By Sean Poulter
Last updated at 3:13 PM on 10th September 2009
Ambushed: The national strike will clash with Gordon Brown's last major party conference before the General Election
Postal workers are set to ambush the Labour party conference by calling a national strike.
The move by 'awkward squad' union bosses will severely embarrass the party at its last major conference before the General Election.
Tens of millions of letters have been held in sorting offices and delayed as a result of rolling strikes by some 20,000 members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU).
The action has caused real hardship for millions of families and businesses with some addresses not receiving post for ten days.
However, the union is now threatening to step up the action by balloting on a full-scale national strike.
Members will start voting next Wednesday with the result expected on September 30 - while Labour is holding its annual conference in Brighton.
Union leaders have sent letters to staff urging them to back a national strike.
Staff claim that job cuts and changes to working hours and other practices are being imposed by Royal Mail without the negotiation promised.
They are also angry that they have been hit with a pay freeze at the same time as the organisation has posted its best profits performance in 20 years.
The CWU letter claims: 'The sheer scale of change planned by Royal Mail is worrying and unprecedented.
'Royal Mail is rolling out those changes with little or no concern for your views or your interests and without revealing the full impact on your job. This has to stop.'
The union has also distributed thousands of postcards that it wants members to fill out and send to the Royal Mail chief executive, Adam Crozier, calling on him to go.
He is labelled as a failure despite being the highest paid public servant in history, picking up more than £3million for one year.
Royal Mail attacked the decision to press ahead with the ballot as 'wholly irresponsible' given that their are talks designed to end the dispute currently underway.
A spokesman said: 'The union has been saying for weeks it would call a national strike ballot but a decision to go ahead in spite of the talks underlines the union's intent to further damage the business and its customers rather than genuinely seeking an end to the current localised disputes.
'The ballot is simply the latest attempt by the CWU to oppose the essential modernisation of Royal Mail on the ground, despite its public claims to support change, and shows the CWU's determination to renege on existing agreements on change, including pay and modernisation, which the union's leadership signed in the presence of the TUC.'
'Royal Mail remains committed to talking to the union and urges it not to call our people out on further strikes which can only damage the business and its ability to continue to provide the one-price-goes-everywhere universal service.'
Royal Mail said it had held more than 60 meetings with the union over recent months.
Its operations director, Paul Tolhurst, said: 'Royal Mail is getting on with the essential changes the union has signed up to in a fair and reasonable way, while the union continues to try to back-pedal from its commitment to modernisation and impose a veto on the progress.
'We urge the CWU to abandon strikes and the threat of strikes, and focus on providing customers with the service they need and expect, rather than planning to hurt them with the threat of more strikes.
'With mail volumes now falling by around 10 per cent a year, the union needs to recognise that customers have a choice in today's open communications market.'
The CWU said the mail backlog was now bigger than at the height of the national strike of 2007, with well over 20 million items backed up in London, one million items in the Bristol area, half a million in Peterborough, and a quarter of a million in Leeds.
Deputy general secretary Dave Ward said: 'Royal Mail's head-in-the-sand approach to the problems in the mail industry is now severely damaging services for customers, with backlogs bigger than in the national strike of 2007.
'Management have been bullying our members into unagreed, often unworkable, changes. The dismissive attitude to staff at the same time as cuts to jobs, hours and overtime and a pay freeze has made Royal Mail a dismal place to work.
'We are successful at bringing in change by agreement. Royal Mail needs the backing of postal workers to make the company successful and make change work.
'We want them to see sense and negotiate agreements which make change work for the company, staff and customers.'
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