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Royal Mail has announced that it plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs as it warned it expects its full-year losses to hit £350million.
The postal network plans to axe up to 6,000 jobs by next August as part of parts to reduce its costs but in total it wants to reduce its total workforce count by 10,000. While the majority of this will come from redundancies, the rest will be made up of people naturally leaving the company and not being replaced, the Mirror reports.
It comes as losses are expected to hit £350million which the company says is down to strike action taken by workers and falling numbers of people sending parcels. Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson said: “This is a very sad day. I regret that we are announcing these job losses.
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“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.”
Royal Mail currently employs 140,000 people. This week saw Royal Mail staff hold the first of 19 strikes in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) had said 115,000 members across the UK were expected to walk out in a 24-hour strike on Thursday.
It marks the sixth strike for postal workers. Royal Mail has warned of postal delays as a result of the latest strike action. It said: “We are doing all we can to minimise any delays and keep people, businesses and the country connected.”
According to the CWU, the dispute had been sparked by Post Office bosses’ freezing on members’ pay for the 2021/22 financial year, which was then followed up by a 2% pay offer for 2022/23.
A lump-sum of £250 was added to the basic offer, which was then raised to 3% as further strikes during June and the summer went ahead. Bosses eventually returned with a cash lump-sum of £500 and raised the basic offer to 5%, but the CWU said the cost-of-living surge meant that was still “completely insufficient”.
CWU official Andy Furey said: “In a normal year, pay offers at those kinds of levels would be considered acceptable. But when we’ve had the retail price index (RPI) going over 10%, then 11 and up to and beyond 12, there’s no way we can agree to what are, in effect, real-terms pay cuts.”
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