Mail strike set to start
West Midland postal deliveries are set to be crippled for up to a week after last ditch peace talks failed to halt walkouts today.
Workers at major sorting offices in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Worcester and Coventry were due to stop work this afternoon in a two-day national stoppage – with another 48-hour strike due from Monday morning.
Staff were expected to strike at sorting offices when shift changes came in at 2pm.
Up to 800 staff could be involved in the strike at Sun Street sorting office in Wolverhampton which handles two million letters and parcels a day for deliveries throughout the city, Dudley and Staffordshire.
Around 1,200 workers at Birmingham, which delivers to parts of Sandwell, and 280 at Worcester, which handles mail for Hereford and Worcester, were to follow suit. The dispute comes after the Communications Workers Union rejected a 2.5 per cent pay rise amid fears that 40,000 jobs could be lost by modernisation plans by Royal Mail.
