Royal Mail workers in Kent are apologising to customers and businesses for taking national strike action.

It is day two of their walkout which sees almost 80,000 collection and delivery staff man the picket lines.

Communication Workers Union members are angry over Royal Mail’s pay and modernisation plans.

Darren McCann, a union delivery representative based in Canterbury, told KentOnline why he is angry: “It has come to stage that if we don’t take a stand now the postal industry as we know it will collapse.

“With the machine they are hoping to put in their plans are that the mail will get to the companies and small businesses even later than it currently is now.

“I don’t think that Royal Mail has the audacity to tell a small business how they should be running their business just because of what time we are going to get their mail to them.”

Mr McCann went onto say: “We had a national agreement on work rates and Royal Mail has now gone against that and they have started testing people.

“They are now testing people at the fastest person instead of looking at the average person and saying if you do not manage to keep up with that there is a possibility we will take people off of pay or discipline people.

“I can only apologise to the small businesses and to the customers that aren’t receiving their post. This is not a position we wanted to be in, we did not want to take strike action but we have been forced into it.”

The disruption is not just confined to this week. The Communication Workers Union has planned three days of strikes for next week beginning on Thursday October 29.

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