Strike Action has been halted at the Seven sorting offices through the Midlands and North West of England today.

This will be a big relief to businesses and the general public alike, for whom the Christmas post is most important. 

The CWU announced that progress had been made in the shape of further discussions with Royal Mail bosses, it is unclear whether the strikes have simply been postponed or whether any concessions have been made, however the underlying fundamental problem of the restructuring of the Mail Centres and Sorting Offices throughout the UK is one that will be a recurring theme through 2009 as the Royal Mail pushes on with its plans to modernise.

But for now, our Christmas Cards should all be delivered.

Mail Workers at the Coventry Mail Centre, and other local centres, have voted for strike action to try and force the Royal Mail to keep their Mail Centre Open.

The CWU put strike action to a ballot last week, and the result, announced yesterday, was 60% in favour of a strike.  At the end of last week Union leaders and Royal Mail bosses met to try and negotiate a settlement, but no compromise has been reached.  Raising the risk of Postal Strikes at Christmas.

This leaves local residents with the fear that they may end up with postal chaos at the busiest time of the year, and will be of concern particularly to online retailers who see up to half of their annual sales taken in the Christmas period. 

Union leaders state that they would be keen to avoid any negative impact on the public at this festive time of year, but that they will take what ever action required to show Royal Mail bosses how seriously they feel about this issue.  A postal stike would be the worse thing imaginable to such businessse who are trying hard to carry on trading in some of the toughest economic circumstances of many years.

Royal Mail have a long standing plan to relocate many of the urban mail centres to new "super-hubs" located on th outskirts of towns, near major motorways and routes.  Coventry's mail centre is located in one of the most inaccessable parts of Coventry's city centre, and plans are to relocate it to a new hub just off the M1 by 2010.

The probability that 2008 could turn into another Christmas blighted by Postal Strikes increases further this week. 

CWU Staff at three Mail Centres, Coventry, Eastern No6 & Northampton, have started voting on strike action against closure of these depots. 

The Royal Mail is to close these smaller centres and move to a super mail hub near the M1.  The Super Mail Hubs are part of the Royal Mail's proposals to build a mail sorting system that can cope with the volumes and demands of the current logistics industry.  The M1 Super Hub is only one of around 40-50 planned for the UK, with the closure of the smaller, urban mail centres, frequently located deep of the centre of town and in awkward situations with poor access.

The Coventry Mail centre currently employs around 500 people, and all of these jobs will be lost in Coventry, a town which has already seen the loss of a very large number of manufacturing jobs.  Similar situations apply to the Milton Keynes Depot, and Crewe, who both held rallies a couple of weeks ago to try and raise awareness of the planned job losses.

The ballot for Mail Strike Action closes on 3rd December, it is hoped that the ballot will force union representatives and Royal Mail bosses into talks, but the chances of the a turnaround by Royal Mail are slim as plans are well advanced and part of a well laid out strategy.

CWU workers have used the Pre Christmas period previously as time to force Mail Bosses hands, but CWU leaders seem to have taken an almost universal acceptance that the workforce will continue to deminish, no matter what action the CWU take, as the Royal Mail needs to cut costs and meet the ever changing and more demanding needs of the UK's mail industry.

The Socialist worker reports that the three depots who are currently voting are standing united and prepared to Strike .  The ballot closes on the 3rd of December, when the UK public will find out whether or not this is another Christmas Post to be blighted by Mail Strikes.

Hundreds of Postal Workers and their families will march on Saturday 15th November 2008 through Milton Keynes & Bletchley to protest against the proposed closure of the Milton Keynes mail centre.

The Milton Keynes mail centre currently employs around 600 people, and the closure of this mail centre at such a time will impact significantly on the local economy.

Last month, hundreds of families similarly marched in Crewe, to protest against the closure of the Crewe Mail Centre, another proposed closure that could result in the loss of 700 jobs.

And these are not the only mail centres at risk.  The Royal Mail is currently in the middle of a strategy which is considering better ways of processing large volumes of mail, and their arguements that the smaller local mail centres are unsuitable and unable to cope with the new technology.

Issues such as this tend to come to a head at Christmas, as the peak levels of demand and the pressure to deliver the Christmas mail gives the postal workers an upper hand in the negotiations.

Christmas is coming, and for the past few years Late October, November and early December have seen disruptive and far reaching postal strikes.  So to help all of our customers thinking about letter, mail, and parcel options for Christmas we will keep you up to date here with all of the issues that the Royal Mail and Communication Workers Union are confronting at this important time.