The major Royal Mail union, the CWU, has signalled that progress is being made in the negotiations about pensions and working practices. The good news is that it looks increasingly unlikely that strikes are on the cards on the foreseeable future.
According to the London branch of the CWU on Twitter: “Today we were advised by the National Officers that substantial progress has been made.” Details aren’t known but such positive noises add to recent reports that a solution is on the cards. The critical issue has been the costs and contributions to the massive Royal Mail pension fund vital to staff.
CWU members voted convincingly for industrial action last autumn. But Royal Mail successfully halted that with a court action. And, considering that back in October the High Court ruled that a strike couldn’t go ahead because of undertakings between CWU and Royal Mail at the time of privatisation, it is remarkable that a deal looks likely. The court ordered that independent adjudication intervene in the dispute. The rhetoric in exchanges back then was untrusting and vitriolic.
It is heartening to report that the pow-wow has been successful over the past weeks. That’s good news for staff and also ecommerce sellers and Royal Mail as a whole. In the past, when we’ve seen strikes at Royal Mail, the winners have been courier companies. Merchants need to get their goods shipped and a strike was an opportunity to go elsewhere. And, of course, once you’ve tried something new and it works, it’s not always the case that you return to your previous supplier.
The UK needs and deserves a strong and effective Royal Mail. Any solution that avoids a strike and confrontation through negotiation has to be good news. We look forward to reporting that strikes are ruled out formally, and an equitable solution has been found, in due course.
3 Responses
Royal Mail has the best infrastructure in the UK to deliver items to any address in any corner of the UK at a set rate. They should be crucifying competition on price services and technology.
When 3rd party companies can offer a lower rate to post a one off item using royal mail than we as account holders can get its totally absurd. They should not be throwing money at other businesses to make money off of their backs. If their own charges are what they really need and are low enough it would beat everyone. Simple as that and it will not be long before Amazon vans are everywhere who will finish off the whole market place. So they need to plan now.
The threat of strikes is not good for anyone and pension funds are easily solved all workers on the existing deal stay on it any new recruits go onto any new scheme royal mail want to implement.
I totally agree but the unions ex in the south of the country don’t seem to want to modernise Royal Mail should be smashing the competition to bits but it’s not bad management which still thinks and works as a nationalised industry trade unions to far on the left who are not willing to negotiate properly