The Royal Mail industrial action called for the 16th running into the 17th of February will not go ahead. Legal action by the Royal Mail have seen the strikes cancelled.
Don’t be too jubilant however, this is a legal technicality and the CWU swiftly had the strikes cancelled to avoid impacting their ballot for fresh strike action. The current strike ballot expires on the 17th of February but we are just days away from a fresh mandate if workers vote Yes in the latest ballot.
The CWU complained that ‘heavily weighted against working people’ as the reason for having the stikes cancelled, saying that their lawyers had advised they would be unable to defend their position in court.
Royal Mail on the other hand are just relieved they’ve temporarily halted further disruption to customer, the most heavily impacted being ecommerce businesses reliant on the postal system for delivering consumer purchases.
This bitter dispute won’t be ending any time soon, with both the CWU and Royal Mail far apart on topics such as Sunday working and later start times to enable next day ecommerce delivery.
Royal Mail also have other woes with boss Simon Thompson being recalled to Parliament for possibly misleading them in what was possibly the most evasive answers MPs have ever received.
We can now be confident that there won’t be further postal strikes before March, once the next ballot concludes and the results announced. The CWU are now focused on ensuring posties remain steadfast and return yet another massive Yes vote for further strikes.
5 Responses
The Royal Mail admits they have lost more money than it would have cost to pay the settlement!!
As a shareholder (with only a few), i do not see this as good management. Had they met the demands half way i’m sure it would have fostered a better relationship, whereas now – no one benefits, not the public, the workers, the shareholders or the management. The management should never let things get so bad, ok unions can be dogmatic, but the management must take the fall for this mess to my mind.
Dave, you could equally say that if the posties had accepted the offer on the table they would also have been better off than striking and losing so many days pay.
Thompson is pretty dire, but Lynch, the head of the CWU, fancies himself as a modern day Scargill type character, and we all know that didn’t end well!
Not sure I agree with that Dave. If management give into the unions then it sets a poor precedent that all the unions need to do is be disruptive to get what they want. Postal works are overpaid and refuse to modernize. Their attitude needs to be broken, else Royal Mail will continue to operate like it’s 1990. I’d rather see Royal Mail crush the union than give in. The company and it’s customers will be better off in the long run.
So Thomson is “bad” for misleading parliament while collecting his salary of £415,000 (and he got a £400,000 bonus last year) but Mick Lynch who fights for better pay and conditions for ordinary people is “a modern day Scargill type character, and we all know that didn’t end well!” Why did it not end well? Do you mean the thuggery that was shown by enforcement officers towards ordinary people looking for better pay and conditions? It may not “end well” again because of the draconian laws being used (and made up to suit the government narrative) to stop peoples right to strike, being jailed for “looking like you MIGHT cause trouble”!
Wanting see an organisation crushed rather than being able to sit down and make a compromise is no doubt part of that government narrative too.
Don’t get me wrong, Postal workers DO need to change with the times, hence the compromise, but to wish ill on people just wanting to make a better living is not the way forward. Postal workers, rail staff, nurses – probably you! – could no doubt all do with a better living wage.
Why not turn your ire towards a government that clearly wants to divide ordinary people and distract you while they hand out multi-million pound contracts to their friends and relations – and give themselves pay rises! They are about to give themselves £2,200 and yet the minimum wage goes up by 92p. If you work 40hrs per week for 52 weeks at 92p you get £1913.60 (£286.40 less).
The basic annual salary of a Member Of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons is £84,144, as of April 2022, yet they get a bigger pay rise – and don’t forget those expenses!
@Stuart there is nothing wrong with Thomson earning that sort of salary. The best talent gets paid a lot of money. If you combined the skillset and brainpower of 1000 postie’s together they couldn’t do the job of one CEO of a large MNC. This is simple supply and demand.
If my employees refuses to adopt modern day practices (better tech, more automation etc ) I’d fire them. Instead they work hard, accept changes, the company does better we reward them well. If they’re unhappy they leave. We don’t own our workers, it’s a basic contract. They work, we pay. If they’re not happy they can leave, if we’re not happy they are let go.
Public sector workers like to try elicit sympathy. A nurse or teacher isn’t more valuable to society than any other person who is subject to market forces. Ironically they’re often filled with lazier workers on average due to the inability to sack the underperformers.