Postal workers vote on national strike
Small businesses count cost as huge backlog of mail builds up in sorting offices
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The threat of a national post strike came a step closer yesterday as more than 120,000 postmen and women prepared to start voting on industrial action. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) said ballot papers would be sent out today in its long-running row over pay, jobs and services.
The dispute has sparked a series of walkouts across the country over the past few months which has disrupted mail deliveries. With millions of letters and parcels sat undelivered in sorting offices, the CWU called a new ballot to decide whether or not to take all-out nationwide action. The result is due early next month.
Dave Ward, the CWU deputy general secretary, said: "Postal workers are striking to defend future services as well as for jobs and modern conditions. Royal Mail management has completely mishandled the situation.
"Disruption is hurting small businesses and other consumers, but postal workers are suffering more than anyone in the dispute. Small businesses stand to suffer more with reduced services in the future if Royal Mail does not reach a national agreement." In a surprise move, the chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, wrote to newspaper editors in an attempt to quieten the rising unrest caused by what he called the "totally unjustified" launch of the ballot.
He said: "I want to stress that we are doing everything we can to minimise the impact of strikes on customers in those areas where the union has called strikes, and to do all we can to persuade the CWU to stop the action and get on with helping us to deliver the service on which so many depend. The position today is that around nine million items of mail are delayed – compared with the average daily mailbag of 75 million – with almost six million of those in London.
"However, we are very concerned about every single letter delayed and we apologise wholeheartedly to our customers for the difficulties caused by the CWU's strikes, and will of course continue to work hard to limit the disruption as much as we can." Hospitals have been forced to rearrange outpatient services because mail delays have caused many patients to miss appointments.
A spokesman for Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London, said: "We are telephoning patients whose appointments are within a short timeframe, and are sending letters by recorded delivery."
Several readers told The Independent their postman had claimed that sorting office workers were deliberately delaying particular items, such as gifts and rented DVDs, to cause maximum disruption.
Royal Mail said: "That would be a serious breach of [their] contracts."
Breaking the strike: White van man rides to the rescue
As the postal dispute escalates, Royal Mail has turned to "white van man" in an attempt to ease the effects of the strikes across Britain. Owing to the recession, there is no shortage of men with vans happy to come to the rescue.
Nader Moradie, 47, had been applying for 20 jobs a day since his computer services business folded last year – then he saw an advert on the internet. "They said they were looking for drivers with a van and insurance," he said. "I didn't have either, so I bought a van, went through a security check and then I started work."
Mr Moradie, from Archway, north London, has been clearing the capital's backlog of undelivered mail for almost two months. "I am self-employed, working almost six days a week, 12 hours a day," he said yesterday on his round in Wimbledon. "I am not making as much as when I had my own company, but I have a job when millions of people are unemployed."
His employer, CRT, was set up in 2002 when the delivery company Parcelforce allowed its drivers to work on a self-employed basis. CRT now has more than 100 drivers, and could do with more.
It is not the first time that Royal Mail, which cannot sub-contract work because of agreements with the union, has used CRT during a strike. The company's founder, Petar Ljubisic, said: "During the 2007 strike we cleared the whole SW4 depot in 10 days. The Royal Mail lot couldn't believe it. The unions hate us."
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Comments
The postal strike will have exactly the same cause today!
Had I still been a postman I would also object to 'walks' being enlarged to unmanageable lengths, to absurd alterations, usually caused by higher managers far from the actual sorting offices and often with no postal delivery experience of any sort.
Quite simply Crozier himself claimed one in three managers were 'rubbish,' yet he adds to this by seeking confrontation himself!
It is time Mandleson stepped in to bring a sensible response to the situation, after all it is the government, all governments, who wish to sell of Royal Mail, and have now found this cannot be done!
They are motivated by incompetent management and the desire for a better managed redevelopment of Royal Mail.
I would suspect you wouldn't know a hard days work for a pittance pay if it jumped up and smacked you in the face.
That's nice to hear. It's indeed time for some liberalization.
"The unions hate us."
Generally a sign that one is doing something right.
As stated this morning the management have yet to install the new machinery that will speed delivery (by ending the need to hand sort mail). The unions agreed long ago to this. Why the hesitation?
Crozier and his men are playing some sort of game, either through a deliberate plan, or I am beginning to think, incompetence. I do think Mandleson needs to intervene and bang heads together. I have found few posties who want to strike -they cannot afford it!
One of the biggest causes of the problem is the governments intention to sell it off, therefore making "tory cuts" into something which need not operate as a business. Its time we put to bed this fantasy of selling off the Royal Mail and start at looking at rebuilding to what it was a decade ago.
Well the first one I regret has been proved true and no amount of posturing posing and prose by Peter Mandelson will convince many otherwise
The Union question is however unanswered as yet. There was an expression used in the sixties, British management deserve British Unions and British Unions deserve British management. At the end of the day the dispute will be settled round a table. The only thing the strike does is threaten the jobs of millions of people who work in small companies who rely on their services and just make the public suffer. Just like the tube strikes.
But I don't quite understand the plans of the GPO. The management seem to be in endless meetings with the Unions so I would have thought that the general plan should have been got across by now. Have they tried? Do the Unions understand? Could the management tell us what the furture post office will do? If it's reasonable then the public will probably say 'ooo that's good, yeah that's something we want' and there will be little or no support for the Unions. But if the plan is some fuzzy mess I think the public would have great sympathy for people worried about their jobs.
I think it's time for more communication and less rhetoric, from both sides.
Is the Labour party part of the problem too? They seem to want to privatise it one minute and then say they support the workers when they chat with the Unions. The indecision and lack of clarity and proper leadership make people worry and then you get strikes.
The consequence of a long strike will be to drive away Post Office customers, that will most definitely reduce jobs