WALTHAM FOREST: Managers help sort post as crisis deepens

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WALTHAM FOREST: Royal Mail managers help sort post as crisis deepens

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ROYAL Mail managers in East London are volunteering to help keep the post moving as the crisis caused by an ongoing industrial dispute deepens.

The Communication Workers' Union (CWU) is involved in a dispute with Royal Mail about job losses and changes to pay and conditions and its members have been involved in a series of official and unofficial strikes.

A Royal Mail spokesman said delays to deliveries are “typically” a few days because of the union's actions.

He said: “The Royal Mail again calls on the union to stop hurting customers and provide the service our customers need and expect.

“Royal Mail is doing everything we can including drafting in management volunteers as well as fully trained and vetted agency staff and drivers, who we sometimes call on during busy periods anyway, to keep mail moving and call upon CWU to call off these damaging strikes which only inconvenience customers and harm our business.”

The Guardian this week revealed that there are more than two million undelivered items of post sitting in the East London Mail Centre, in Bromley-by-Bow, which sorts mail for Waltham Forest.

Royal Mail is not allowing the centre to process items, so mail is being driven to other centres before coming back to east London for delivery.

But many of the other centres now have backlogs of their own, meaning they are not able to process the items.

John Ayres, CWU East London drivers' representative, said the union is trying to protect the postal service.

A ballot of CWU members, asking whether they support a national strike, closes on October 8.