Online retailer Amazon is looking to other delivery services over fears a Royal Mail strike could disrupt crucial deliveries in the run-up to Christmas.
The company is searching for ‘contingency measures’ as the bitter row over jobs, pay and services at the postal service escalates.
The news comes as the Communication Workers Union is expected to confirm today that its 120,000 members have voted in favour of a crippling nationwide strike.
Last month, the union balloted its members for an all-out national strike. If CWU members vote in favour, the union will have to give just seven days’ notice before the first national walkout can be staged.
But insiders do not believe the CWU will call an indefinite full-scale national strike because it would result in them losing their wages. Instead, it is likely there will be a series of one or two-day strikes.
Local strikes have already caused chaos for small businesses and led to many incurring fines and charges as they receive bills late.
Now Amazon – Royal Mail’s second largest customer with a reported £25million contract – has become one of the most high-profile customers to desert the postal service.
The company announced last night that it was looking for other carriers to deliver its products to ‘ensure that we can continue to deliver to the high standards that our customers expect from us’.
A spokesman for Amazon said: ‘We have not cancelled any long term contracts with the Royal Mail. They continue to be one of a number of carriers that we use.
‘However, with the possibility of strike action in the near future, we have been working on contingency measures with our other carriers to ensure that we can continue to deliver to the high standards that our customers expect from us.’
Amazon, one of the UK’s biggest online retailers, has opted to use rival service Home Delivery Network (HDN) instead of the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams.
Brian Gaunt, chief executive of HDN, told The Guardian: ‘We are seeing a number of our customers preparing to start marketing their deliveries as free of Royal Mail risk.’
The CWU called a ballot over a failure to reach agreement with Royal Mail management on a modernisation programme that revolves around thousands of job cuts and changes to working patterns
Up to 16,000 workers are under threat from cuts across the state-owned company.
Strike action by the CWU has already caused chaos in both London and Bristol.
CWU general secretary Billy Hayes said ministers seemed to have ‘walked away’ from trying to tackle the company’s multi billion pound pension deficit.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson has refused to intervene in the dispute, but Mr Hayes said the Government had a responsibility to act.
‘The Government has a hand in this as well,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Mr Hayes said he was confident of achieving a yes vote for strikes, adding that the ballot was a referendum on the Royal Mail’s management and the Government’s handling of the industry.
‘We don’t have to take strike action, but it seems to have come to this because the government and Royal Mail have refused to engage the workforce in modernisation of the company.’
The local industrial disputes have left an estimated backlog of 25million items and Royal Mail has been forced to hire temporary warehouses in a desperate bid to shift it.
Business leaders have described their fury about being held to ransom by the postal service.
James Roper, of web retailers’ group IMRG, said: ‘Even the threat of action is damaging. It is a great shame for the people of this country who benefit from the convenience of on-line shopping.’
The strike threat comes after it emerged Royal Mail is raising the cost of a first class stamp by 3p to plug a £100million black hole in its finances.
Source : Daily Mail
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