Royal Mail and the CWU postal workers union have clashed over the impact of the latest two weeks ofindustrial action aiming at forcing the British postal operator into a higher pay offer and a
climbdown on modernisation plans.The CWU said yesterday that the rolling strikes at British mail sorting centres were gaining98% support from workers. Strikes this week would include a network labour stoppage on August 1,stoppages at delivery and collection hubs on August 2, and strikes at airport facilities on August3 – 4, the union announced.
Dave Ward, CWU Deputy General Secretary said: “As the CWU’s action starts to bite some 80million items of mail are now backlogged within the system. So pressure must be mounting on RMchairman Allan Leighton and chief executive Adam Crozier to come and negotiate.”
In response, Royal Mail said that more than 80% of staff were working normally yesterday andthat the mail backlog was very small: 1.4 million items were strike-delayed out of a daily mailbagof around 82 million letters. The company said it remained fully operational despite the rollingstrike action.
Royal Mail reiterated that strike action would not change its absolute need to modernise inorder to compete successfully in an increasingly challenging marketplace. The company was losingbusiness because its costs and therefore its prices were too high.
Meanwhile, British newspapers reported that the strike was speeding up TNT’s plans to developits own delivery network in Britain instead of relying on Royal Mail for last-mile delivery.
CEO Peter Bakker said true competition would only come to the UK postal market once therewere rival delivery networks, and said TNT expected to decide on a UK delivery network over thenext 12 months. But the low downstream access price for using Royal Mail for final delivery wouldmake it hard for rivals to create competitively-priced networks, he noted.
