Over 100,000 UK Postal Workers Hold Decade's Largest Strike Over Pay

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - More than 100,000 postal workers took to the streets across the United Kingdom on Friday to protest a scanty pay raise, in what the head of the Communication Workers Union described as one of the biggest strikes in more than a decade.

"There's 115,000 postal workers taking strike action today. It is the biggest strike in the UK since 2009. It’s also probably the biggest mandate that any union has ever had for strike action," Dave Ward told Sky News, referring to over 97.7% of CWU members who had voted in favor of the walkout.

Ward said Royal Mail workers deserved a "dignified" pay as the country heads for a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by soaring food and fuel prices. He said the company made a record 758 million pounds ($896.5 million) in the year ending in March 2022, gave over 400 million pounds to shareholders in dividends and rewarded top executives with huge bonuses for achieving all their financial targets and then "imposed" a 2% pay raise on the workforce.

"Our members are really, really angry and they’ve lost all confidence in the leadership of the company… Against skyrocketing inflation, energy bills rocketing — people are just not going to accept that," he said.

Royal Mail has argued that CWU’s proposals would cost it a billion pounds while it was losing almost a million a day due to a post-pandemic drop in online shopping and a steeply declining letter market. It said more strike action was scheduled for August 31 and September 8-9.