POSTAL workers have unanimously passed an emergency motion condemning Royal Mail’s attempts to outsource the processing of compensation claim forms.

The resolution, approved at the Communication Workers Union (CWU) conference on Wednesday evening, said the union’s members were “appalled” at Royal Mail’s plans to contract out the handling of P58 forms, a “significant piece of CWU graded work” involving claims for lost, damaged or delayed mail, to a St Ives-based company.

“Whether or not there are direct job losses, if elements of our work … are in the future performed by employees in other companies on inferior terms and conditions, this is outsourcing and it represents a huge threat to our national agreements,” the motion warned.

Ralph Ferrett, of Plymouth and East Cornwall branch, said the proposals amounted to “outsourcing, pure and simple,” which would “break a fundamental part of our national agreement.”

If the CWU allowed the outsourcing of “some of our members because it is cheaper, then that opens the floodgates to every part of the business,” he added.

John Woodhouse, of Newcastle amalgamated branch, agreed, saying: “It could easily lead to the ultimate outsourcing of all Royal Mail services as a whole.”

Northern territorial rep David Bowmaker said the CWU needed to resist the plans, predicting that Royal Mail was “going to test our resolve and see what holes they can find [in] any of our agreements.

“If we don’t make a stand on this issue, if we allow Royal Mail to nibble away and outsource our work unchallenged, [there will be] more attacks wherever Royal Mail think they can get away with it.”

Andy Furey, of the CWU executive, said the union was “totally and utterly opposed to any outsourcing of any of our members’ work whatsoever,” warning that the plans were “a test of the legally binding agreement” between the union and Royal Mail.

The accord stipulates that Royal Mail “will not outsource, sell or transfer to a company outside of the Royal Mail Group any part of its business if to do so would result in any employee being subject to the automatic transfer provisions of Tupe.”

Mr Furey said Royal Mail’s justification that no-one was being transferred under the Tupe regulations – which preserve the terms and conditions of employees transferred from one employer to another – was “spurious.”