Postal Chaos
MR. GEORGE WOODCOCK said that his meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday was 'short and sour.' The postal dispute which it was hoped this meeting would end quickly threatened to be long and bitter. It is a disastrous affair. The damage to the economy, not to mention the inconvenience to the ordinary life of the public, is already substantial. The an- nouncement of a full-scale strike by the postmen promised national chaos.
Evidently the postal workers were this week prepared to lower their demands Mr. Maudling, however, chose to adhere rigidly to his oiler of a 4 per cent increase pending the study of post- men's pay in relation to other industries. He can- not have expected that this would lead to a settlement. The only incentive to an agreement that he offered was a proposal that the pay study should be completed in four weeks instead of six. In their present mood the postmen were likely to find this more irritating than conciliatory. and so it turned out. A futile clash has resulted.
Mr. Ron Smith is the postmen's leader in principle but not altogether in fact. He has not been in a position to guarantee that his members would go back to work unless some definite in- crease was assured. Even if he climbed down, un- official stoppages would continue, probably on a large scale. Now that other unions have moved in with promises of formidable financial support, the quarrel has been unpleasantly enlarged. The pub- lic temper may be getting short as the incon- veniences of the postal muddle increase: there is certainly no evidence of any general feeling that a head-on collision is justified.
It was unrealistic of the Treasury to try to hold the postmen down to 4 per cent when the trouble blew up. It was even more unrealistic—to put it mildly—to persist in the attempt this week. It was pretty obvious that the men were going to get more than this before the dispute was over. The argument that to make a better offer now would undermine the Civil Service pay structure was not convincing. The sensible course would have been to make a modest improvement on the original offer before the final showdown.
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