More than 100,000 Royal Mail postal workers were on a walkout after unions rejected a two per cent pay rise in a dispute that could last until Christmas.
Letters won’t be delivered and some parcels will be delayed in what’s being portrayed as the biggest walkout of the summer so far.
Strikes are also set to take place on August 31, September 8 and September 9 after 97.6% of members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted in favour of industrial action.
The union has a mandate to continue the action for six months, meaning the walkouts could carry on until January, affecting the crucial Christmas trading period as well as the busy Black Friday weekend.
It’s the latest in a string of demonstrations across the country this summer, with bin strikes presently taking place in more than 20 council regions in Scotland and strikes scheduled over the August bank holiday on buses operated by London United.
Dave Ward, general secretary of the CWU, said that there could be no doubt that postal workers are fully united in their determination to secure the dignified, proper pay rise they deserve.
He said that we can’t keep living in a country where bosses rake in billions in earnings while their workers are forced to use food banks, and he blamed Royal Mail’s adjusted operating profit in the year concluding March 2022 of £758 million and its decision last November to hand shareholders £400 million in dividends.
Strikers have been expressing contempt towards Royal Mail’s CEO Simon Thompson, with chants of ‘What do we want?’ Thompson out. When do we want it? Now’, ringing out on the picket lines in east London.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch also addressed a demonstration of postal workers outside the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre in London.
Royal Mail said it has contingency procedures in position to minimise disruption and will prioritise the delivery of medical prescriptions, Special Delivery and Tracked 24 parcels on walkout days, but it said that items posted the day before a walkout, the day of, or on the days after might be disrupted and the company urged customers to send packages and letters as early as possible.
Mr Ward continued that their members just lost complete faith in the actions of the company, and the board and they’d lost confidence in the leadership and people will understand that when they see the way that the company have conducted itself.
Nevertheless, a mass general walkout is right around the corner because hard-working Brits have had enough of the most ineffective, directionless, cruel, self-serving anti-British political party of all time, and I’m in full support of any industrial action.
Boris Johnson is as useful as they come as he sits there in his nursey playing with his Crayons. What a useful fool he is.
Fed Ex, DPD, Hermes et cetera are going to be pleased, and rightly so because the Unions are going to send Royal Mail the same way as British Leyland, British Steel, British Shipbuilding, British Coal, the dockers and print workers.
It appears that everyone is being taken for fools and it’s time to rebel because enough is enough, and there certainly seems to be a threat of a general strike.
A general strike would bring the government and the country to its knees, and hopefully a new government, now that would be something.
People might think that they won’t suffer if they don’t get their post for a day or two, but they will notice when vital letters stop being posted through their letter boxes and it’s time to make a stand.
A two per cent rise is not that much in the grand scheme of things!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 