Border guards join strikes as postal workers go out again | strike

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Border Force officials will on Friday join a wave of industrial strikes across Britain, the start of the first of a series of strikes at airports, as Royal Mail workers leave again for two days before Christmas.

Passengers flying to the UK have been warned to prepare for longer lines at immigration at airports, while many letters and parcels will not be delivered before Christmas as staff take action over back pay behind inflation.

Heathrow, the largest of the six airports where Border Force staff will strike, said it expected the vast majority of flights to be unaffected, with no flights canceled ahead of the industrial strike.

About 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union will continue to strike through the remaining days of 2022, with the exception of December 27.

The Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the Border Force, has recruited officials from other departments as well as hundreds of members of the armed forces as an emergency workforce in an effort to mitigate the effects of the strikes.

Steve Dunn, Border Force’s chief operating officer, didn’t rule out closing airports in a worst-case scenario, and said travelers should expect disruption.

Fewer than 9,000 flights are now scheduled to land at the six affected airports – Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Gatwick, Heathrow and Manchester – during the strikes, carrying up to 1.8 million passengers, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium. Officials will also hit one of the seaports, Newhaven in East Sussex.

The airports are confident that emergency staff and electronic gates, which will not be affected, will handle most passengers effectively during the strikes. Passenger volume traveling through airports is still only about 85% of pre-pandemic levels.

Heathrow expects that departing flights will have little or no impact, with all terminals open as normal, but warns arriving passengers should be prepared for longer waiting times in the immigration hall, particularly if they do not have usable passports. At the automatic gates.

Meanwhile, Royal Mail said it would do everything it could to ensure last-minute Christmas cards and parcels were delivered, as tens of thousands of postal workers once again come out in an increasingly bitter dispute with its Communications Workers’ Union staff.

The Royal Mail said the strike, which will cover 18 days this year by Christmas, has now cost it £100m.

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A company spokesperson said: “Within the next 48 hours we will do everything we can to deliver Christmas to our customers. Thousands of employees across the company have swapped their usual day jobs to help sort and deliver the festive mailbag. We are grateful to them and the over 12,000 Posties who are back in business Last strike day.

A CWU spokesperson rejected the claim and said the industrial strike was strongly supported.

A Royal Mail spokesperson added: “We urge the CWU to consider seriously our offer of payment of up to 9%, and to work with us to return the company to profitability… [Its] The future and all of our staff’s jobs depend on modernizing Royal Mail so that we can better meet changing customer demands.”

The CWU Royal Mail has been accused of refusing an offer to suspend strikes. The company’s general secretary, Dave Ward, said the company was trying to “destroy postal workers’ jobs and drive their union out of the workplace”.

Both sets of strikes follow actions taken by nurses and ambulance workers earlier this week. Industry measures, including a ban on overtime at train operators, continued to severely disrupt some rail services, while more Network Rail rail strikes followed on Christmas Eve.

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