Royal Mail strike: Thousands rally outside parliament in latest wave of strikes (2023)

Introduction

Britain was hit with more pre-Christmas disruption today, as Royal Mail staff went on strike over pay and conditions - the first in a series of walkouts.

They're just the latest set of workers to take industrial action - with more planned this month by unions representing train drivers, nurses and ambulance staff - among others.

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This isn't what anyone wanted for Christmas: a walk out from over a hundred thousand postal workers after a breakdown over pay and working conditions, they're call for a pay rise in line with inflation, rejected about the hospital appointment.

Letters aren't being delivered at the moment.

Parcels trap Parcels seem to be being prioritized over letters, Christmas cards and at this time of year, when elderly people it's a way of people keeping in touch it's disrupting people, but you're.

Adding to that, we are fighting to save the Postal Service Royal Mail saying workers are resisting changes to modernize the business, which is losing one million pounds a day.

The changes we need making sure Royal Mail is set up to be able to compete and win in Parcels.

We have no Monopoly in Parcels every parcel we win.

We win because we're the best.

Why are you striking? Now, though, people are saying you're holding Christmas hostage? Well, what are the we have got? Nothing else we can do.

We have to go on strike striking at Christmas I.

Think most people are backers.

Honestly, most of our customers are quite happy.

They're not bothered about it.

They want us to get what we what we deserve, even if their customers will forgive them.

Small businesses might not we're going to upgrade you to DHL and I'm going to send you an invoice for the uh, for the additional cost is that I'll write at Jane's monogramming company in South, London she's, had to factor in two additional hours into her day to field calls from customers worried their Parcels won't arrive in time for Christmas.

Can we rush that and upgraded a DHL? Her business heavily relies on Royal Mail, not only posting out all her finished goods, but customers can send in their belongings to her to personalize.

Also by post.

People are shopping much more prudently.

This Christmas, because we're we're economically, are in a very different situation when Royal Mail sets back their last day for guaranteed delivery by Christmas by almost a week.

So you know they normally will deliver your tractor truck 24 Parcels right up into a couple days before Christmas, but this year, they've pushed it way back.

That's a week lost to in your busiest selling period, and the busiest selling period is basically the fourth quarter, so it's one week of 12 where finally coming right for you as a retailer, so certainly one twelfth decreases is in my budget.

That's quite a lot for a small business.

It's a lot! It's a lot.

So is this one day's worth of packages? This is the start of the days the start of the day, but even if your gift arrives on time, you might not, with a rail and bus walkout, planned for virtually every day up till Christmas drivers on the picket line in South London today still haven't reached a pay deal with abelio, though drivers for another bus provider, metro line had agreed a rise for their workers.

This week of 11 percent 11 Play Rise for our bus drivers in the bellio will still live them about three years behind, because for the last 12 years they haven't been paying the right rate.

We are after a 27 pay rise.

Okay, that will bring us in line with all the other bus drivers in London I mean during a covered.

Look how much bus drivers died during a covid I mean give us credit.

You know we was out there taking the doctors, nurses, everybody to work, we kept London moving when the trains are on strike.

It's us doing their job.

You know I mean give us give us the pride, give us what we deserve, at least with yet more action planned by teachers, transport, civil servants and the biggest industrial action in NHS history to come.

It is truly the season for strikes well against a backdrop of strikes, falling living standards and freezing weather.

The chancellor today attempted to warm the economic Outlook with a bonfire of financial services regulations.

The reforms include a relaxation of so-called ring fencing rules which require Banks to separate their retail and investment.

Businesses, changes to hiring and monitoring, meaning Executives won't be held directly responsible for issues on their watch, reform of Short Selling rules where traders buy and sell assets, hoping the price will fall and plans to consult on a new Central Bank digital currency, but it was called the plans part of a race to the bottom, but rolling back legislation designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 crash will Jeremy Hunt, says: turbocharged growth without destabilizing the system.

We have learned the lessons of that crash.

We put in place some very important guard rails, which will remain, but the banks have become much healthier financially.

Since 2008 we put in place a process so that Financial issues can be resolved which we didn't have before well.

Mr Hunt says those reforms will help increase Britain's, sluggish productivity, a perennial problem for governments, but something that's likely to be made worse by the volume of strike action planned over the coming months.

Those strikes are now being pitched by Rishi sunak as a battle between union bosses and Ordinary People.

Our policy correspondent, Paul McNamara, is in Downing Street Paul, yeah, Chris Christmas looming strike action on mass Across, the Nation across so many sectors, as you heard earlier on.

That is front and foremost in the prime minister's mind now, in recent days, the rhetoric from Richie sudak has been ramped up on Wednesday in Parliament.

He was talking about tough new laws, to quote protect the lies and livelihoods of the British public against strike action.

But it's just two weeks until Christmas A lot of people are wondering: do they need to start changing their plans now because they need to do that pretty soon.

So the questions for the Prime Minister are look.

Is this just all talk or have you really got time to do anything now and what are these tough new plans? There were some briefings that they might include Banning emergency workers from even being allowed to strike.

I put those questions to the Prime Minister this morning on behalf of all broadcasters and listen out to his answers, because he's still refusing to give any detail now, the suspicion is amongst his critics that actually, he hasn't got time to push through any new laws, whatever he comes up with, and even if he does come up with something the harshest of legislation he just will be able to push through so winter disruption is still very much on the cause.

One thing he did want to talk about in detail was a new deal that he struck with Italy and Japan to work together on the next generation of fighter jet, and he was at Raf coningsbury in Lincolnshire this morning to talk about those plans, we're making an incredibly important announcement today we're one of the few countries in the world that has the capability to build technologically advanced fighter aircraft.

That's important because it means we can keep the country safe from the new threats we face.

It also adds billions to our economy and supports tens of thousands of jobs across the country, but it's also good for our International reputation and today's example.

Today we are partnering with Italy and Japan two of our closest allies to build this next generation of aircraft.

That's going to keep our country safe, and it's something that we can all be very proud of.

Well you'll hear me see military personnel.

We know there are some military personnel who, on standby, to possibly have their Christmas leave canceled to help with strike action aside from calling in soldiers is there anything you can do at this late stage to head off strike strike disruption or do people in honesty need to start making alternative plans for Christmas right now, so the government is always going to try and act fairly and reasonably and that's why we accepted in full the recommendations of the independent bodies that advise a government on the appropriate levels of pay in the public sector.

But what I'm not going to do is ask ordinary families up and down the country to pay an extra thousand pounds a year to meet the pay demands of the union bosses that wouldn't be right and it wouldn't be fair.

But what I am going to do is ensure that I minimize the disruption to people's lives and make sure that we protect lives and that's what we're working on right now with resilience and contingency plans, but also looking at tough new laws which will help us do that.

But you're right we're here at an RAF Base today, I had the opportunity to say thank you to some of our Armed Forces Personnel, because many of them are going to miss Christmas to help us deal with the disruption from strikes, whether that's Manning border posts or driving ambulances, and we all owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.

It was widely briefed to the press that you could be looking at emergency workers end up like the police being Banning being banned from Strike action.

Yes, or no is that on the table, so I'm not going to get into the details now we're looking at all options, but what I can say is my priority is to always be reasonable and that's what we're going to continue to do, but also to make sure that we can protect lives and minimize A disruption to people's lives.

That's that's my focus and that's what we'll work on doing.

Okay.

Lastly, there's new banking rules been unveiled today to cut red tape, introduce after the financial crisis in 2008.

There are people out there who are going to say look it's the Prime Minister who used to work for investment Banks now making life easier for investment banks.

Are you even Reckless here? No, the UK has always had and always will have an incredibly respected and robust system of regulation for the financial services sector.

Of course that's the right thing to do, but it's also important to make sure that the industry is competitive.

There are actually a million people employed in financial services and they're, not just in the London and the city, they're spread across the country in Edinburgh and Belfast and Leeds in Bournemouth, and we want to make sure that we can continue creating jobs across us, the United Kingdom.

Today's reforms will mean that the industry remains competitive.

We can create more jobs, but of course, if this will always be a safe place where consumers will be protected.