Local councillors and union launch campaign against Royal Mail office closure

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) and ALL councillors in the WF15/16 postcode area have launched a campaign against the closure of the Heckmondwike Delivery Office by Royal Mail.

Heckmondwike DO office has served the local community in the Heckmondwike & Liversedge postcode for many years. Residents can use the office to pick up parcels, redirect or hold mail, and access other services. 

  

However in March 2012, Royal Mail announced plans to close the Heckmondwike Delivery Office by August 2012 and move operations to Batley Delivery Office on Grange Road, Batley.

  

The closure has been announced without consulting the Community and its elected councillors or MPs, or the workers and their union (CWU). Local Councillors and the CWU are calling on Royal Mail to keep the office open. 

For residents of Heckmondwike and Liversedge collecting parcels will mean the journey to Grange Road in Batley which at present has no bus service to it.

For businesses it could mean a disruption in service.

It will severely hamper our elderley and disabled People being able to collect Items- batley is not on a Bus Route.

"Councillor Statements"

Royal Mail Delivery Staff are not happy either, since most have worked at the office for nearly a decade and live locally. While receiving travel allowances for three years, ultimately they will have to pay more and travel longer to get to work.

Several are worried they may struggle to pick up their children from school if the move means later start times and longer travelling times. While Royal Mail has stated that nobody will lose their job, some workers may not have a place at Batley Delivery Office and are unsure where in the Wakefield area they may end up working.

  

Local CWU branch secretary Andy Lee explained: “In my opinion closing Heckmondwike Delivery Office would effect the quality of service offered to local residents and businesses and would be an unnecessary disruption to our member's current working life. I

There is no rationale behind Royal Mail’s announcement other than the money they will gain by selling the site".

  

The CWU Leeds No.1 Amalgamated Branch and Local Councillors have launched a campaign to keep the office open, in order to keep on serving the community. They are campaigning on the internet and in the local area with a petition's and leaflets. 

For businesses and residents please contact:

Andy Lee

Central Secretary

Leeds No.1 Amalgamated Branch

Communication Workers Union

Suite 6e

Josephs Well

Hanover Walk

Leeds

LS3 1AB

Tel: 0113 2341312 (Office)

       07958760045  (Mobile)

Fax: 0113 2341307

Email: andylee@cwuleeds.freeserve.co.uk

The Inaugural Lecture of Professor Paul Blackledge

Professor Paul Blackledge is to hold his Inaugural Lecture on Wednesday 13 June 2012 at the Rose Bowl, Leeds Met University City Campus at 17:30.

If you wish to attend please RSVP to: eventstream@leedsmet.ac.uk

Professor Paul Blackledge

Professor Paul Blackledge is a political theorist working within the classical Marxist tradition. His most recent works include a monograph, Marxism and Ethics: Freedom, Desire and Revolution, and a coedited collection, Virtue and Politics. In these books he articulated a Hegelian Marxist ethic through the lens of a neo-Aristotelian critique of liberalism and capitalism. The understanding of Marxism developed in these books builds upon arguments first presented in his second monograph, Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History, and in a series of related articles.

Beyond the Impasse of the Modern Moral
Point of View: Towards an Ethical Marxism

The lecture takes as its starting point Raymond Geuss’s claim that contemporary moral philosophy “has little to tell us about real politics”. According to Geuss this failure stems from the way that the Kantian colouration  of most modern normative theory informs a tendency to separate discussions of what ought to be from questions of what is. It is precisely because we live in a world in which ethics has been reduced to an emotivist caricature of itself that Marx was scathing in his criticisms of moral discourse. This has often led commentators to erroneously claim that he had no interest in ethical theory. The opposite is the case. It was because Marx understood the social basis for our emotivist culture that he was able to grasp that competing moral claims would tend towards incommensurability, and thus that moralistic politics would take the form of “impotence in action”. Unfortunately, because Marx’s critics largely naturalise the modern moral point of view they tend to interpret his rejection of the moral form as evidence either of a crude mechanical materialism or of simple incoherence. In contrast to these approaches, this lecture seeks to outline an interpretation of Marxism that is able to point beyond the impasse both of modern moral philosophy and of much of modern radical theory towards an ethically grounded criticism of, and alternative to, capitalism. Blackledge argues that, understood thus, Marxism provides indispensible resources for contemporary political theory (and practice).

Save the NHS - Public Meeting

Dr John Lister will be speaking at a meeting organised by Leeds Hospital Alert and Leeds Keep our Health Service Public on Thursday 21 June 2012 from 7pm.


The meeting will take place at Holy Trinity Church Boar Lane, Leeds, LS1 6HW.


Please come and join in the discussion on how we can save the NHS from the attacks of the privateers.


For further information e-mail: leedshospitalalert@org.uk


Please also find below a link to the petition to Save Airedale Hospital Laundry Service.  This in-house service is under threat, and the petition asks the management of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust to do everything possible to keep the laundry in-house and its 40+ staff in work. 


Please also sign the petition here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-airedale-hospital-laundry-service


Please support this petition, sponsored by UNISON, GMB and Keighley TUC, and distribute it to friends, family and colleagues, asking them to also sign.