Royal Mail postal strikes continues in August, further delays for delivery

Tuesday 11 August, 2009

Dear Valued Customers,

The series of Royal Postal strikes started in June 2009 continues in August. The following information is from the Guardian's website .

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Who is on strike?

Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) are staging a series of 24-hour strikes across the country. The strikes, which started in mid-July, are part of an ongoing dispute between the union and Royal Mail over pay, jobs and services. The current round of strikes started last Friday and is expected to continue until the end of this week. CWU claim that 125,000 members have so far taken part in this latest round of action.

Where are they striking?

Today the strike hit Kings Lynn, Stanton, Bury St Edmonds, Thetford and the Ipswich mail centre in East Anglia, and Alloa, Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath and Grangemouth in Scotland.

On Tuesday, workers in Stoke-on-Trent will go out on strike.

In London, around 12,000 workers involved in delivery, collection and driving will be on strike. A spokeswoman for the CWU said all of central London would be affected, as well as large areas of greater London.

On Thursday, a distribution centre near Bristol will be affected.

What impact are the strikes having?

Royal Mail says the majority of its national and international mail network is operating as normal and guaranteed delivery services have, in general, been unaffected. Things are now getting back to normal in the areas affected by strike action at the end of last week.

However, services appear to be seriously disrupted in the areas hit by today's strikes. In East Anglia, for instance, the Eastern Daily Press has reported that around 16,500 homes in Kings Lynn and Thetford have not received deliveries as a result of the strike.

Royal Mail says it expects Tuesday's strike in Stoke and Thursday's strike in Bristol to affect only mail collections, with deliveries expected as normal, but that households and businesses in London look set to be hit hard by Wednesday's strike. Business collections will be limited across vast swathes of the capital, deliveries may be limited to items sent via premium services like Special Delivery and Royal Mail Tracked, and redeliveries of mail across all London postcodes will be not be available on Wednesday or Thursday.

Full details for all disrupted areas are available on the Royal Mail website.

When will I get my post?

A spokesman for Royal Mail said it generally took a few days after a strike for the backlog to be cleared, although in some instances post was arriving more quickly. If your postman is on strike this week you should expect to get your mail early next week, if not before.

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Please be patient if your post did not reach you within the delivery time frame announced on our website.

Kind regards, 

The Xpertron Team