2009 Royal Mail industrial disputes

The strike action began on a local level after postal workers at Royal Mail offices in London and Edinburgh accused their bosses of cutting jobs and services, which they claimed broke the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement, the agreement that was struck to end the 2007 strikes, and accused Royal Mail of threatening modernisation of the service.

[1] After a series of localised walkouts over the summer months, and after failing to reach an agreement, the CWU opened a national ballot for industrial action in September 2009.

A resolution to the dispute was finally reached following lengthy discussions on 8 March 2010, and on 27 April it was reported that postal workers voted to accept the deal.

The union feared that a national introduction of this equipment would lead to thousands of full-time workers being made redundant and a significant increase in the number of part-time staff.

Furthermore, the union said that when Royal Mail stopped talking to staff about the long-term effects of job security, there had been no choice other than to threaten a strike to restart discussions.

Speaking about the situation at the time Dave Ward, the CWU's deputy general secretary said, "We are now seeing cuts but not modernisation in the postal industry and there's only so long before this is going have a major impact on services.

The CWU criticised Royal Mail's business policy as "chaos management" and in August and September the localised strike intensified.

[8] Furthermore, following the first round of strikes, it emerged that both sides had been "tantalisingly close" to brokering a deal on the evening of 20 October, but that Royal Mail had backed away from this the following morning.

[12] Royal Mail later blamed a hard core element of London postal union leaders for refusing to endorse a proposal that both sides had agreed to.

[13] Discussions were held during the second wave of strikes, when Brendan Barber announced on the afternoon of Friday 30 October that proposals had been put to both Royal Mail and the CWU for them to consider over the weekend.

[18] Following lengthy discussions between Royal Mail managers and union representatives a deal to settle the dispute was finally agreed to on 8 March 2010.

In exchange, the CWU agreed to Royal Mail's modernisation strategy which include plans to introduce the automated walk sequencing machinery.