The DMA said yesterday that two days of strikes this week would have an immediate negative impact of £10m as direct mail campaigns by UK businesses were held up or cancelled.
Both Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union are blaming the other for the failure to resolove the dispute over pay, conditions and modernisation plans. The CWU refused Royal Mail's last-ditch plea yesterday to postpone this week's national strikes until after Christmas.
Royal Mail announced last weekend it was controversially hiring 30,000 temporary workers, a move defended by the company's CEO Adam Crozier. "We are absolutely determined to do everything we can to minimise delays to customers' mail, especially in the run up to Christmas," he said.
Mark Higson, managing director of Royal Mail Letters, wrote to the union yesterday morning asking it to postpone the strikes this week for "a much-needed period of calm" until the end of December.
Higson suggests to Dave Ward, the CWU's deputy general secretary, that the overall proposal gives our customers much needed stability and certainty in the run up to Christmas".
Royal Mail's letter points out that the two sides "are unlikely to achieve that much before Christmas".
The letter also says Royal Mail would work with a third party to develop an industrial relations framework in the future.
With postal strikes going ahead today and Friday, Tory leader David Cameron clashed with Prime Minister Gordon Brown over his handling of the dispute.
During Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, Cameron said it required "leadership, some backbone and some courage" to prevent union militancy. These were traits, Cameron suggested, which Gordon Brown did not possess.
Instead, he claimed, union leaders had sensed weakness and were taking advantage of it.
Cameron also blamed the Government for backing down on part-privatising Royal Mail.
_1.jpg)
.jpg)
