Postal dispute starts to bite

Post boxes are being sealed in affected areas

Post boxes are being sealed as high-level negotiations continue in an effort to prevent wildcat walkouts at sorting offices across England and Wales turning into an unofficial national strike.

Postal workers have taken unofficial action at five London sorting offices as well as delivery offices, rail and airport offices.

The Royal Mail has said millions of letters will be delayed and have accused strikers of "holding customers to ransom" in a "totally unacceptable action".

The dispute which began last week in Watford has spread to Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Chester, Stockport, Birkenhead, North Wales, Maidstone, and Cardiff, leaving 6,000 workers on unofficial strike.

Strike disruption

Backlog of 5 million items

18 delivery offices closed in London

13 of the UK's 43 sorting offices affected

There are already fears that if the dispute continues the delivery of postal ballots in the run-up to the 7 June general election could be disrupted.

Union leaders, currently locked in talks with senior executives, have asked them to show restraint.

Senior Royal Mail managers hope to avoid the first nationwide stoppage since 1996 and are battling to maintain services.

Walkouts condemned

But post boxes are already being sealed in affected areas.

The Royal Mail, which handles around 80 million items of post each day, apologised to customers for the disruption and condemned the walkouts.

Thirteen of the Royal Mail's 43 main centres for sorting post are affected.

Mick Linsell, Royal Mail's managing director of service delivery, said: "It is totally unacceptable that union members are attempting to hold customers to ransom by denying them a service."

Mr Linsell said it was "particularly disappointing" that workers had gone on strike when an independent team had recently been appointed to review industrial relations in the service.

The review, supported by the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union (CWU), has been asked to assess the present "unstable" level of industrial relations.

'Loyal workforce'

Earlier, John Keggie, deputy secretary of the CWU, said industrial relations in the post office were at an all time low because of radical commercially-inspired changes.

He said: "We do not need senior managers issuing statements condemning postal workers as 'militants' and 'wildcats'.

"Instead, they should sit down with national union officials and hammer out a solution to the dispute.

"Postal workers are a loyal and dedicated workforce who are paid very poorly."

Around 800 union members at Watford stopped work last Friday and Saturday after a dispute over changes to working patterns.

'Massive backlog'

Postal staff at other centres refused to handle mail from Watford and started taking unofficial action.

It is thought there is already backlog of five million items as a result of the action in Watford and south London alone.

Many of the Royal Mail's 14,000 delivery offices are closed, including 18 in London.

The Royal Mail said the Postal Regulator had warned that strikes would benefit competition and threaten jobs.

Voters in Stockport wanting to cast a postal vote in next month's election have been told to collect forms from council offices by hand because of the strike.