03/11/2009

Legal Action Threat Over Mail Strike

Royal Mail is facing legal action over the recruitment of 30,000 agency staff during strikes.

The Communication Workers Union are to go to the High Court on Friday to seek an injunction against Royal Mail using the temporary staff while the industrial dispute over modernisation plans continues.

Royal Mail has stressed that its recruitment of agency workers is to deal with the traditional rush during the festive period, as well dealing with the backlog of mail.

A spokesperson for Royal Mail said that the workers were not being hired to do the job of striking workers and that the hiring of them was "entirely in line with all employment law".

However, the GMB union has also written to Business Secretary Lord Mandelson asking him to investigate employment agencies which have supplied temporary staff to Royal Mail during the strikes.

The union is demanding an investigation into alleged breaches of the law in Slough, Bristol and Dartford, where it alleged that temporary staff appeared to be doing the jobs of workers who were on strike.

The union has also warned that it would seek enforcement proceedings against the Business Department and government if they failed to investigate the allegations.

CWU members are set to hold two more strikes on November 6 and 9. These strikes will be all-out strikes, involving more than 120,000 staff, instead of the previous strikes, which saw workers in different areas striking on different days.

Royal Mail said that the backlog of mail caused by three days of strike action last week had been halved from 50 million to 25 million by Monday.

Talks aimed at resolving the dispute are due to resume between Royal Mail and the CWU today.

(KMcA/BMcC)

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