Black Country union bosses accuse Royal Mail of 'scare tactics' after company announces 6,000 redundancies

The delivery giant has blamed industrial action for mammoth financial losses.

Bosses urged union chiefs to call off their latest strike action and come to the table over a deal but stressed the job cut plans cannot be avoided.

Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson said on Friday that the planned redundancies are a “minimum” and more could take place if current strike action is extended.

Dave Jones, secretary of the Wolverhampton and district branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), said: "It's just another tactic of Royal Mail to scare and intimidate the workers who are participating in strike action.

"The staff won't be scared by those tactics. We don't want to lose any jobs out of the industry but we will move with the times.

"We are prepared to embrace technology.

"We want to do that for the right pay, terms and conditions."

The cuts announcement comes a day after Royal Mail workers in the CWU launched a fresh strike in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.

Picket lines were mounted outside Royal Mail offices on the sixth day of action in recent months on Thursday, including outside the Sun Street depot in Wolverhampton.

Mr Jones said the strikes so far had largely been met with support by the public.

He added: "In our area we've had superb support. We don't like striking and disrupting the public service. What we want is fair pay and terms and conditions.

"We worked all the way through the pandemic and were key workers. We feel we never had the just rewards for that."

Royal Mail said the move is in response to the “impact of industrial action, delays in delivering agreed productivity improvements and lower parcel volumes”.

It said it is seeking short-term cost efficiencies through the planned reduction of 5,000 full-time equivalent roles by March and around 10,000 by August.

Royal Mail highlighted the 10,000 reduction in roles will include the removal of overtime, the decision not to fill empty roles and a reduction in temporary workers.

The plan is therefore expected to require between 5,000-6,000 redundancies by August.

Royal Mail is expected to fall to a £350 million operating loss for the year after being hit by industrial action, its parent group International Distributions Services (IDS) said.

The company, which employs around 140,000 people, said this could increase to a roughly £450 million loss if customers move elsewhere following the initial strike action.

It came as IDS told shareholders that Royal Mail suffered a £219 million operating loss over the first half of its financial year, tumbling from a £235 million profit a year earlier.

Royal Mail said this included a roughly £70 million hit from three days of strike action.

Mr Thompson said: “This is a very sad day. I regret that we are announcing these job losses.

“We will do all we can to avoid compulsory redundancies and support everyone affected.

“We have announced today losses of £219 million in the first half of the year. Each strike day weakens our financial situation.

“The CWU’s decision to choose damaging strike action over resolution regrettably increases the risk of further headcount reductions.”