About Us
A brief guide to the CWU, our Members and our Objectives
CWU History
The Union of Postal Workers (a mostly postal union with some telecommunications members) changed its name to Union of Communication Workers (UCW) in 1980.
The Post Office Engineering Union merged with the Civil & Public Services Association Post & Telecoms Group in 1985 to become the National Communications Union (NCU) a mainly telecommunications union with some postal members.
The Communication Workers Union was formed on 26 January 1995 as a result of a merger between the UCW and the NCU.
The CWU is now the seventh largest union in Britain and it is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress. It is the second largest communication union in Europe.
Our Members
The CWU is the main communications union in the UK, representing almost 255,000 members employed in the postal, telecommunications, cable, financial services, information technology and related industries. In Royal Mail and BT we represents all the non-management grades.
In Telewest, T-Mobile, Orange, Cable & Wireless, NTL we represent mainly engineers, clerical employees and call centre workers but also some management grades.
The CWU also has a growing Retired Members group, which currently has around 22,000 members.The main groups of CWU members are:
- Postal 150,000
- Telecom 65,000
- Financial 3,000
- Retired 22,000
Our Objectives
The main objectives of the CWU are to protect and promote the interests of members and improve their working lives.
As an industry-wide union, the CWU is committed to achieving the highest possible membership levels in all communications companies, since this is the best way to protect individual employees, improve general working conditions, and increase the influence of the Union, both with employers and with other bodies such as the Government, industry regulators and the European Commission.
