Why Royal Mail plans to axe up to 6,000 jobs by August next year and have strikes been blamed?

The company said it has started the process of consulting over ‘rightsizing the business in response to the impact of industrial action, delays in delivering agreed productivity improvements and lower parcel volumes’.

It said this expected to require up to 6,000 redundancies by August.

This is due to short-term cost efficiencies, according to Royal Mail.

There is a planned reduction of 5,000 fulltime equivalent roles by March and around 10,000 by August.

The job cuts come after a warning from by parent group International Distributions Services that Royal Mail is expected to tumble to a £350 million operating loss for the year after being hit by industrial action.

Fresh strike action launched by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) was announced after a long-running dispute over pay and working conditions.

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Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson said: ‘This is a very sad day. I regret that we are announcing these job losses.

‘We will do all we can to avoid compulsory redundancies and support everyone affected.

‘We have announced today losses of £219 million in the first half of the year. Each strike day weakens our financial situation.

‘The CWU’s decision to choose damaging strike action over resolution regrettably increases the risk of further headcount reductions.’