More postal workers vote for strike action

More than 115,000 UK postal workers voted for further industrial action over working conditions ahead of four days of strikes that are already planned for later this month and early September.

The Communication Workers Union CWU said almost 99% of the members voted for further strike action on a 72% turnout.

Terry Pullinger, the deputy secretary general of the CWU, said the Royal Mail Group's attempts to whittle away people's hard-won working conditions will be met with fierce opposition. Working people need more security on the job, not less, and we won't be backing down until we find an acceptable solution for our members, in these times. Postal workers are due to strike on August 26 and 31 and August 8 and 9 in a dispute over pay.

The union is now required to declare further action because of the latest ballot result, which means postal workers represented by the union will enter a formal dispute with Royal Mail.

Members voted by 98.7% to pursue further action, on a 72.2% turnout. This means that more than 83,000 staff voted for more strike action, with 81,000 in favor of more strike action.

Royal Mail has offered a 5.5% pay rise for CWU workers, its biggest increase in years.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said that the CWU has decided to vote against change instead of engaging meaningfully on change that will secure future jobs.

Royal Mail can have a bright future, but we can't achieve that by living in the past. Customers want more parcels, bigger parcels, delivered the next day, including Sundays, and more environmentally friendly options. We wanted to meet this week but were disappointed that the CWU couldn't make it. We hope to meet next week. After the renaming of the overall holding company to International Distributions Services, a dispute about the loss-making UK postal business will continue to be called Royal Mail.

The company, which is increasingly reliant on its profitable overseas operations, called GLS, is aiming to move towards a parcels-led business to cash in on the online shopping boom.

It says parcel deliveries represent 60% of Royal Mail's business and that this transition requires changes to ways of working as letter deliveries decline.

The CWU has said that Royal Mail's purported 5.5% pay offer amounted to a 2% increase at a time of soaring inflation, which has hit a 40 year high of 10.1%.

Postal workers in this country are being pushed to the edge, but there is no doubt that they will fight the planned erosion of their workplace rights with determination, said Dave Ward, the union's general secretary.

Royal Mail, which last month said it was losing 1 m a day and threatened to break up the company if it could not achieve significant operational change, said it hoped to break even in the current financial year. It has said that strike action will push it to a loss.