Agreement in Royal Mail dispute

The future of the Royal Mail is not crystal clear

The UK's Royal Mail and union representatives have reached an agreement over working practices, bringing to an end months of talks.

The executive committee of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) will discuss the proposals on Tuesday.

Union members are likely to be balloted early in the New Year.

According to CWU spokesman Chris Proctor, the agreement now makes strike action, which threatened to disrupt Christmas deliveries, unlikely

"It looks as if an enormous amount of progress has been made," Mr Proctor told BBC News Online.

Plans

The Royal Mail and unions have clashed over the company's three-year plan aimed at reducing its 200,000 strong workforce by 30,000, and introducing more efficient working practices.

It plans to scrap the second daily postal delivery, for example

The Royal Mail, which is losing money and faces a deregulation of its industry in 2007, says it has no choice but to modernize.

Postal workers disagree and earlier this year staged a number of walk outs which were not sanctioned by the CWU.

They had previously rejected a proposed pay raise because they felt it was tied to changes which would mean the loss of thousands of jobs.