The CWU have announced they will call Postal Strikes on 19 days before Christmas and time them to cause maximum disruption in a mixture of single days and rolling action across Royal Mail Group’s network.
Property and Facilities Functions (P&FS) CWU members who keep Royal Mail workplaces functioning have voted to strike. That’s the cleaners and engineers that work across the Royal Mail network.
The Postal Strikes on 19 days will cover peak mail periods such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas build-up. If you can possibly use alternative carriers you would be best advised to get contracts in place and notify carriers of your intended volumes as they are all going to be flat out picking up the slack. For those who rely on large letter or letter post, it’s dismal news as there really isn’t an alternative.
Royal Mail, in their 2022/23 Q1 quarterly report said that they had an “operating loss of £92 million, reflecting inflexibility in the cost base to adjust to lower volumes and disappointing performance on delivery of further efficiencies”. That’s about a million quid a day and with postal strikes on 19 days before Christmas (not including the strikes coming this Friday and Saturday, or the previous strikes this year), their coffers are going to be empty.
The drastic action by the CWU is entirely expected due to the company getting tough and invoking clauses in their agreements with the Union allowing them to press on with modernisation in the face of industrial actions without consultation.
CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said “We call on everyone to stand with their local postal worker”. Regardless of your views on how much they deserve a pay rise, we’re pretty sure that if you run an ecommerce business that standing with your local postal worker probably involves moving as much of your businesses away from Royal Mail as possible and probably never returning. Once parcels are gone, Royal Mail will be left with loss making letters and that’s going to be very very bad for postal workers. If the company has no money their future pay will be dismal.
Strikes aren’t good for Posties either – they’ve already lost 6 days pay through strike action and with postal strikes on 19 days that’s 25 days lost pay. No pay rise is going to make up for losing almost a month’s pay and they are going to be struggling with the cost of living while being in a much worse financial situation than any other workers in the country.
6 Responses
WoW that is a lot of strike action. It knackers my video games this year as Large letter is the only viable service. The other stuff I have moved into will just get switched.
The country is a right mess. I have just come back from Dublin ( house hunting) and the prices in Ireland are comparable to the UK in the shops etc, that is the first time I have seen that ( apart from a pint that is still a joke).
As far as the postie’s I know they are not paid enough that is everywhere however. That Tory Clown on Friday has put the final nail in the coffin after years of stupid mistakes and at the end I doubt even their rich friends will hang about
Royal Mail should never have been privatised. Everybody knows the letter business is a public service, not a profit making entity. Hospital letters, tax letters, council tax, junk mail, none of this makes money. Can see the parcels side being hived off and the taxpayer left to pick up a diminished and unprofitable letter service. The RM board are essentially asset strippers who have planned this since privatisation. The only winners here will be RM shareholders and the board. Leaving an even more unprofitable letters business behind for all of us to pay for. Could spell the end for businesses sending small items through the post, or at least vastly increase the cost through having to use couriers.
Well, this is a disaster for my small business. I have no alternative to using large letter post and my customers will have no idea when their orders might arrive from now on. I had some sympathy with the posties but the union is now taking liberties and on top of all the other economic problems the country faces industrial action will just about finish a lot of us off. Who will pay taxes then?