9:49pm Wednesday 26th August 2009
By James Wallin
MORE than 800 Royal Mail staff are expected to strike for a full day in Swindon.
Workers at Dorcan Mail Centre and a logistics depot next door to the Wheatstone Road centre will down tools for 24 hours in two strikes on Wednesday.
The walk-outs were confirmed last night and follow months of negotiations between union bosses and Royal Mail management.
Jason White, of the Communication Workers’ Union, said he expected 800 mail centre workers to strike from 4am.
He said 95 per cent of the centre’s staff were CWU members, and, of those, nearly 70 per cent had voted in favour of industrial action.
Mr White said the action had been taken after issues surrounding the transfer of Reading and Oxford’s mail sorting operations to Dorcan, general working conditions and the upgrading of some part-time staff to full-time workers had failed to be resolved.
He said: “This is a last resort. We have tried to talk to management – our door is always open.”
Another 70 Royal Mail drivers will leave their posts for 24 hours on Wednesday following concerns about working conditions.
A Royal Mail spokesman insisted only internal deliveries would be affected and said Swindon residents would still receive their mail.
Contingency measures, including using managers as drivers, will be put in place by Royal Mail.
The spokesman said representatives from the company had met CWU representatives 50 times in recent months.
He said: “We again condemn the CWU for striking locally over much-needed modernisation and change which has already been successfully implemented by our people in the majority of offices in the UK and is working well.
“The changes are all covered by the 2007 agreement on pay and modernisation, which the CWU leadership signed in the presence of the TUC but which they are now reneging on in a way that clearly hurts our customers and our people and damages Royal Mail.
“The union claims to support modernisation, yet acts to destroy it.
“Unfortunately we have been notified of further industrial action to take place in Swindon on September 2 which will affect the processing and collection of mail. Delivery staff will be working as normal.
“Customers who need more information are advised to visit www.royalmail.com/ serviceupdates.”
Mr White responded: “We know modernisation is coming. We have never had a problem with it.”
A separate national ballot about industrial action for all postal workers is currently ongoing. The results will be known next month.
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