Royal Mail faces further strikes
Postal workers threatened to stage further strikes by the end of the month unless a bitter row over pay and conditions is resolved.
As the Communication Workers Union announced the move and the Royal Mail vowed to press on with its modernization plans, Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, held out the prospect of coordinated industrial action in the months to come.
Mr. Barber said unions would be brought together under the umbrella of the TUC’s public service liaison committee and said that the government would pay “a heavy price” if it did not pay attention to the warnings. With more than 2m public sector workers in dispute over pay and job threats it is understood the committee will meet shortly.
Steve Cox, vice-chair of the Prison Officers Association, said: “None of us want a repeat of the winter of 1978 but if the government ignores the workers and shuts the door in our face we will have no alternative and we will all be out on the street.”
Royal Mail said yesterday that it could “no longer delay the next steps in modernizing the business to enable it to compete on an equal footing with other operators and will now begin to make the changes which have been discussed with our people and our trade unions for many months”. The CWU claims that up to 40,000 jobs could be lost as a result of the proposals.
The union said that there had been “significant progress” in areas such as pay but Royal Mail had refused to budge on its pension proposals which would mean closing the existing scheme to new employees, raising employee contributions and increasing the retirement age.
There was also disagreement over the start time for early shifts which could reduce earnings of some workers by up to Pounds 25 a week. According to the union, Royal Mail was offering a two-year deal worth 6.7 per cent compared with its previous one-year offer worth 2.5 per cent.
Royal Mail said it had offered CWU both a short-term resolution to the dispute within the amount available for pays this year, as well as a longer-term solution “which we believe is in the interests of all our people and the business”.
The company said it was “extremely disappointed” that the CWU continued to ignore challenges facing the company. It said: “It has become clear during this time that certain elements within the CWU are determined to drive on with this dispute irrespective of the damage it is causing to our people, our customers and the future of Royal Mail.
