Christmas mail on strike after Royal Mail rejected last offer

The Christmas mail is expected to be severely disrupted as the Royal Mail strikes are confirmed on December 23-24.

The union representing postal workers said senior management at Royal Mail Group “has rejected an offer to negotiate to settle the ongoing dispute”.

They said they had offered to suspend the strikes and “put in place a period of calm” from now until January 16.

They said the offer to issue a joint statement detailing Royal Mail’s latest promise not to include redundancies was “almost immediately rejected”.

Strikes have already been going on for 16 days in an increasingly acrimonious dispute, and it looks like they will dashed any hopes of delivering massive volumes of Christmas mail over that period.

CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said: “The fact that Royal Mail Group rejected our offer just hours after receiving it shows they were never serious about saving Christmas for customers and businesses.

“When a company openly boasts it has set up a £1.7billion fund to crush its own workers rather than use that money to settle the dispute and restore service, then you clearly know that dark forces are at work.

“Their only intention is to destroy postal workers’ jobs and remove their union from the workplace.

“Our members will not accept this and further action will take place in 2023.

“Our message to the public and to businesses is that postal workers don’t want to be here, but face an aggressive, reckless and out of control CEO who is determined to destroy their livelihood.”

This is breaking news and will be updated.