Postal strikes delay '35m items'

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The backlog of undelivered mail caused by the postal strikes has now risen to 35 million items, Royal Mail has said.

The statement came on the second day of the second wave of strikes. The latest action involves 400 workers at three sites in Plymouth, Stockport and Stoke.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) remains at loggerheads with Royal Mail.

The CWU said Royal Mail's estimate of the backlog was "laughable" and alleged that the true total was between 50 million and 60 million items.

The two parties have resumed talks to try to thrash out a deal over pay and modernisation, following a meeting on Thursday night.

The latest wave of industrial action is due to continue on Saturday, when 77,000 delivery and collection staff are due to strike.

On Thursday, an estimated 44,000 CWU members took part in strike action across the country.

These strikes follow two 24-hour stoppages last week.

Royal Mail said it had now cleared virtually all delays caused by last week's stoppages and that it was doing "all it reasonably and legally can" to get the post to its customers as soon as possible.

'Maximum disruption'

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"We're hoping for as many talks as possible. The urgency is obviously rising," a CWU spokeswoman said.

The CWU has so far not named any more strike dates, although on Thursday the union's general secretary Billy Hayes warned that there could be further action beyond the current three-day strikes.

He said he was "very angry" about Royal Mail's attitude to the talks.

"We will be upping the dispute. We will not be scaling it down. There is every prospect that we will increase the action and we could be looking at longer strikes," he said on Thursday.

Although Friday's strike is on a much smaller scale than those held on previous days, one worker on the picket line in Plymouth told the BBC: "We may be a very small cog in a very large wheel, but we are aiming for maximum disruption."

The Plymouth site is England's largest coding centre - which redirects badly-addressed mail.

Modernisation

The union and Royal Mail failed to come to an agreement during three days of talks earlier in the week, chaired by the TUC, and relations seemed to be deteriorating on Thursday.

Mr Hayes said his union is also annoyed by Royal Mail's decision to hire 30,000 temporary workers to help clear the backlog of mail that has built up as a result of the strikes.

But Royal Mail said that, with the help of these workers, the backlog of mail should be cleared by early next week.

Royal Mail says it is trying to modernise to compensate for letter volumes dropping by 10% every year as people switch to other forms of communication such as emails and texts.

It has shed 63,000 frontline postal staff in recent years, and says it needs to cut more jobs as part of continuing modernisation plans.

The CWU agrees that job cuts are necessary, but disagrees over their extent, and over the future pay and working conditions of the workers that remain.