POEU sold out again

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WHEN the POEU Postal Engineers' one day strike on Monday August 23 was called off, initially we thought it was a victory for the engineers.

But it has turned out to be yet another in a series of sell-outs of postal engineers in the POEU by the Union leadership since the split of the Post Office and British Telecom.

After calling off the strike by phoning branches, the NEC has published a letter to branches, together with the letter from Dearing (Chairperson of the Postal Board) to Bryan Stanley (the POEU General Secretary) on which agreement was based.

It amounted to a stay of execution of an agreement Postal Engineers had with the old Post Office, giving them until Christmas when Dearing 'hopes' to have reached a new agreement with magnanimous Staniey - an agreement which will worsen the pay and conditions of postal. engineers working in mechanised depots, and which Stanley hopes to add his signature to over the heads of the POEU membership.

Postal engineers make up about 10% of the POEU membership: feel they are being pushed out of the union by the bureaucrats in Greystoke House, but they are beginning to fight for themselves following Monday 23rd's grand old Duke of York.

Never

Liverpool Power branch.

major postal branch. unanimously decided that the strike should never have been called off, and are writing to branches with postal members to call a conference of branch officers and delegates ic fight to remain within the POEU and to fight the Postal management's attacks on their pay anc conditions.

Postal branches wil certainly support this, bur Telecom branches shoul also. It is the same POEL leadership who lack the wil and direction to lead thei members into fighting for pay and conditions in bock the P.O. and B.T., and it i the . same Governmen behind the P.O. and B.T who are directing boc management boards int attacks on our jobs.