Stop the Royal Mail Sell-Off (Rip-Off)

Dear Colleagues

There has been a lot of news in recent days about the proposed 30% sell-off of Royal Mail to a private concern, the most notable forerunner being TNT. This is a company most notorious for it's strike breaking antics at Rupert Murdoch's Wapping plant in 1986.

TNT has a track record of cutting jobs to boost profits and works on the basis of 10 part-timers to one full-timer to cut costs.

In the last 9 months of 2008 the postal service made £225 million profit whilst TNT's profits have collapsed.

The much trumpeted pensions deficit was mainly caused by the Conservative and 'new' Labour Governments of recent years taking a 13 year 'holiday' from paying their contributions into the fund. As the owners of Royal Mail, these Governments actually used this money to fill their own coffers. To allow a privateer to get their hands on the profitable part of Royal Mail whilst keeping the 'deficit' is shear madness in line with the Governments tactics with the banking industry.

If the Government can find billions to bail out these parasites in the large banks, it can sure afford to pay the money owed by the Government itself to ensure workers get the pension that they have worked for, without resorting to blackmail tactics 'of agree to the sell-off or lose your pension' The sell-off and the pension problem are two entirely different matters.

If you wish to help stop the destruction of Royal Mail, please sign the e-petition on the official site of the Prime Minister's office at:
http://petition.number10.gov.uk/Royal-Mail-Sale/ and find out how you can support the Keep The Post Public campaign at
www.keepthepostpublic.org.

Yours in solidarity

Paul Rutland