The government today urged Royal Mail management and unions to settle a pay dispute which threatens to escalate into a national postal strike.
The Department for Trade and Industry warned that a strike could do severe harm to the long-term prospects of the postal service.
But a spokesman for the department insisted that ministers saw the dispute as a “commercial matter” and would stay out of it for as long as possible.
Business Post, the independent parcel delivery firm, is in talks to take up a number of the mail trains soon to be abandoned by Royal Mail.
The move would help to safeguard some of the 517 railway jobs at risk as a result of Royal Mail’s shock decision to switch the transport of mail from rail to road.
Business Post is understood to be in early discussions with EWS, Britain’s largest rail freight operator, about setting up a high-speed mail service between London and Scotland.
Read MorePostal workers are to be balloted on industrial action in a dispute over pay, threatening the first national strike for seven years, it was announced today.
Around 160,000 members of the Communication Workers’ Union will vote over the next few weeks on whether to stage a series of walk-outs in a row over this year’s wage offer which the union claimed had more “strings” than the Philharmonic Orchestra.
The CWU said the Royal Mail was being disingenuous by claiming that the latest offer was worth 14.5% over 18 months.
Officials said the only definite money on offer was 3% from October and a further 1.5% next April.
The union said it was being asked to agree to 30,000 job cuts, which it said would “destroy” postal service.
Belgium’s struggling publicly-owned postal service De Post/La Poste needs a partner quickly to modernise its operations, its chief executive was quoted as saying on Friday. “I’m not naming names but it is clear that De Post is years behind the postal companies in the Netherlands and Germany,” Johnny Thijs was quoted as telling the Belgian daily De Standaard in an interview.
Read MoreReview of Dutch postal market. Includes comparison with France, Germany, UK, Sweden & New Zealand
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