The 1988 United Kingdom postal workers strike was a

strike Strike may refer to: People *Strike (surname) Physical confrontation or removal *Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm *Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

in August and September 1988. It was the country's first national postal strike for 17 years, and began after postal workers at

Royal Mail , kw, Postya Riel, ga, An Post Ríoga , logo = Royal Mail.svg , logo_size = 250px , type = Public limited company , traded_as = , foundation = , founder = Henry VIII , location = London, England, UK , key_people = * Keith Williams ...

walked out in protest over bonuses being paid to recruit new workers in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and the

South East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

. As a result, postal deliveries throughout the United Kingdom were disrupted for several weeks. The strike action started on 31 August when members of the

Union of Communication Workers The Union of Communication Workers (UCW) was a trade union in the United Kingdom for workers in the post office and telecommunications industries. History The union was founded in 1919 as the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) by the merger ...

walked out to protest against 2.75% bonuses, and it was intended as a 24-hour stoppage. However, the strike continued after temporary workers were hired to clear the backlog of undelivered mail. By 5 September the industrial action had spread with a quarter of the country's postal workers on strike, and by the time an agreement was reached the following week, the strike had spread throughout the British mainland (workers in

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

did not strike). No mail was being delivered by this point and, in order to ease the backlog of post, bosses at Royal Mail placed an embargo on the delivery of overseas mail. By the time the strike ended there was a backlog of 150 million undelivered letters and parcels. The postal strike sparked a rise in the sale of

fax machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

s, which helped ease the impact of the strike. The issue of temporary workers also led to some violence. In an incident at a sorting office in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, three men were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour after pickets threw bottles at workers arriving at the facility. The strike came to an end on 13 September after union representatives and Royal Mail managers held talks over the preceding weekend. However, because of the backlog of mail, deliveries remained unreliable for several weeks afterwards. The strike led to a delay in the receipt of information concerning the September 1988 unemployment statistics which were briefly over-recorded as a result.

References

{{reflist United Kingdom Postal Workers Strike, 1988 Royal Mail Labour disputes in the United Kingdom

Postal workers A postal worker is one who works for a post office, such as a mail carrier. In the U.S., postal workers are represented by the National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL–CIO, National Postal Mail Handlers Union – NPMHU, the National Associatio ...

Postal strikes Union of Communication Workers Royal Mail labour relations

See also

References