Public Information Exchange

Postal Strikes Delayed
30/10/2009

The national postal strike has been put on hold after both sides in the dispute agreed to a “period of calm” before Christmas. Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union said that they would continue talks on the company’s modernisation plans without further bouts of industrial action.

Back in October 2009, postal workers voted in favour of a National Strike in a row over changes to working practices, service modernisation and job losses. Out of 81,000 members who took part in the ballot, 61,000 members of CWU took the stance that the only way forward was to strike in order to resolve their concerns. The ballot result was announced after Royal Mail lost their second biggest client Amazon, which will incur losses of over 25 million pounds a year.

Royal Mail is one of the few remaining state owned services left remaining in the UK.  Back in June this year a bill was brought to the House of Commons that would effectively privatise Royal Mail, but this has been put on hold in the wake of the current economic downturn.

Royal Mail delivers approximately 84 million items every working day with a network of 14,376 post offices with revenue of £9.056 billion. For the financial year 2008 - 2009 Royal Mail reported profits of £321million, with all four group businesses in profit for the first time in twenty years.

One key issue for postal workers is the “streamlining” of the full-time workforce to be replaced with temporary, 20 hour contracts with increased pressurised working conditions.

One postal worker in Portsmouth expressed the concern that Royal Mail was deliberately forcing the service into decline. “Existing staff feel that their jobs are in jeopardy and backed into a position whereby they have to make up the deficit in service delivery with part-time temporary workers.”

Consumers and businesses alike have felt the full force of the strike implications but little about the reason behind the walk outs, and public support for the strike is waning. People continue to suffer delays to their post; businesses struggle to cope with increased customer complaints, items failing to arrive and incurred costs for “missing items”.  SME’s and online retailers are reportedly the hardest hit and the strike action has inadvertently caused businesses to fear for their trading future. Some businesses have taken the step of switching to private mail providers in order to re-instate consumer confidence.

BBC London News invited PIE’s CEO Freddie Talberg to speak with Royal Mail postal worker Alan Smith to highlight the implications that the strike is having on small businesses in the Capital and to shed light on the postal worker’s attempts to resolve the ongoing dispute with Royal Mail Chiefs.

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Ed.