Postal union in court move over agency workers

The Royal Mail is to face legal action over the recruitment of 30,000 agency staff during the post strike, union leaders have announced.

The Communication Workers Union served notice of action in the High Court on Friday after considering the move for the past few weeks.

The company has denied that the 30,000 workers are being used to break the series of post strikes, but are dealing with the backlog of post as well as preparing for the Christmas rush.

Talks between the two sides to try to break the deadlock over jobs, pay and modernisation were set to resume today.

The Government was earlier threatened with legal action by the GMB union if it did not investigate claims that agency staff have been unlawfully hired to do the work of striking postal workers.