Postal workers across Britain launched two days of nationwide strike action today in the latestescalation of the long-running dispute over modernisation of Royal Mail.
The CWU called out about 42,000 workers at national mail sorting centres and network driverstoday, while a further 78,000 nationwide delivery and collection staff will take action tomorrow. Afurther three-day strike is expected next week.
Meanwhile, a fresh dispute has broken out between Royal Mail and the CWU over a last-minuteagreement that the two sides negotiated on Tuesday to avoid today’s strike.
Royal Mail offered to review recent modernisation measures implemented without unionagreement in exchange for a strike-free period in the run-up to Christmas. In addition, the twosides agreed to speed up and complete the 2007 pay and modernisation agreement.
But the CWU yesterday rejected the proposal as outlined in a letter from Royal Mail managingdirector Mark Higson, saying this was different to what had been agreed. The agreement in turn wassimply “a form of words” to keep talking and there was no negotiated deal, the union said. Ittherefore went ahead with the national strike.
In response, Royal Mail condemned the start of strike action and stressed that “the door isstill open” to sign the agreement negotiated with the CWU on Tuesday night. Mark Higson, Royal MailManaging Director, said it was totally outrageous for the CWU to accuse the company of reneging ona deal when it was the union that had walked away. He repeated his offer to meet the union at anytime to sign the words agreed by the CWU on Tuesday night which Royal Mail had expected to berubber stamped by the union’s National Executive yesterday.
“We have an agreement that was reached on Tuesday night and we had an agreement in 2007 – thereal issue is not about getting agreements, it’s about the CWU leadership’s ability to deliver andhonour them,” he declared.
