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Postal services in Devon are facing more disruption this week with another 24-hour strike by staff who collect, sort, distribute and deliver letters and parcels, with more action planned in the lead-up to the busiest time of year ahead of Christmas.
Around 110,000 UK staff are due to join a 24-hour stoppage on Thursday, October 20, and also on the following Tuesday, October 25, in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
The Royal Mail is warning that the planned series of winter strikes is likely to cause disruption in the run-up to Christmas, which traditionally sees it handling the highest volume of letters and parcels. It says the dispute has so far cost it millions of pounds and is warning of up to 6,000 job losses by next summer.
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The Communication Workers’ Union has released dates for further rolling industrial action hitting various parts of the business on 15 days through November and early December, although Royal Mail said it had not been formally notified of the plans.
Royal Mail’s owner International Distribution Services said three days of industrial action had cost it around £70million. It warned it was expecting a loss of around £350million by the end of the year which could rise to £450million if it loses more customers.
The company says it will start consulting on up to 6,000 job losses by next April, due to industrial action, delays in productivity improvements and fewer parcels.
CWU General Secretary Dave Ward has called for a Government inquiry into what he called the “gross mismanagement” of Royal Mail. He said it had an “asset-stripping agenda” which would destroy the business and jobs. Mr Ward said there was “no prospect” of the union agreeing to new starters on 20 per cent lower pay rates with a three-hour longer working week.
He said: “For businesses and for the public, what they want to do is end daily deliveries. And in relation to parcels, while the CWU wants to capture parcel growth, they want to hive that off into a separate business with self-employed owner-drivers. This is not modernisation. This is asset-stripping and levelling down of the worst sort.”
The Communication Workers’ Union South West Regional Secretary Kevin Beazer said: “The picket lines I’ve been at have been well-attended, upbeat and buoyant and from what I’ve heard from area reps elsewhere in the region, it’s a similar picture all over. We’re going to see this through until the end. We need to keep our discipline and we need cool heads – this is a long fight and we’ll make sure we win it.”
The Royal Mail said: “Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, but we cannot fully replace the daily efforts of our frontline workforce. We’ll be doing what we can to keep services running, but we are sorry this planned strike action is likely to cause you some disruption. We have been able to recover services quickly after recent CWU strike action and we will continue to focus our efforts on working to get our services back to normal as soon as possible after any future strike action.”
Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson said that the planned redundancies were a “minimum” and more could take place if current strike action is extended. The firm said the move is in response to the “impact of industrial action, delays in delivering agreed productivity improvements and lower parcel volumes”.
It said it is seeking short-term cost efficiencies through the planned reduction of 5,000 full-time equivalent roles by March and around 10,000 by August. Royal Mail highlighted the 10,000 reduction in roles will include the removal of overtime, the decision not to fill empty roles and a reduction in temporary workers. The plan is therefore expected to require between 5,000-6,000 redundancies by August.
Mr Thompson said: “This is a very sad day. I regret that we are announcing these job losses. We will do all we can to avoid compulsory redundancies and support everyone affected. We have announced today losses of £219 million in the first half of the year. Each strike day weakens our financial situation. The CWU’s decision to choose damaging strike action over resolution regrettably increases the risk of further headcount reductions.”
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