Royal Mail recently announced details of plans to axe almost 100 post offices across Northern Ireland.

This is a cruel blow to many of the most rural and economically deprived urban areas, where the vast majority of closures will occur. The government and Royal Mail argue that as too few customers use these services, rises in running costs have rendered cuts inevitable.  In reality, it is a crude attempt to raise profits at the expense of the needs of these communities.

In rural areas, the post office often serves as the only shop, acts as an important meeting point and provides vital local information. Royal Mail argues that by creating 54 “outreach centres” it will minimise the impact on these communities. In most instances, however, this amounts to a weekly visit at a set location and is seen as no substitute by residents.

In urban areas, particularly hard hit will be the elderly or disabled, for whom the local post office is often a vital service. It will also be a huge inconvenience for many on low incomes. While Royal Mail claim that 95% of people will be within one mile of the nearest post office, this statistic does not take into account sectarian fault lines, public transport routes and other considerations. Furthermore, increased pressure on remaining branches is likely to result in longer queues and poorer services for all.

Pressure is mounting on politicians to oppose the closures. Peter Robinson MP was forced to organise a meeting with Royal Mail management to discuss the closure of three post offices in East Belfast. In England and Wales, where four million signed a 2006 petition calling for an end to closures, popular campaigns, such as the “save our post offices” campaign, have built mass opposition in various regions. This has no-doubt influenced the Greater London Authority’s decision to launch a legal challenge against post office closures in London, in a move that could have direct implications for Northern Ireland.

As the potential for the organisation of a UK-wide campaign increases, the recent muted response of the CWU leadership is worrying. The labour movement must struggle to place trade unions at the head of the fight against this continuing assault on our postal service.

As a result of the Assembly Executive’s ‘efficiency’ targets, 450 jobs are to be lost in the Housing Executive. The cuts have already begun to be felt with 66 temporary workers being fired last month.

John, a worker in the Housing Executive told The Socialist: ‘The Executive management took an arbitrary decision without proper consultation with NIPSA or other unions that temporary staff would be summarily dismissed without any investigation into the impact this would have not only on the individuals themselves but also on the service that was being left behind.

There was no cognoscente taken of equality issues or their rights under employment law. There was the ridiculous situation that some of these staff on temporary contacts had been successful in obtaining internal promotion. These staff were employed to cover full time and temporary vacancies within the Executive and the work and posts still remain unfilled therefore putting more stress on individual staff members to carry out the work.

The Housing Executive is being forced by the Assembly to sell off surplus land and social housing to fund it’s housing programme for 2008/9 and onwards into the future. It is recognised by the Department of Social Development that it is highly likely that the Housing Executive will have a shortfall of over £50m for their own programme and almost £80m to fund social housing. A lot of tenants will not get planned repairs carried out to their properties as promised.

There is the recent debacle when the Co-Ownership Housing Association had to shut it’s doors to applicants for 2008/9 due to lack of funding. Housing is in free fall and without adequate investment into social housing the future is bleak for those many thousand who need a home to have realistic access to work, education and health services.’

The job losses, counting for 15% of the total workforce in the Housing Executive, are taking place whilst Northern Ireland is experiencing its worst housing crisis in 40 years. There are currently over 38,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in Northern Ireland. Over 20,000 of them are assessed as being in “housing stress” and over 9,000 are officially homeless.

These job losses are a taste of what is to come across the public sector. All Departments have been given efficiency targets of 3%, with many others being told that they have to make a further 5% cuts in administrative costs. Public sector workers need to pressurise the leaderships of their unions to co-ordinate united action, including strike action, in order to stop these cuts. Meetings of public sector workers should be called to discuss a common campaign across all public sector unions to fight the cuts agenda of the Assembly Executive.

The rejection by 92% of postal workers in the CWU consultative ballot to changes in their pension scheme is a clear message to Royal Mail management and Gordon Brown that they will not sit back and allow their pensions be cut to shreds.

Royal Mail management want to introduce a career average scheme that calculates the workers eventual pension based on their salary in each year of their employment rather than on their final year. This guarantees that most workers will get a reduced pension than currently agreed, while management are also proposing to increase the standard retirement age from 60 to 65 in 2010.

Royal Mail management states that the reforms are designed to deal with the £6.6 billion deficit in the pension scheme. But what they don’t say is the deficit is because for the past 17 years, Royal Mail has not paid anything into the pension fund. The real reason for the pension changes is to drive down the overall pension that postal workers have worked for and are entitled to.

These proposals are expected to reduce the pensions of postal workers by 34%. This equates to many workers losing up to £20,000 from their overall pension, while being expected to work five more years for the privilege. This attack on postal workers is even harder to stomach after the announcement that chief executives of Royal Mail will award themselves bonuses worth £4.5million at the end of April.

The rejection of the pension changes is a positive indication that postal workers still want to fight management’s attacks on terms and conditions. A ballot for industrial action should be organised and a campaign by postal workers in both the CWU and UNITE to build momentum for action needs to be developed.

Coastguards in Northern Ireland joined 700 Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) workers across Britain in further strike action against low pay on 11 April.

This was the second day of strike action by these workers in just over a month. Both strikes on March 6 and April 11 resulted in the closure of half the UK's 19 rescue centres, with the rest staffed largely only by managers. In Northern Ireland 80% balloted in favour of strike action with picket lines well attended.

These successful strikes, the first ever in the 180 year history of the profession, have shown the determined nature of the coastguards to receive a pay increase that reflects the value of their work and the risks involved.

At the moment most coastguards are only paid the minimum wage. In fact, a few months ago many coastguards received a pay increase after it was discovered that they were actually being paid beneath the minimum wage.

Coastguards have also been hit by Gordon Brown’s “pay freezes”, meaning pay increases below the rate of inflation i.e. pay cuts. Pay increases last year averaged 2.5% with an increase of only 1% last year for the more experienced staff.

The PCS union is calling for the government to implement the findings of studies which recommend coastguards pay is brought in line with other emergency service workers. This would not just mean an extra £3,000 a year for coastguards but would also increase the safety of the general public as it would allow coastguards to work full time.