‘No post for four days’ when 115,000 Royal Mail workers go on strike this month

More than 115,000 Royal Mail workers are to strike later this month as they call for a ‘dignified, proper pay rise’.

Briton shouldn’t expect to get post on August 26, and 31, and then on September 8 and 9, as Communication Workers Union (CWU) members walk out.

Following failed negotiations, Royal Mail offered an unconditional 2% pay increase, backdated to April 1, 2022.

A further 3.5% increase was made available, subject to agreeing on a series of changes, said the company, which was fully privatised in 2015.

But the CWU rejected the offer, saying it would mean a ‘dramatic reduction’ in living standards due to soaring inflation – currently at 9.4% and on track to hit 11% in October.

CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, said: ‘Nobody takes the decision to strike lightly, but postal workers are being pushed to the brink.

‘There can be no doubt that postal workers are completely united in their determination to secure the dignified, proper pay rise they deserve.

‘We can’t keep on living in a country where bosses rake in billions in profit while their employees are forced to use food banks.

‘The CWU’s message to Royal Mail’s leadership is simple – there will be serious disruption until you get real on pay.’

In a statement to the stock market today, the company said the decision to strike is an ‘abdication of responsibility’ for the long-term job security of CWU members.

Royal Mail operations development director, Ricky McAulay, said: ‘After more than three months of talks, the CWU have failed to engage in any meaningful discussion on the changes we need to modernise, or to come up with alternative ideas.

‘The CWU rejected our offer worth up to 5.5% for CWU grade colleagues, the biggest increase we have offered for many years.

‘In a business that is currently losing £1million a day, we can only fund this offer by agreeing the changes that will pay for it. Royal Mail can have a bright future, but we can’t achieve that by living in the past.

‘We are ready to talk further with CWU to try and avert damaging industrial action but, as we have consistently said, it must be about both change and pay.

‘We have contingency plans in place, and will be working hard to minimise disruption and get our services back to normal as soon as we can to keep people, businesses and the country connected.’

Royal Mail said its 5.5% offer would add around £230million to its annual people cost ‘at a time when the business is already loss-making’.

In its Q1 trading update, published on July 20, the company said it was losing £1million per day and that its proposed pay deal adds another £0.5million to that daily loss.

But the CWU’s Scottish regional secretary, Craig Anderson, has a different viewpoint of the on offer.

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He told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today: ‘The negotiations started in February regarding a pay rise for the workers within Royal Mail and the negotiations have broken down.

‘They’ve imposed a 2% pay award without agreement. They offered another 1.5% based on signing away terms and conditions, and a further £500 as a bonus for having targets that they knew weren’t achievable. So there was never a 5.5% pay offer put on the table.’

He called for Royal Mail to ‘sit back round the table’ and look at where members are at regarding the cost-of-living crisis.

He added: ‘A fair offer from our perspective would be for them they sit back round the table with us and actually look at where or what comes out at the moment with a cost-of-living crisis, where the company’s been with the profits that they’ve made, and actually start negotiating on a percentage pay raise that reflects that.’

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