Royal Mail strike to create three week backlog

[Geezer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/2 ... ke-backlog

Royal Mail strike to create three week backlog

• Households and firms face a fortnight of disruption
• First items waylaid will be last of backlog delivered


* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009 19.35 BST


A post office worker holding bags of letters

A postal worker at London Bridge Post Office. Photograph: David Levene

Millions of households and businesses face over a fortnight of postal disruption as unions go ahead with their two-day national strike tomorrow morning.

Experts said that some post will take almost three weeks to get delivered before postal services get back to normal.

But if the industrial dispute between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) drags on and more strikes are called, some letters stuck in the system will take even longer to reach their destination.

Jonathan de Carteret, founder of broker Post-Switch, said that Royal Mail was using special warehouses to house the undelivered mail which will get topped up as and when more strikes take place. Letters waylaid by the first strikes will be the last to get delivered because they will be literally at the bottom of the pile.

"While Royal Mail works through the backlog of letters, it's unfortunately a case of first in, last out," he said.

Royal Mail will operate a skeleton service tomorrow and on Friday as a result of the staggered strikes, involving more than 100,000 mail centre workers, delivery men and women and drivers.

Some 12,000 managers – members of the Unite union, which is not supporting the industrial action – will go into work and do some deliveries themselves.

The first of the 30,000 temporary staff which Royal Mail is taking on will not start work until next week to help clear the backlog, the company said.

Post-Switch estimated that less than a third of mail normally delivered will get through tomorrow and on Friday – about 33m items out of the 110m typically delivered daily at this time of year.

This will add an estimated 150m items to the existing backlog of about 30m letters and parcels, which it said would take two weeks to clear, provided no further strikes took place.

The broker is advising clients that business post – such as bank statements and energy bills – which normally would take 7–10 days to arrive will now take 20 days. First class mail sent in London is already taking a week to get delivered, and up to 10 days around the country. Delays for these deliveries will also increase further.

Rival postal operators such as UPS and TNT Post have ramped up operations to make sure some parcels get delivered. But Royal Mail is the only company able to deliver on a national basis to the "last mile" – from the local sorting office to people's homes – which is why a strike will have such a devastating effect.

This week, the Department of Health said that it was putting contingency plans in place to make sure patients get important information, such as notice of appointments and test results. Where this cannot be done by email, plans are understood to include the use of other postal groups if industrial action continues.

A spokeswoman for the watchdog Consumer Focus repeated calls for Royal Mail and the CWU to resolve the dispute under the aegis of the conciliation service Acas. It said letters were likely to arrive more quickly if posted at local post offices.

CWU has timed the dispute – like the last national strikes two years ago – to coincide with Royal Mail's busiest time of year, the run-up to Christmas.

A host of large business customers, including the online retailers Amazon and Argos, will switch to rival operators.

[Godric]

royal mail has brought on themselves this could have been resolved and they chose to scupper it, they can cry in their corner if they wish, but i can go to my bed tonight with a clear conscience knowing the battle lines are drawn and i know who my enemy is ... the screws and their lickspittle buddies who wish to hammer us and our business down

[kwf166]

Doesn't take the media long fish up this information, where do they get their statics