CWU national industrial action
The CWU intends to hold two national strikes this week, the details of which are as follows:
Thursday 22nd October: Mail Centres & Network Distribution Units Striking. Limited processing, movement and collection of ordinary mail (if local collections performed by staff at a Mail Centre).
Friday 23rd October: Delivery Offices & Collection Units. Limited delivery and collection of ordinary mail (if local collections performed by staff at the Delivery Office).
Whilst this is a serious development, national strike action is not inevitable and concentrated talks between Royal Mail and the CWU are continuing to take place.
In the event the planned strikes do take place, mail services on Thursday and Friday will be very limited and as a consequence, some delay to the collection, sorting, distribution and delivery of mail will be inevitable.
What we will do to maintain and recover service
If national industrial action goes ahead, Royal Mail has strong contingency plans in place and will do everything possible to keep mail moving and minimise disruption for our customers.
· Keep mail moving – hundreds of managerial and contract drivers will move mail around the country Thursday and Friday.
· Delivering mail – We’ll continue to prioritise Special Delivery™ and Royal Mail Tracked™ mail for delivery on strike days, however the nature of the CWU action means we cannot guarantee doing so. In order to provide customers with clear guidance on service, we will be removing the Special Delivery guarantee for items posted on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd which would be due for delivery on Friday 23rd October and Saturday 24th respectively. We will restore the guarantee of delivery as soon as we can be sure we can honour the service promise. We expect to be able to do this by Monday 26th October.
· Use of managerial and support resources on strike days to maintain premium services, open callers’ offices and to collect from Post Office branches and as many posting boxes as possible.
· Supporting goods distribution – we have additional sorting and distribution capacity in place to aid the distribution of packets through our network.
· Targeted recovery – concentrating managerial and support resources on affected areas to deliver mail after the strikes.
We are really sorry for the impact and inconvenience the CWU strike action continues to have on our customers in London and other areas and the further problems this national industrial action will cause all customers. We are continuing to urge the CWU to call off all strike action and concentrate with us on supporting customers during the Autumn and Christmas peak mail period.
More information about service in your area
This is available on the regional pages, which you can access by clicking on the links below.
· Northern England & Northern Ireland
· London, the South East and East Anglia
· Scotland
· Midlands
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