All Royal Mail deliveries and collections will be “shut down” across Scotland during four days of strike action.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) stated that services will be disrupted as a result of the industrial action, set to take place on 26 and 31 August as well as 8 and 9 September, in a dispute over pay.
Royal Mail said that workers have been offered a 5.5% rise, but the union says the rise reflects a 2% pay increase, a further 1.5% in exchange for a change in terms and conditions, as well as a £500 bonus.
Craig Anderson, the Scottish regional secretary of the CWU, told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday that negotiations had broken down.
“We’re taking this action because we’ve been given no other option,” he said. “The negotiations started in February regarding a pay rise for the workers within Royal Mail and the negotiations have broken down.”
Anderson added: “They’ve imposed a 2% pay award without agreement.
“They offered another 1.5% based on signing away terms and conditions, and a further £500 as a bonus for having targets that they knew weren’t achievable; so there was never a 5.5% pay offer put on the table.”
He called for Royal Mail to “sit back round the table” and look at where members are at regarding the cost-of-living crisis, adding: “A fair offer from our perspective would be for them they sit back round the table with us and actually look at where or what comes out at the moment with a cost-of-living crisis, where the company’s been with the profits that they’ve made, and actually start negotiating on a percentage pay raise that reflects that.”
CWU is among several unions taking strike action this summer in demands for increased pay offers for workers in light of the rising cost of living.
The union also has an ongoing pay dispute with BT.
Anderson said it would be difficult to come to a figure due to the uncertainty surrounding inflation with the most recent figure sitting at 9.4%.
“The difficulty we have at the moment is we don’t know where inflation will be tomorrow never mind where it will be in six months’ time.
“Our members don’t want to go on strike but we’ve been given no other choice. We’re at gridlock at the moment and as I say we’d be quite happy to sit back round the table to discuss a pay offer.”
Ricky McAulay, operations director at Royal Mail said: “After more than three months of talks, the CWU have failed to engage in any meaningful discussion on the changes we need to modernise, or to come up with alternative ideas.
“The CWU rejected our offer worth up to 5.5% for CWU grade colleagues, the biggest increase we have offered for many years.
“In a business that is currently losing £1m pounds a day, we can only fund this offer by agreeing the changes that will pay for it.
“We have contingency plans in place, and will be working hard to minimise disruption and get our services back to normal as soon as we can to keep people, businesses and the country connected.”
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