ACAS To Arbitrate Royal Mail Dispute

The Royal Mail is calling in conciliation service ACAS in a last-minute bid to halt pending strike action.

They are making a final effort to resolve its industrial dispute and to see if unions will agree to call off a national postal strike.

The offer comes as union leaders prepare to meet Royal Mail bosses in an attempt to stop strikes which threaten to cause delivery havoc for millions of people.

A huge backlog of letters and parcels is expected if the planned stoppages go ahead on Thursday and Friday.

Royal Mail says it will be trying to resolve the long-running dispute over jobs, pay and conditions when it meets Communication Workers Union (CWU) officials later.

"Royal Mail has had around 80 meetings with the CWU in recent months and we are continuing to talk to the union to try to avert their totally unjustified strikes," a Royal Mail spokesman said.

Chief Executive Adam Crozier has invited the union CWU's General Secretary Billy Hayes to meet him more than a dozen times and Billy Hayes has not even responded, Royal Mail claimed today.

However, it remains to be seen if the conflict can be eased as relations between the two sides became increasingly fractious over the weekend when Royal Mail announced it was hiring up to 30,000 temporary workers to cope with the walkouts and the Christmas rush.

CWU officials said they believed the move to hire strike staff was illegal and they received backing from other union leaders.

"We will be looking at the legal side of this and we are calling on recruitment agencies to be aware of the law if they are asked to supply temporary workers to the Royal Mail," said one CWU official.

Regulations amended in 2007 state that an employment business may not supply a temporary worker to a hirer to replace an individual taking part in an official strike or any other official industrial dispute.

(BMcC/KMcA)