Royal Mail in talks to avoid strike action

Royal Mail is in talks with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) in a bid to avoid the planned national postal strikes this week.

However, according to a report by Sky News, Royal Mail said it will call in conciliation service Acas to try to resolve its industrial dispute if unions agree to call off the strikes - planned for Thursday and Friday this week.

Last week, the CWU said it had no choice but to announce a strike after it accused the Royal Mail of turning down its latest series of proposals without proper consideration.

However, today a spokesperson for Royal Mail said it has had “around 80 meetings with the CWU in recent months and we are continuing to talk to the union to try to avert their totally unjustified strikes.”

The renewed talks come after the CWU criticised Royal Mail’s decision to hire up to 30,000 temporary workers to minimise the impact of “unjustified and irresponsible” industrial action.

Employing additional people to do the work of staff who are on strike is illegal under employment law.

In response, Royal Mail said the hiring of agency staff was not about bringing in workers to do the work of striking staff, but to ensure there were sufficient staff to clear any backlogs between walkouts, as well as deal with the increase in mail volume, leading up to the Christmas period.

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