Postal strike dates in December and earlier Christmas post deadlines

Picket line in Ramsgate earlier this year Photo Ciaran Jarrett- #PicketPap

Royal Mail staff in communication union CWU will take strike action on:

Friday 9th December
Sunday 11th December
Wednesday 14th December
Thursday 15th December
Friday 23rd December
Saturday 24th December

The CWU is in dispute with Royal Mail over pay and changes to working conditions.

The CWU says: “Our Royal Mail members have had an unagreed 2 per cent pay deal imposed on them.

“This is at a time when RPI inflation is currently running at 11.8 per cent and when Royal Mail has announced Group profits of £758 million and when the company is paying out many millions to private shareholders.

“In a national strike ballot over pay, our Royal Mail members voted by a 97.6 per cent majority to take action.

“The pay dispute is not complicated. Our members are striking for a pay rise that fully addresses the current cost of living. Our members need it, our members deserve it – the company can afford it.”

Throughout this year, 115,000 postal workers have been taking industrial action against the ‘real-terms pay cuts; and action that they say will force through thousands of compulsory redundancies and enact changes that would see Royal Mail turned into a Uber-style gig economy parcel courier.

Royal Mail says: “Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, but we cannot fully replace the daily efforts of our frontline workforce. We’ll be doing what we can to keep services running, but we are sorry this planned strike action is likely to cause you some disruption.

“Following several months of talks between Royal Mail and Communication Workers Union, including ACAS facilitation, Royal Mail has shared a best and final offer for pay and change. The revised offer includes extensive improvements that have been made during the negotiations with the CWU, including an enhanced pay deal of 9% over 18 months and a number of other concessions to terms and agreements. The offer is subject to agreeing a programme of change with the CWU.”

The last posting days for delivery before Christmas are now 12 December (instead of 19 December) for second class post and 16 December (instead of 21 December) for first class.

6 Comments

  1. they are not winning any prizes with me , i hope firms start to use other couriers as the royal has been useless for years , and totaly unreliable and never on time.

    • I see Currys have taken their parcels to another courier ! There’s so much choice for parcel deliveries now , I think the CWU are shooting themselves in the foot tbh !

    • Curry’s have already switched. While I support the strike action, I do believe that the repercussions of it are going to end up with a lot more jobs being lost than was on the table & possibly RM even ceasing to exist-because companies & online sellers are not going to keep using a service where parcels are taking weeks or even possibly months to be delivered & letters being left in favour of parcels, so people will not be getting hospital letters etc & could miss appointments.

  2. This Tory government will continue to blame the victims, because thats what they do! Millions of hard working public service workers are being forced to take pay cuts, why? Because they are an easy target, thats why! Postal services are vital! I have a dispute with Sky who supply my Broadband, and who are trying to impose an increase on my subscription, without my approval! Its impossible to reply to their emails, as they block them, so I am printing them off and posting them to Sky, how dumb is that!

    • If everyone who wants one got a pay rise, inflation would be even worse than it is now, prompting people to demand even more money and creating a vicious circle. Besides, both mail and rail use is down on pre-pandemic levels, so effectively they want more money from companies that are getting less income. This can only end in much reduced services.

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