120,000 people from the Royal Mail in the UK are on strike, and the logistics system may be paralyzed!

According to foreign media reports, 115,000 Royal Mail employees recently announced that they will go on strike from August 26 to 31 and September 8 to 9 , when the UK's postal express service will face several days of paralysis.

It is reported that the current inflation rate in the UK has reached 11.9% . Due to the imbalance of income and expenditure, the pressure of life has increased. Since June, large-scale strikes have broken out in the British railway system many times. In early August, Felixstowe, the largest container port in the UK, also announced a strike action .

Last month , the Communication Workers Union ( CWU ), which represents about 115,000 of Royal Mail's 140,000 employees, announced plans for a national strike after a vote in which the union voted overwhelmingly in favour of striking .

British media reported that this strike will be the largest strike so far in the UK's "Summer of Discontent" and the first strike by Royal Mail employees since 2009.

As inflation continued to rise, the Royal Mail proposed a 5.5% pay increase due to changes in work and conditions, but this was rejected by postal workers , which led to this strike action .

In response, Royal Mail said in a statement that the strike was a surrender of long-term job security by CWU members and that the CWU had not had "meaningful discussions" with it in the past three months .

According to Royal Mail , on April 1, following the conclusion of negotiations with the CWU, the company had offered an unconditional pay rise of 2%, with the option of a further rise of 3.5%, subject to improvements in productivity and changes to the postal worker roster .

Now that the CWU has rejected the proposal, it will increase the company's annual staffing costs by approximately £230 million, while Royal Mail has been in the red this year.

In its first quarter trading update published on 20 July, Royal Mail announced it was losing £1m a day, with the proposed pay deal increasing that figure by more than £500,000 a day .

In the CWU's view , the so-called pay increase is only achieved after the changed terms and conditions are reached . According to the new work schedule provided by the company , workers are required to significantly increase their working hours in order to improve the company's ability to deliver online shopping packages .

According to the Bank of England 's forecast , UK inflation will exceed 13% in October , and various realities indicate that pay increases of 2% and 3.5% will be equivalent to actual pay cuts .

CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said that no one takes the decision to strike lightly, but the reality is that bosses are making billions in profits while employees are forced to use " food banks " ( charities that provide free food to the poor ). So there will be serious social chaos before they actually get their wages.

Royal Mail has warned that strike action will cripple postal services on target dates, with millions of letters and parcels set to be delayed . Special deliveries, tracked parcels, coronavirus test kits and medical prescriptions will be "priority", though on-time delivery cannot be guaranteed during the strike .

The online shopping craze has driven a surge in the number of parcels, and the multiple collective strikes by workers in the UK's postal and express delivery industry, railway system, and container terminal will have a huge impact on various service systems in the UK, and e-commerce transactions may come to a standstill .

U.K.

logistics