Read more about how we personalise ads in the BBC and our advertising partners. Picket lines have been mounted outside Royal Mail offices on the sixth day of action in recent months.

1. Watch Make Sense of Strikes on iPlayer and find out more about why people are striking and whether industrial action works.
2. Early signs are that on day 6 of strike action, the support is bigger than ever.
3. Royal Mail workers are holding the first of 19 strikes in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
4. Pip Haywood, managing director of online card company Thortful, has calculated that each day of action is costing the firm up to £50,000 a day.
5. But he said the firm has been “very clear about the damaging impact of strike action”.

Pip Haywood, managing director of online card company Thortful, has calculated that each day of action is costing the firm up to £50,000 a day. Postal worker walkouts coincide with the busiest time of year for Royal Mail when people and businesses are sending Christmas cards and presents. Chairman Keith Williams has said that the firm is losing £1m a day as parcel volumes fall and efforts to modernise the business stall. Postal worker Hannah Carrol, who is part a strike at Whitechapel in East London, said she wanted to see wages rise in line with the growing cost of living. General Secretary Dave Ward said workers faced the “biggest ever assault” on jobs, terms and conditions “in the history of Royal Mail”.

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The government’s emergency Cobra committee will hold its second meeting of the week later to discuss how to minimise the impact of the wave of industrial action. And on Friday, rail workers, buses, baggage handlers, highway workers and driving examiners will walk out. Around half of rail lines are shut again on Wednesday, with no services at all in most of Scotland and Wales. “It’s meant we’ve had to staff up to protect our customers,” she told the BBC, with three times as many requests for advice on delivery windows from shoppers than usual.

Lucy Bryant, who runs her small business Haus of Lucy from Brighton, says she supports the strikers as “everyone has a right to fair pay”. The company is encouraging people to post items as early https://www.topforexnews.org/investing/invest-in-startups-with-these-7-you-can-buy-on/ as possible to avoid disruption. Thompson, who took on the job in early 2021, will leave in October after a bruising tenure that included being accused of “incompetence or cluelessness by MPs”.

Watch Make Sense of Strikes on iPlayer and find out more about why people are striking and whether industrial action works. He described the plans as an “asset-stripping business plan” that https://www.day-trading.info/what-is-a-counter-currency/ will lead to the break-up of the company. IDS bosses said they were not aware of whether personal attacks from either politicians or unions played a part in Thompson’s decision to step down.

In the past few days, Sir Brendan Barber, the former head of the TUC and ex-chair of conciliation service Acas, has been brought in to help facilitate the talks. Royal Mail has said it is losing £1m a day and that it is projected to lose more than £350m for the financial year ending in April. The company has been beset by recent problems, including the prospect of further strikes, and a cyber attack which disrupted overseas start your own brokerage as a white label mail. But he said the firm has been “very clear about the damaging impact of strike action”. A Royal Mail spokesman said the firm is “doing all we can” to resolve the dispute, and that the firm is “committed to getting the right deal”. Network Rail wants to cut 1,900 jobs as part of changes to the way its maintenance teams work – although it insists most of this could be achieved by people leaving voluntarily.

“Quality of service has been significantly affected by industrial action and high levels of absence. I am sorry that we have not delivered the high standards of service our customers expect. The union also objected to proposed changes to working conditions, including compulsory Sunday working. For the past year there has been a row over workers’ pay, jobs and conditions. Early signs are that on day 6 of strike action, the support is bigger than ever. “It is insulting the intelligence of every postal worker for the Royal Mail chief executive, Simon Thompson, to claim that their change agenda is ‘modernisation’.

Royal Mail reports £1bn loss after postal workers’ strikes

The rate at which prices are rising, known as inflation, is running at nearly 11%, which remains close to a 40-year high. Evri, the delivery company formerly known as Hermes, said that severe weather, Royal Mail strikes and staff shortages are causing “some localised delays”. Some parcel companies claim the walkouts are having a knock-on effect, and forcing them to delay next-day deliveries as people and firms seek alternative ways to send their post. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. However, bosses have not ruled out plans to potentially break up the business. We feel we’re moving forward, but it is still an option if we don’t,” Williams said.

The union has called for Royal Mail to increase wages to an amount that “covers the current cost of living”. It comes as Royal Mail said the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents the strikers, had rejected a pay rise offer “worth up to 5.5%” after three months of talks. On strike days it will deliver as many Special Delivery and Tracked 24 parcels as possible, it said.

It said plans by the postal service include cutting workers’ sick pay, delaying arrival of post by three hours and inferior terms for new employees. The planned 19 days of industrial action include Black Friday week and Cyber Monday, as well as 13, 20, and 25 October, and 28 November. Royal Mail workers are holding the first of 19 strikes in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions. Royal Mail has reported a £1bn loss, with bosses blaming strike action by workers and a failure to increase productivity for its poor performance during a year in which it cut 10,000 jobs. At the time, Mr Ward said the union’s leaders did not believe more strikes were the right thing to do but there might come a time when more industrial action is called. “The CWU leadership’s choice of damaging strike action over resolution is weakening the financial position of the company and threatening the job security of our postmen and women.

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The long-running dispute has seen workers and management at loggerheads, leading to industrial action including a strike over Christmas, with further possible strikes. “Instead of working with us to agree on changes required to fund that offer and get pay into our posties’ pockets, the CWU has announced plans to ballot in the New Year for further strike action.” “The public and businesses also face the end of daily deliveries and destruction of the special relationship that postal workers and the public have in every community in the UK.

Royal Mail workers walked out again on Wednesday, marking the third of six strike days across the festive season. The union representing the workers is demanding a pay rise that more closely reflects the current rate of inflation. Letters will not be delivered on strike days and some parcels will be delayed, Royal Mail warned. It is the first of four days of industrial action, with walk-outs also taking place on 31 August as well as 8 and 9 September. This would effectively see employees in secure, well-paid jobs turned into a “casualised, financially-precarious workforce overnight”, said the union.

Williams said there was now a “clear path towards a more competitive and profitable Royal Mail, delivering improved services for our customers while further reducing our environmental impact”. Together, those problems overshadowed what IDS said were successful efforts to cut costs and “rightsize” the business in the second half of the financial year. Royal Mail had previously offered a one-off payment plus a pay deal it says is worth 10% over three years.