Post Office strike – all out on 3rd May
Postal, Post Office (PO) April 19 2022
Union calls nationwide walkout against pay freeze, bringing out every Crown office in the UK and halting all cash collections and deliveries along with call centres and various admin workers in the fight for a fair deal…
“You provoked this strike, now it’s going to happen,” was CWU assistant secretary Andy Furey’s message to Post Office bosses today, after the union’s industrial executive formally authorised strike action to begin at the commencement of all shifts on Tuesday 3rd May.
“This is the first national Post Office strike for a number of years and the responsibility for this situation lies 100 per cent with the senior management and their stubborn, arrogant and downright disrespectful attitude towards their workforce,” he told CWU News this afternoon.
Every one of the UK’s 114 Crown Post Offices will close for a 24-hour period, and there will be no cash deliveries or collections from the 11,500 sub-post offices around the nation either – action that will severely impact everywhere.
The action is fully legal and follows the astonishing 97.3 per cent YES vote returned by the union’s Post Office members in the statutory strike ballot that was held during March – a reflection of the enormous anger felt by workers at the stubborn refusal of the Post Office to pay a wage rise for 2021/22.
“They have told us that they’re freezing pay in keeping with official government and public-sector pay policy,” says Andy. “But that’s an outrageous and dishonest excuse as the government’s austerity measures do not apply to the Post Office and it should be borne in mind that our members worked throughout the pandemic to provide essential services to the Great British public.
“And the further irony here is that our members are always being told by senior management that they are a commercial operation and required to make a profit – yet the Post Office is a profitable concern – profits made by the hard work and dedication and skill of our members.
“The management want to have it both ways. They refuse to reward our members for their outstanding dedication to serving the Great British public through the worst public health emergency in living memory, but yet the also refuse to give our members their fair share of the profits that their hard work has created.
“It’s hypocrisy, it’s unprincipled and, with RPI inflation currently running at 9 per cent, a pay freeze is totally unacceptable.
“That’s why our members are coming out on 3rd May – and unless the Post Office see sense and pay up, this will just be the first strike and other dates will follow.”