IAM writing regarding your article (Thursday, June 20), concerning the postal dispute in which Royal Mail regional director Mr Ken Barker described the deal being offered to our members by Royal Mail as a "ground breaking deal offering more money, job security into the next century and a shorter working week."

I have to say to Mr Barker that with an almost 70 per cent vote in favour of a strike from a 76 per cent turn-out, it would appear that not many of our members would agree with you.

Let me deal with this ground-breaking offer:

Royal Mail's proposal for more money would in reality mean a typical rural delivery driver would lose £845 per year. A postwoman on a permanent late driving duty would lose £443 per year. A postman higher grade working a typical night shift would lose £8.11 per week on basic pay and an incredible £59 per week in pay calculable for pension purposes.

Earth shattering I believe would be a more apt description of this part of the offer.

It is true that Royal Mail have offered our members a 90 minute reduction in the working week, however, Royal Mail's proposed 'way of working' insists that our members must work 15 minutes a day in their own time, exactly the 90 minutes taken back on a six day week. Security into the next century: Mr Barker knows full well that Royal Mail are offering job security up to the year 2000, which is just about the three years Royal Mail calculate it will take to implement fully their 'way of working' proposals. After that we believe there will be massive compulsory redundancies.

Mr Barker gives no mention of Royal Mail's offer of a five day week by the year 2000, subject to further productivity improvements. Postal workers moved from a seven day week to a six day week in 1849. Despite our members collectively turning the Royal Mail into the finest and most profitable postal service in the world, our members work longer hours and have less holidays than any other postal administration in Europe.

Our members have out-performed workers in any other comparable industry either in the public or private sector in the world, the least they have earned is the right to have more than one day off a week.

We say to Mr Barker, stop chasing yesterday's fashions, we wish to go forward to the future, not back to the future. We say to the public that this dispute gives us no pleasure whatsoever, but we have got to get our members off the treadmill of long hours and low pay and with it low morale.

We say to Royal Mail that you are blessed with a workforce that is dedicated, flexible and productive and who feel badly let down by you.

Learn the lessons of your own attitude surveys and the size of the ballot result and let us go forward together.

STEPHEN LARGE, Branch Secretary, East Lancs Amalgamated Branch Communication Workers Union.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.