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Britain’s postal service faces days of paralysis with letters and prescription medicines undelivered after 115,000 Royal Mail workers announced they will strike in just over a fortnight.
The Communication Workers’ Union on Tuesday said members up and down the country will launch industrial action on August 26 and 31, as well as September 8 and 9.
It will be the biggest strike so far in the “summer of discontent” and marks the first time Royal Mail workers have walked out since 2009.
The announcement came after talks about pay and conditions fell apart, with a CWU source accusing company’s bosses of “taking the p—”.
Royal Mail similarly claimed that the union had failed to engage in “meaningful discussions” for the past three months.
Postal workers have demanded a “dignified, proper pay rise” in the face of rampant inflation, rejecting the 5.5pc wage increase offered by the company so far.
Royal Mail’s offer includes a 2pc increase backdated to April 1 that has already been implemented and another 3.5pc rise that would be dependent on improvements in productivity and changes to postal worker rosters.
However, the CWU has said these would amount to a real-terms pay cut with the Bank of England currently predicting inflation will top 13pc in October.
The union is also unhappy about new schedules that would see postal workers asked to work more days of the week and potentially longer hours, to improve the company’s ability to deliver online shopping parcels.
Dave Ward, the general secretary of the CWU, said: “Nobody takes the decision to strike lightly, but postal workers are being pushed to the brink.
“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.”
But Royal Mail warned the strike action would cripple the postal service on the days targeted, leaving millions of households waiting for important letters.
A company spokesman said special deliveries, tracked parcels, Covid testing kits and medical prescriptions would be “prioritised” but admitted that the industrial action meant that on-time delivery could not be guaranteed during the industrial action.
Ricky McAulay, Royal Mail’s operations director, 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.
“Royal Mail can have a bright future, but we can’t achieve that by living in the past.
“The CWU’s failure to engage on the changes we need is an abdication of responsibility for the long-term job security of their members.
“We apologise to our customers for the disruption that CWU’s industrial action will cause.”
He added the company was willing to talk further but only about “both change and pay”.
The plans for a national walk out come after CWU members voted overwhelmingly for strike action last month.
The union represents roughly 115,000 of 140,000 Royal Mail staff.
Since then, talks with Royal Mail have been ongoing to try to avert industrial action.
The company has said its offer of a further 3.5pc pay rise is conditional on productivity improvements.
Bosses have argued that more mail needs to be sorted by machine rather than by hand and that postal workers need to be able to offer parcel deliveries on more days of the week, to match competition from rivals as the online shopping boom fuels demand for “next day” packages.
