Victory to the postal workers!

We spent a very good half hour on the CWU picket line at Leicester's APC last night. The atmosphere was terrific - determined but very positive, and everyone involved seemed to be very clear that the strike was not a token gesture but a step in a campaign which absolutely has to win.

The stakes are very high. Not only are postal workers facing a below inflation 2.5% pay rise but Royal Mail bosses are also intent on making major cuts to both jobs and services. This is a scenario that will be eerily familiar to all health workers, and the links between our fight and that of the postal workers are obvious. We're both up against a public sector pay freeze dictated by Gordon Brown in his last days as Chancellor, and the threat of privatisation of our essential public services.

If only UNISON had managed to get our act together early enough this year to ballot our NHS members before the summer holiday season we could have been taking action alongside our brothers and sisters in the CWU - which would surely have hastened the satisfactory conclusion to both disputes.

Hopefully the CWU will win their fight in the next few weeks, but pickets at the APC thought it was likely to be a long and hard battle. If it is, UNISON members and other public service workers have two jobs in front of us: to organise solidarity - collections, visits to picket lines, etc - for the postal workers with immediate effect, and to ensure that our own disputes over the same issues are brought forward so that we can fight alongside our colleagues. No public sector union - whether health, postal, local government, education or civil service - should settle their dispute until everyone has won a pay rise that takes account of the current rate of inflation.