No deal to avert postal strikes
Updated on 21 October 2009
The postal strikes planned for tomorrow and Friday are going ahead, and there will be further action at a later date after negotiations failed to find a resolution.
The Communication Workers Union, which is embroiled in a dispute with Royal Mail over pay, conditions and modernisation, launched a ferocious attack on the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, accusing him of working "hand in hand" with Royal Mail to undermine negotiations.
Royal Mail said strike action was "wholly unjustified" and it was willing to keep on negotiating.
Click here to read our Q&A on the Royal Mail strikes.
The union said it had been forced to strike after agreements reached with Royal Mail negotiators last night were vetoed by the company's managing director. But Royal Mail's operations director, Paul Tolhurst, pinned the blame on the union.
"Last night Royal Mail and the CWU did reach a negotiators agreement and a set of words and the plan was for the CWU to take that back to their main committee for approval this morning," he told Channel 4 News.
"Unfortunately what seems to have happened is that the main committee have rejected the words and as a consequence of that the CWU are now casting around trying to find somebody else to blame."
The CWU responded saying Royal Mail is being misleading.
"The form of words that were drafted between the negotiating teams last night was precisely that - a form of words that may have allowed the sides to keep talking and call off tomorrow's strikes.
"The reality is there is no agreement. Both Royal Mails negotiating team and the CWU negotiating team know that the form of words do not constitute a final agreement. To now suggest it is plain stupid."
