Isle of Man Post Office's (IOMPO) contingency plans, put in place to mitigate the impact of the three-day strike staged by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) last week, worked extremely well.
Throughout the three days, IOMPO received and processed mail from three sea containers and three mail planes and undertook its full range of collections on all strike days, processing 100% of that work and successfully dispatching two planes of mail back into the UK postal network.
A total of 5,671 Special Delivery, Royal Mail Tracked, Parcelforce 24, Yodel and HaysDX trackable packets/parcels were delivered along with thousands of machineable letters to large business customers. In addition, more than 500 flower bouquets were delivered on Valentine's Day.
Simon Kneen, Chief Executive of IOMPO, said: "While it was very regrettable that we faced further strike action by approximately 210 of our 340 strong workforce, I am very grateful to the team that delivered all key services during the three days, and prepared standard delivery items for dispatch, ensuring disruption to customers was kept to a minimum. I would also like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding. Today, all the mail from Thursday, Friday and Saturday went out for delivery, along with 80% of mail received on this morning's sea container. Providing there are no disruptions to our incoming transport network, we will be completely up-to-date tomorrow (Tuesday) morning."
Following the latest round of negotiations held last week, IOMPO will be providing a further counter proposal to the CWU by the end of this week.
Simon continued: "We were disappointed that the strike went ahead. Despite the current financial challenges and difficult trading conditions, from the outset, IOMPO has sought to protect existing workers basic pay and to keep the current pension scheme open to existing members. No compulsory redundancies are planned as part of the ongoing cost saving initiatives. Following the latest round of talks, there are a number of proposals within the overall negotiation that we believe we are close to agreeing with the CWU. We are keen to settle these to move us forward, while we work to address the remaining elements in dispute, wherever possible by mutual agreement."
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