On Wednesday 4th November 2009, supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Group/Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! protested outside Reed Employment Solutions and Manpower UK employment agencies in Newcastle. Royal Mail had been recruiting temporary and agency workers through these agencies to scab on the postal worker strikes.

We demonstrated in solidarity with the postmen and women calling on people looking for work not to take these scab jobs and for the agencies to stop farming out the jobs of the posties. We demonstrated in solidarity with the demands of the postal workers who were striking over job cuts, changes in work conditions, pay freezes, recruitment freezes, an estimated £10billion pension deficit and proposals to privatise Royal Mail by 30%.

We picketed the agencies, spoke on the megaphone, handed out leaflets, got passer-bys to sign the petition and donate towards the strike fund and had a banner reading: ‘Don’t Scab on the Posties! One Struggle! One Fight! Defend Public Services!’ This got a lot of support from the public and was featured on page 2 of Thursday 5th edition of the Evening Chronicle.

By scabbing on the postal workers it undermines their strike and their demands and sells out the long term interests of the whole of the working class for nowt but a quick pay-cheque.

It is important that we stand in unity against all of the attacks we are coming under as the Labour Party throws billions at the banks and the private sector while massively attacking the public sector in order to pay itself out of the economic crisis at the expense of the working class. The interests of the working class nationally and internationally are always going to be at logger-heads with the ruling classes. It is for this reason that the only way we can win our struggle is by standing in solidarity with all of those who are fighting back against attacks from the state whether it be the striking postal workers, mams and dads occupying their kids school that is threatened with closure, unemployed people who are having their benefits cut, people fighting against repossessions, the Muslim youth who fought the English Defence League to protect their community, asylum seekers and immigrants in their daily battle against racist immigration laws and fighting deportations, black and young people in their fight against police harassment, the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan resistance against imperialist wars and occupations.

The strikes may have been called off for now but this doesn’t mean that attacks on the postal workers have ended. We will be there to support their struggle when they take it up again.

One Struggle! One Fight!