By Leah Montebello
The UK postal service is facing an “Armageddon moment” as Royal Mail’s eleventh hour bid to call off Black Friday strikes fails.
Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) rejected Royal Mail’s “final and best” offer this afternoon, scuppering hopes that industrial action happening tomorrow and Black Friday – two of the biggest online shopping days of the year–would be called off.
“Negotiations involve give and take, but it appears that the CWU’s approach is to just take. We want to reach a deal, but time is running out for the CWU to change their position and avoid further damaging strike action tomorrow,” Royal Mail chief exec Simon Thompson said in a statement, offering a nine per cent pay rise over two years.
Meanwhile, the CWU shot back at the delivery giant’s “aggressive strategy,” calling the company’s offer “wholly inadequate” that instead equated to a “non-backdated 3.5 per cent pay increase”.
“These proposals spell the end of Royal Mail as we know it, and its degradation from a national institution into an unreliable, Uber-style gig economy company,” CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said in a statement.
“Make no mistake about it: British postal workers are facing an Armageddon moment.”
A union source told City A.M. that Thompson did not attend the final negotiation meeting this morning between the delivery giant and CWU, which they deemed “a complete dereliction of duty for one of Britain’s biggest CEOs to be missing in action when so much is at stake”.
A Royal Mail spokesperson told City A.M.: “It is disappointing that the CWU’s has increasingly taken to making false and misleading claims about the negotiations and launching personal attacks.
Simon Thompson has been present at recent negotiations facilitated by Acas, including two weekends of talks. This morning’s meeting with the CWU lasted 15 minutes, by which point both parties agreed there was nothing further to discuss.”
Strike action has already added £100m to Royal Mail’s losses so far this year, with more set to come as 115,000 strike during the busy Christmas period.
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