Post Office workers stage national pay strike

Post Office workers in the United Kingdom staged a one-day strike in a dispute over pay on Tuesday.

Members of the Communication Workers Union, known as the CWU, last month voted 97 percent in favor of industrial action following a pay freeze in 2021, and what they described as a "poor" pay rise offer this year that is not in line with inflation. It said it had a mandate for more strikes in the coming weeks.

Nearly 2,000 workers from more than 100 branches directly owned by the Post Office took part in the strike action that meant there were no deliveries or collections from 11,500 sub-post offices around the country, reported the BBC.

So-called crown post offices, which are larger branches, suffered the worst disruption, with the dispute involving those working in administration roles and in call centers, as well as shop counter staff, said Sky News. The Post Office said the vast majority of its branches remained open despite the strike.

The UK and most of Europe is facing a rapid increase in the cost of living as inflation in the UK hit a 30-year high of 7 percent in March. It is predicted to continue rising to 9 percent or more, later in the year.

In a statement, CWU assistant secretary Andy Furey said: "The current offer of a mere 2 percent pay rise over two years is nothing short of an insult to these key workers who provided exemplary services to this nation during the pandemic.

"As the cost-of-living crisis mounts, working people across the country are facing stark realities.

"This isn't any less true of Post Office employees, who deserve far better than the degrading offer currently on the table. Post Office management need to understand that by undervaluing these workers, they have provoked real anger across the country."

The union said the Post Office has turned over huge profits in the last few years, and that its management could afford a pay increase.

Furey added: "This is not an issue of affordability. This is about power play from a management that is needlessly antagonizing its key worker employees."

The Post Office has been facing ongoing scrutiny this year with a government inquiry into its faulty Horizon IT system, which resulted in hundreds of subpostmasters being wrongly convicted of crimes such as fraud, false accounting and theft between 2000 and 2015.

The scandal has been described as the "biggest miscarriage of justice in modern English legal history". The inquiry has been hearing from victims since it opened in February and is expected to continue until later this year.