Royal Mail engineers threaten strike before Christmas
Royal Mail could find its cleaners and engineers going on strike on Friday (21st December), after union members were offered an “insulting” pay offer. Around 1,900 members of the Communication Workers Union are involved in cleaning, maintaining and repairing Royal Mail facilities across the UK, but a secret ballot saw 91% voting in favour of industrial action over the latest pay offer.
The action could take place from 5am Friday until 5am Saturday, hitting at a key moment in the run-up to Christmas, with the Royal Mail system stretched by peak volumes.
However, Royal Mail’s facilities management contractor Romec insisted today that contingency plans were in place to cope with a strike.
“Hypocritical”
The CWU claims the offer of a 1.5% pay rise would leave “most” of its members employed by Royal Mail’s facilities management contractor Romec “below the level of the living wage”.
UK inflation is running at around 2.7% at the moment.
The union claimed that the 1.5% offer comes as Romec exceeded all business targets last year and as Romec senior management were currently enjoying bonuses of between 9% and 15%.
CWU national negotiator Ray Ellis said: “The company’s behavior has been totally hypocritical and the workers are furious. We have been taking part in talks this week at the conciliation service ACAS and urge management to avoid the strike by upping their offer.”
Romec
Romec is a joint venture company 51% owned by Royal Mail and 49% by infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty, established back in 2002 to provide technical and building services to Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd and Parcelforce Worldwide. The firm makes around GBP 150m a year in revenue, and last renewed its contract for a 10-year period from April 2011, in a deal worth about GBP 900m over the contract term.
The company was not commenting today on the union’s specific claims, but a spokesperson told Post&Parcel there were further talks to come regarding the pay offer.
“The strike is over the pay increase offered by the company and Romec is currently working with the CWU to reach agreement,” said the Romec spokesperson.
“As a business we are committed to providing the very best possible service to our customers and we have robust contingency plans in place to deal with this industrial action.”
The CWU said that if strike action goes ahead on Friday, it could leave Royal Mail premises without cleaning and equipment repairs, which the union suggested would have health and safety implications.
Billy Hayes, the CWU general secretary said: “The whole union is behind the Romec workers.”
