Post Office workers across the Bristol area will stage a one-day walk-out on Tuesday (May 3) as part of strike action in a dispute with bosses over pay.
Members of the Communication Workers Union who work in post offices from North Somerset to South Gloucestershire and in Bristol, are going on strike after voting overwhelmingly to take the action.
Post Office management have tried to reassure customers that ‘the vast majority’ of Post Office branches will remain open during the one-day strike action.
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The CWU locally will be manning picket lines at Crown Post Offices in Nailsea and Yate, and others across Bristol will be affected by the action, the union said.
The CWU, which represents Post Office staff, said workers ‘won’t accept a collapse in their living standards’. The union said the Post Office bosses have offered a two per cent pay increase, plus a £250 one-off payment, but with inflation currently running at around eight per cent, that would effectively be a pay cut in real terms.
The CWU said its members considered the pay freeze a ‘slap in the face’, and voted by 97.3 per cent on a 70.2 per cent turnout, to take strike action. Attempts to negotiate a settlement have not worked, with CWU assistant secretary Andy Furey saying the bosses have refused to get around the bargaining table. “Post Office management are insisting they are simply following government policy on public sector pay policy,” he said. “But they have repeatedly contradicted themselves, and have also said that it’s their decision to impose a pay freeze.
“We know Post Office has turned over huge profits in these past few years – management can afford to provide our members with a reasonable pay increase if they wanted. This is not an issue of affordability. This is about power play from a management that is needlessly antagonising its key worker employees. The attitude of Post Office needs to be viewed in the context of inflation rising by at least 9 per cent already this year.
“Our members don’t appreciate being taken for fools, which is why they have voted in massive numbers for strike action. Post Office can’t put their heads in the sand. This dispute won’t go away, and our members are united – they won’t accept a collapse in their living standards,” he added.
“To avoid more disruption to services this year, the CWU urges Post Office to get round the bargaining table and thrash out a settlement with us that treats our key worker heroes with the respect they deserve,” he said.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “We have been notified by the CWU that they have instructed their members to take strike action on Tuesday May 3.
“We want to assure our customers that the vast majority of our 11,500 branches are unaffected by this decision and will remain open throughout the day,” they added.
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