Royal Mail calls in mediators
By Dan Roberts, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:32pm BST 16/06/2007
The Royal Mail has offered to meet postal unions through the conciliation service Acas in a last-ditch effort to avert a crippling national strike.
Adam Crozier, its chief executive, has written to the Communication Workers Union this weekend in what looks like a significant concession to its demand for talks following a successful ballot for industrial action.
Nevertheless, Royal Mail executives are understood to believe that the involvement of third-party negotiators is the only way to get the CWU to back down. It remains determined to pursue its modernisation strategy, according to sources close to the management.
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The two sides disagree over pay and how the introduction of new technology will impact on jobs. The Government is keen to get both sides to talk in order to avert the first national strike for 11 years.
"If we want to be competitive so we can retain and win business and secure our future, we have no option but to modernise," writes Mr Crozier.
A copy, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, reveals a combative tone that will do little to calm the conflict. Crozier accuses the CWU of "protracted national wrangling over every small piece of change" and says employees are embracing the new ways of working more enthusiastically than their union maintains.
He also says postal competitors are 40 per cent more efficient, while the CWU wants a 27pc pay rise. The CWU says this figure is deliberately misleading.
In a letter to Crozier last week, the CWU accused management of hiding behind the word modernisation when what was meant was "cuts in the service, pay and jobs".
It added: "By refusing to negotiate you are revealing publicly your real motivation is about destroying the union rather than working with us to make Royal Mail a success."
