The first 2023 Royal Mail strike date has been announced, and although it’s a 24 hour walkout it’s been timed to run across two days to cause maximum disruption. Due to start at 12.30pm on Thursday the 17th, the first 2023 Royal Mail Strike will finish at 12.30pm on Friday the 17th.
This means you can pretty much guarantee that you won’t get a business collection on the Thursday, and I wouldn’t bet on you getting on the Friday either. Deliveries on both days will also be disrupted. Royal Mail say that they’ll do everything they can to keep the service running, but admit it’s an impossible task.
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.
– Royal Mail
If you have breathed a sigh of relief and commenced trusting Royal Mail to deliver your ecommerce products again, it’s time to switch back to the plans you had prior to Christmas. There is no sight in end to the bitter dispute and, frankly, the Royal Mail have appeared to do as much as possible to antagonise the Union and bate them into further action. The first 2023 Royal Mail Strike is unlikely to be the last.
The CWU’s national elected leadership say that they called the strike after Royal Mail begun forcing through unagreed changes related to the structure of work at offices across the country. They say that these decisions have been taken in direct contravention of the Industrial Relations (IR) Framework established between the union and the employer, the validity of which was re-committed to by Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson in a letter dated the 6th of January.
In effect, the CWU say, the changes represent the removal of the right of the CWU to negotiate at a local level, and must be viewed as a real step towards the derecognition of the union.
This action is down to the conduct of Royal Mail management, who have displayed a complete lack of integrity.
Our members will not just sit back and watch as their working lives are destroyed by a company leadership hell-bent on ripping up historic arrangements that protect their rights and give them a voice through their union.
It is postal workers who keep this company going and this country connected – it’s time management recognise this, drop the nasty games and begin taking negotiations seriously, so that this dispute can be ended for good.
– Dave Ward, General Secretary, CWU
9 Responses
I deplore all strike action, which holds customers hostage and disrupts people’s businesses.
But it has to be said the Thompson’s handling of this situation is a major factor in the length of the strikes and the deep ill feeling with the RM workforce.
In the last year, Thompson has overseen a halving of RM’s share price and any RM shareholders should push for Thompson’s removal out of self interest.
RM will evolve as the landscape it operates in changes, but Thompson is clearly not up to the job. He is being hauled back to parliament to explain his “answers” a few weeks ago as well.
waste of time
Every one treats these actions as normal service now
They Work with it ,or round it
Ohhh well might as well have a holiday week that one for the games anyway. It will be the usual shambolic mess and they will be ignoring large letters again.
The CEO is useless and needs to go he is not fit for purpose.
Waste of time and money. If RM didn’t cave with all the strikes in November and December then they certainly won’t blink in mid February.
At this point the posties and the union are just driving customers away and are a bit like like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Just don’t bloody prioritise parcels again!
40 large letters sent out on the 12th Dec where delivered between 10th-15th January. All were refunded. It cost me a lot of money the last time you prioritised parcels.
Oh dear William that must really hurt, no business can sustain those sorts of losses. Effectively, all those buyers got their items free. Did any of them offer to repay you? I imagine not, customers see all this as part of the game of modern consumerism. All this is feeding the amazon machine and destroying small independent businesses as well as royal mail.
Hi, it is painful. I wrote to every one of the refunded as I could see that they were delivered (delivery scan) and asked them to consider getting in touch to arrange payment or return. Only 3 paid me. The rest ignored my email.
It also galls me also that I decided to close on the 12th to the 30th of December due to the impossible delay situation caused by the strikes but everything I sent out on the 12th took 4 weeks to arrive.
So I lost out on refunded orders plus pretty much forced to close at a very busy trading time.
Now, they intend to strike again. Punishing small retailers again with not a care.
For goodness sake, not again! The strikes last year did such serious damage to our small family business. We nearly went down all together and my wife had to find other work. So many parcels lost and hundreds of pounds refunded to customers along with thousands lost in pre-Christmas sale which are vital to us. If I thought it would change anything then I would be in support, but it won’t. Just hits small businesses who certainly won’t be getting pay rises this year regardless of the level of inflation!
Reading various online forums, the GBP (Great British Public) only associate Royal Mail with receiving bills these days and thus don’t much care about the strikes. The hardest hit group is small suppliers for whom large letter post is essential to economic shipping. We don’t have the turnover for contracts with couriers. Nor do we have any influence with royal mail management. So we are just being picked off again for no good reason.