Postal union goes to court over casual workers

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called more 24-hour national postal strikes after talks aimed at ending a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernisation broke down last week.

"I can't confirm whether it's an injunction or damages yet, but it is in relation to the Royal Mail's hiring of agency workers to fill in for people who are on strike," a CWU spokeswoman said.

Royal Mail said its use of temporary staff is "entirely in line with employment law."

The troubled state-owned firm said in a statement that up to 30,000 temporary workers had been hired to help clear the backlog of mail delayed by strikes and deal with high Christmas volumes.

But the union said the legal challenge did not concern the hiring of extra staff for the busy Christmas period, rather workers purposely hired to break the strike.

"They always hire 15,000 extra staff in the run-up to Christmas -- it's the additional 15,000 on top of that we are concerned about," the CWU spokeswoman said.

"Royal Mail have been very confident about hiring extra workers (to break the strike) ... but everybody we have consulted with has agreed they have broken the spirit of the law," she added.

Legal firm DLA Piper, which specialises in industrial relations, doubted Royal Mail is breaking labour laws.

"The laws to prevent the use of temporary workers to cover striking staff actually only apply to the employment agencies who provide the workers," said employment partner, Guy Lamb.