last Thursday’s “CWU Live” event, Outdoor Assistant Secretary Tony Bouch said ODM had been “signed off” at five units following a Post Implementation Review. Have you been told at your unit that ODM is now a permanent change?

The only thing which has been fed back to us is that “tweaks” have been implemented. No official decision on the pilot has been confirmed. We were told from the start it was not a “trial”, it was here to stay.

Bouch has now said CWU officials have submitted an “alternative model” to ODM based on a so-called “light and heavy” model. Isn’t this just a revised plan for slashing jobs and ramping up workloads—cutting 8 duties into 7 instead of 4 into 3? According to Bouch this is based on “the same principle” but with the 8th duty “lapsed” and spread across the seven with delivery workers paired on two walks (in a van share) with the “heavy” duty including all mail and parcels and the “light” duty only first class letters and parcels. How is this an “alternative”?

To me this is the last throw of the dice by CWU officials. It is badly thought through and virtually impossible to follow. In fact the company has rubbished it.

Bouch is finally admitting that the ODM has been a failure. This despite Walsh repeatedly saying that there was ‘no Plan B’. What does he say to the hundreds of long service delivery staff who are demoralised, exhausted and those who have left the job because it has become unbearable?

The service is on its knees with failures daily of 1st class and second-class mail and packets lying in offices for days. Bouch’s latest proposal of ‘heavy and light’ from what I can determine will need more hours, a change of duties and extra vans. Bouch is telling postal workers to place goodwill in EP group (a hedge fund). Who does he think he is kidding? All of these changes are another step in the race-to-the-bottom, and the workforce (especially in pilot offices) can see them for what they are.

Members of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee played a leading role in exposing what the CWU was up to on the pilots even before they started. Based on this experience how important is it to develop the network of rank-and-file organisation to defeat the collusion of the bureaucracy with management and bring power back to the shop floor?

Nothing can be entrusted to Walsh and CWU officials. They have shown once again they are unaccountable. They don’t have our interests at heart but the profits of the shareholders. In this case the new billionaire owners EP Group. We will not accept this lying down and the rank and file offers the only alternative by providing the genuine voice of postal workers and mobilising our collective strength against the pro-company apparatus.