(Alliance News) - Strikes by Royal Mail workers will go ahead in the days before Christmas after their union said the company had turned down an offer of negotiations to resolve a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
Royal Mail is owned by London-based International Distributions Services PLC.
The Communication Workers Union said its members will walk out on Friday 23 and Saturday 24.
"An offer extended to the company to suspend the strikes and establish a period of calm from now until 16 January 2023, as well as the union and the company both signing a joint statement incorporating Royal Mail's latest promise of no compulsory redundancies, was rejected almost immediately," said the union.
The strikes will be the 17th and 18th days of action in the increasingly bitter dispute.
CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: "For Royal Mail Group to reject our offer just hours after receiving it demonstrates that they were never serious about saving Christmas for customers and businesses.
"When a company openly boasts of having built a GBP1.7 billion fund to crush its own workers rather than use that money to settle the dispute and restore the service, then you know dark forces are clearly at work.
"Their sole intention is to destroy the jobs of postal workers and remove their union from the workplace.
"Our members will not stand for this, and further action will take place in 2023.
"Our message to the public and businesses is that postal workers do not want to be here, but they are facing an aggressive, reckless and out-of-control chief executive committed to wrecking their livelihoods."
source: PA
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International Distributions Services (IDS)