Deliveries struggling back to normal after two-day Bognor postal strike

A two-day strike by postmen and women is expected to have caused up to a week of disruption before letters and parcels are being delivered as usual. But the workers' union representative has warned further industrial action is likely.

Paul Mountain, the Communication Workers' Union representative at the Clarence Road postal depot, said a national ballot had been called by the union for September.

This could see postal services around the country stopped.

"We could well take more action before that here," he said on the picket line. "I am going to hold a meeting next week to find out what the members want to do."

The strike last Friday and Saturday received total support from the some 90 postmen and women at the depot. About 30 of them set up a picket line from 4.30am on the first day. Some 30 managers were drafted in by Royal Mail to sort the mail inside.

They are believed to have concentrated on ensuring priority and special delivery items went out as well. They also staged one collection from post boxes around the town.

Mr Mountain said the disruption was necessary to highlight the impact of changes to the service which Royal Mail wanted to bring in.

"Our managers want to take out hundreds of hours of work out of the depot. It can't be done and maintain services at the same time.

"The local managers know that, but they are being told what to do by their superiors.

"The time to sort out the post will be so tight that we will not have time to scoop down and pick up more items.

"If we want to blow our nose, that will put us way over our allocated time," he explained.

Mr Mountain claimed the alterations would worsen the service to households and firms around the Bognor and Barnham areas.

Having too little time to sort the post would see the deliveries set out an hour later than at present and fail to give the postmen and women enough time to get to premises before their shifts end.

Only eight minutes would be allowed for a postman to cycle to Pagham with 32 kilos of post. This was after the number of full-time staff had been cut from 119 to about 70 in four years and the number of properties for each delivery had risen from 350 to about 500 in that period.

The Royal Mail has accused the CWU of standing in the way of progress by agreeing to the change needed to compete in the modern world of communication, but then refusing to implement it.

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