No deal yet for postal workers
Discussions aimed at warding off a national strike by disgruntled postal workers were adjourned last night, with no clear sign of a breakthrough in the pay dispute.
Talks resume Wednesday with unions threatening to ballot its 160,000 postal workers over walkouts on Thursday.
Negotiators from the Communications Workers Union (CWU), led by deputy general secretary Dave Ward, met Royal Mail managers at the arbitration service ACAS to question the apparently “dishonest” pay offer.
The CWU, which is led by Billy Hayes, says the offer, billed as 14.5% over 18 months, had “more strings than the Philharmonic Orchestra.”
The offer takes basic pay for postal workers to over 300 pounds per week.
The union challenged Royal Mail to respond to accusations that the only up front money was 3% from October 2003 with a further 1.5% next April.
They demanded more of the pay increase be made available in short term and less of it coupled with productivity incentives.
The CWU wants Royal Mail to reduce the 10% of its pay offer linked to ending the daily second delivery.
A CWU source said: “They have linked ?20 a week to local agreements on productivity and ?6.28 to a national agreement. We need to see more of that ?20 upfront in the pay award – either in October or April next year.”
Royal Mail defended the 14.5% offer but admitted some of it was linked to productivity changes.
The last national strike by postal workers was in 1996.
Royal Mail is reportedly haemorrhaging some 750,000 pounds a day, a large figure, though down from the one million mark some months ago.
