Postal workers vote for strike action

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 07-Jun-07, 14:25

LONDON - Postal workers have voted to strike over pay, and with Royal Mail saying it will not change its position there is likely to be disruption to postal services this summer.

The Communication Workers Union today revealed that 75% of members who voted in the strike ballot were in favour of the move. According to Royal Mail the CWU balloted 127,000 people and 66,064 voted for action.

Union members have rejected Royal Mail's offer of a pay rise of 2.5%, with a possible bonus of £800 and a 50% share in any above-budget cost savings achieved locally.

The CWU is seeking further negotiations with Royal Mail rather than immediately calling a strike.

However, Royal Mail put out a statement after the vote saying it would continue its drive to modernise the business.

Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, said: "If we don't modernise we'll fail...so our position remains -- we can't afford to pay any more right now and we certainly can't afford to put all our future in danger by putting off the need to change and modernise."

Comments

TONY ATTWOOD - 07/06/2007

Actually you missed a super bit out of the Royal Mail press release in which they make the point that the 21000 members of the workforce who are not in the union did not vote. In reality it would be one hell of a bigger story if we found that people who were not in the union did vote. You have to wonder what on earth RM is doing putting out stories like this - it just makes them look very silly.