Households and businesses face days of disruption to their postal deliveries after last-ditch attempts to avert the first national postal strike in 11 years came to nothing.

Royal Mail workers will walk out for 24 hours on June 29, in a dispute over pay and conditions. The two sides are also at odds over the company’s business plan, which involves cutting £380 million this year.

The Communication Workers Union, which represents 130,000 workers, announced the strike plans last night and said that it would also agree further action within two weeks. The move comes after 77 per cent of members voted in favour of industrial action.

Dave Ward, deputy secretary general at the CWU, said: “What Royal Mail are doing is not modernisation. The truth is it is intent on cutting services, cutting jobs and cutting pay.”

Adam Crozier, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said the offer to staff was fair and realistic. Workers are being offered a 2.5 per cent increase on their basic pay, plus an £800 bonus if performance targets are achieved. They will also be paid incentives to cut costs at local office level, with any unexpected savings split with workers.

“Against the backdrop of an increasingly tough and shrinking market we simply can’t afford to pay more,” Mr Crozier said, a point disputed by Mr Ward, who said that the postal group could afford to give its workers “a decent pay rise”.

Royal Mail wants to push through a modernisation programme to become more competitive with rivals, who have only recently been allowed into the market.

The strike could cause a backlog in undelivered post when workers return to work, lengthening the impact of the action. By striking on a Friday, Royal Mail will not be able to deliver much of the delayed mail until Monday morning at the earliest.

Mr Ward said that the union had decided to strike “purely because Royal Mail have declined to negotiate”. Mr Crozier said that the company was still willing to “sit down with the CWU to explain again the absolute need for Royal Mail to modernise and to underline how damaging a strike would be for postmen and women, and customers”.

The company said that rivals paid their workers 25 per cent less than Royal Mail staff received. The basic wage for postmen and postwomen is £323 a week. Royal Mail said the CWU had called for an increase to £395 combined with a cut in hours.

The mail market is falling in value by 2.5 per cent a year. Although internet shopping has created demand for parcel deliveries, the rise in the use of e-mail and telephones poses a threat to the company’s growth prospects. Royal Mail must also now contend with greater competition in the business mail market.

Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, told the Trade and Industry Select Committee that it was up to Royal Mail’s managers to resolve the dispute.

Mail drop

— The mail market in Britain is declining by 2.5 per cent a year

— Royal Mail has lost 40 per cent of its bulk business mail to rival operators since the market was opened to competition

— The company’s rivals are 40 per cent more efficient through better use of technology

— Mail sent by businesses accounts for 90 per cent of all items sent; domestic mail accounts for the rest

Source: Royal Mail

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Milk: do we need a dairy godmother?
• DIY: the women doing it for themselves
• First double portrait of Princes unveiled