UK Postal union seeks talks with threat of one-day strikes
Postal union seeks talks with threat of one-day strikes
The Communication Workers Union is poised to call a series of one-day strikes unless Royal Mail reopens talks over its pay and modernisation proposals.
The union’s postal executive will meet tomorrow to discuss its tactics after a ballot of 127,000 members voted overwhelmingly last week in favour of industrial action. If a strike does go ahead it will be Royal Mail’s first national stoppage for more than a decade. The union will have to give seven days’ warning of any action.
Yesterday Royal Mail said it was prepared to talk but held out little prospect of an improved offer. “If the union want to meet we are very ready to meet,” said a spokesman, adding: “We have offered all we can afford.”
The union has rejected Royal Mail’s offer of 2.5%, plus a potential bonus and productivity payment, and is also opposed to the company’s modernisation programme which it claims would mean the loss of 40,000 jobs over the next five years.
Royal Mail insists it must invest up to GBP 1.25bn in modernisation, particularly to increase automation of postal sorting, to compete with private-sector rivals.
It estimates that by the end of this financial year, one in five letters will be handled by competitors, although the company will still deliver much of that mail under so-called access agreements.
Today Nigel Stapleton, the chairman of industry regulator Postcomm, will call for Royal Mail to make greater use of innovation rather than on concentrating on competing on price.
He will tell Postcomm’s fourth annual industry forum that market liberalisation and the introduction of competition are benefiting big generators of mail through better services and prices, and have also meant an improvement in services to households.
Mr Stapleton will point out that mail is facing an increasing challenge from other methods of communication, such as emails and texts. However, he will add that mail has an opportunity to use the new technologies to provide services such as personalisation and customer targeting as well as its traditional strength of daily hand delivery to all 27m addresses in the UK. He will also ask delegates to look beyond the “bleak short-term prospect of industrial action” and focus on initiatives which boost mail’s position in a changing world.
