Liverpool unofficial postal strike after staff sacked

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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About 200 postal workers in Liverpool have staged an unofficial strike over the sacking of six workers.

The workers began the wildcat action, which did not have the authorisation of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU), at three depots in the city earlier.

An agreement was reached for staff to return to work.

Unions and management have agreed on an independent disciplinary hearing which will be heard by Royal Mail and CWU representatives from London.

"We hope it will take place as soon as possible as nobody wants this hanging over them - our members who are affected have got more than 200 years service between them," said Mark Walsh, Merseyside CWU branch secretary.

"We have agreed on a hearing that will have people from outside Merseyside," he added.

Deliveries affected
CWU said night staff at the Sandhills office were dismissed after a disagreement over new sorting machinery. Royal Mail apologised for the disruption.

It said it regretted the effect on deliveries and collections.

According to the CWU, the workers were dismissed on Saturday following an incident a few weeks earlier.

Staff walked out from the offices at Liverpool North, Liverpool South and West Derby at about 0800 BST and returned to work in the afternoon.

"Royal Mail apologises to customers in Liverpool today for any inconvenience they suffer as a result of unofficial industrial action being taken by a number of employees in the city," said a spokesperson.

"We are doing all we can to deliver Special Delivery and other items of tracked mail.

"We regret that the unofficial action has affected deliveries and collection of the mail in the city."

[norbert]

By P739

" work at the Sandhills depot and I'll tell you what the problem is:

A manager didn't listen to the sorting machine operators, who told him that the way the machines were set up to work would lead to a "failure" (which means some mail remains unsorted at the end of their shift). This is indeed what happened (I believe many thousands of letters remained unsorted at the end of their shift) and an investigation was launched into the workers conduct. This investigation ignored the fact that the night manager was in charge and was informed of the impending "failure" and didn't act accordingly.

Basically, the blame for managing the sorting machinary and making the decisions was placed at the workers feet, and not at the managers, who is paid to supervise the mail sorting operation of a night.

The men who were dismissed (or received a suspended dismissal) were long serving employees with many years service between them. By sacking them on this ludicrous charge, the company hopes to save money by not having to pay them off via voluntary redundancy, and ALSO it gives Royal Mail management a chance to transfer some workers from Warrington Mail Center to Liverpool. I believe Warrington Mail Center is overstaffed after the transfer of the Copperas Hill workers last year, so this gives Royal Mail a good excuse to redeploy workers out of Warrington.

So, after hearing our colleagues had been dismissed (or received a suspended dismissal) we decided to walk out in support of them. If we let Royal Mail sack our hard working and loyal colleagues on a whim, on trumped up charges, then we're next. If you don't back us, then fine. But we work our socks off day in, day out in a climate of bullying, intimidation and aggresive management. We'll go back to work when the union tells us that meaningful discussion is taking place regarding the future of the dismissed workers.

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