Postal Strike info

Postal strike to escalate as talks collapse in bitterness

Long-suffering Royal Mail customers have been warned that the postal strike will be stepped up after the latest talks between union and bosses collapsed amid recriminations.

Billy Hayes, the head of the Communication Workers Union, said today that there was every prospect of longer walkouts. He also hinted that the union was preparing to sue the Royal Mail for hiring agency workers to help deal with millions of items of backlogged mail.

"We will be upping the dispute. We will not be scaling it down," said Mr Hayes. "There is every prospect that we will increase the action and we could be looking at longer strikes."

Picket lines were mounted outside mail centres across the UK from 4am today at the start of the latest, three-day strike.

The talks ended last night with Royal Mail accusing the union of scuppering a deal by trying to introduce fresh demands.

Bosses claim that the union negotiators turned up at yesterday’s talks at the TUC, after a meeting with its national executive, armed with a fresh set of proposals, including paying striking workers overtime to clear the backlog and an agreement to lobby the Government jointly on the company's £10 billion pension deficit.

Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s managing director, said he thought the two sides had been on the verge of a "sensible agreement" after talks on Monday and Tuesday. He added that the union was sending contradictory messages: "The CWU leadership has failed to carry its own postal executive committee, which appears to be split with London members, at odds with the rest of the country, and unable to reach any decision."

A statement from the company said: "Royal Mail urges the union to get independent help to resolve its own internal position so that the company and the union can then get on with constructive and meaningful talks."

Dave Ward, the deputy general secretary and head of the CWU negotiating team, dismissed the claims that the union made fresh demands as "complete nonsense".

He said: "The proposal that we tabled yesterday was in line with the progress that we had made in negotiations. If that is not true, our challenge to Royal Mail is, why didn't they reject it outright? They waited eight hours and at this point in time we still don't know whether they accept it or not."

Mr Ward in turn accused Royal Mail of scuppering the talks by breaching the confidentiality of the negotiations and refusing to go to Acas for mediation.

"They wanted to string this out without a strike until after Christmas and then they were going to carry on imposing change," he claimed.

He said the union wanted the dispute sorted out as postal workers would find it "very difficult" to strike at Christmas. "I'd rather sort this out now than have people think we're holding them to ransom," he claimed.

Up to 120,000 workers are due to strike over the next three days. From this morning, 43,000 workers, primarily in the mail centres, are due to strike, to be followed tomorrow by 400 staff at sites in Plymouth, Stockport and Stoke. The bulk of the workforce, up to 77,000 delivery and collection staff, are set to strike on Saturday.

Unite, the other union represented within Royal Mail, has told its membership, primarily supervisors and managers, not to cover the tasks of striking workers meaning that backlogs could top those of last week. Royal Mail has recruited up to 30,000 temporary workers to deal with the backlogs although the union is still considering whether to seek an injunction against the use of this alternative workforce.

Royal Mail said after last week’s two-day strike that 10 million items had been delayed although the union said it was closer to 100 million. The company said yesterday this had been reduced to around two million items, primarily in London.

Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the TUC who chaired the peace talks, said he was very disappointed at the turn of events. He added: "A great deal of positive work has been done in the negotiations, which have been conducted in a positive spirit on all sides throughout. It is crucial that the progress that has been made is not lost."

A spokesperson for the Department of Business, Industry and Skills said: "We are disappointed that today’s talks have not reached a resolution that would have averted this week’s strikes. However, the TUC is willing to continue to facilitate talks to build on the progress made this week and we urge both sides to continue with them."

The difficulties the industrial dispute is posing for small businesses was highlighted yesterday with a survey showing they each expected to lose between £500 and £5,000.

The survey, conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses, said that although half of the 1,200 companies questioned were considering leaving Royal Mail, they felt they were "held to ransom" because alternative carriers were too expensive and did not meet their needs.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6895165.ece