Royal Mail workers across West Lothian kicked-off Christmas strike action with a walk-out today over pay and conditions.
Members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) are embroiled in a dispute, with another scheduled for Sunday, with further action planned throughout December including Christmas Eve.
One West Lothian worker, who asked not to be named, was on a picket line in Bathgate and said the posties are heartened because they know the public is behind them.
He said: "I believe the public is behind us, there is no anger on the picket line, the atmosphere is bouyant.
"We're all standing firm. At the start of the strikes it was all about pay, but now it's more about conditions.
"The business is now attacking our terms and conditions, they want later starts, but who wants their post delivered and 4pm or 5pm in the afternoon?
"They want to get rid of sick pay and annualised hours, shorter ours in the summer and longer days in the winter, so we'll be out even longer in the winter.
"The list goes on and on.
"We are downhearted that the strikes are on because we don't want to fail Christmas.
"We've been forced into this, we want to do our duty at Christmas
"We can cope with losing money but the hard this is we don't want to let our customers down."
CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: “Royal Mail bosses are risking a Christmas meltdown because of their stubborn refusal to treat their employees with respect.
“Postal workers want to get on with serving the communities they belong to, delivering Christmas gifts and tackling the backlog from recent weeks.
“But they know their value, and they will not meekly accept the casualisation of their jobs, the destruction of their conditions and the impoverishment of their families. This can be resolved if Royal Mail begin treating their workers with respect, and meet with the union to resolve this dispute.”
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We spent three more days at Acas this week to discuss what needs to happen for the strikes to be lifted. In the end, all we received was another request for more pay, without the changes needed to fund the pay offer.
“The CWU know full well that in a business losing more than £1 million a day, we need to agree changes to the way we work so that we can fund the pay offer of up to 9% we have already made. While the CWU refuses to accept the need for change, it’s our customers and our people who suffer. Strike action has already cost our people £1,200 each.
“The money allocated to the pay deal risks being eaten away by the costs of further strike action. The CWU is striking at our busiest time, deliberately holding Christmas to ransom for our customers, businesses and families across the country.
“We are doing everything we can to deliver Christmas for our customers and settle this dispute. During the last strike days, we delivered more than 700,000 parcels, and more than 11,000 delivery and processing staff returned to work.
“We recovered our service quickly, but the task becomes more challenging as Christmas nears. We remain willing to talk at any time about our best and final offer and urge the CWU to call off their damaging strike action.”
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