UK postal workers will stage another 24 hour strike in their ongoing dispute with Royal Mail over pay and modernisation. Workers in mail centres will walk out from 7pm tonight, followed by action from other groups including delivery drivers at various times over the next week.
Several eBay sellers have reported that items posted at the beginning of the strike period, 31st July and 1st August, are only just being delivered: it seems that mail is being sorted from the top of the pile, not from the bottom. With at least another week’s industrial action to come and no sign of compromise from either side, things can only get worse for those of us who have no choice but to rely on Royal Mail for our deliveries.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said “In taking further strike action the CWU is again failing to grasp or understand the harsh realities of an open postal market and the intensifying competition from other forms of communication, including broadband internet.”
Updated to add an unexpected bit of good news: action has been suspended to allow talks to go ahead. The aim is now to have a deal finalised between RM management and the union by September 4th. Fingers crossed!
7 Responses
Doesn’t help if you sell beads though, Chris. Unless a courier can come up with a sub-£2 small packet rate, lots of us sellers of ickle things are stuck with RM.
*groans*
Sends even more products via a courier instead of Royal Mail. Just how much is this costing them in lost revenue that will never be regained?
The longer the strike goes on the more likely some company will step in to kill them off entirely 🙁
Well, I have to say that so far (fingerscrossed again…) we have not seen much effect of the strike. Our subpostoffice still takes our post every day, I have only had one piece delayed since the start of the strike.
It will, of course, now proceed to go belly up…:-(
It’s been called off! 🙂
Yay! Update coming – thanks for the heads up, Mairi.
We’re loving it out here in the Far East.
The “top down” sorting that is done has helped us enormously with our slower delivery options – for example, our normal 3-7 weeks into the UK for Economy Airmail is now earning us positive “fast delivery” feedback after 7-10 DAYS.
Not often we can find something to crow about over our UK competitors 😀
Long may it last I say 😉
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