Royal Mail staff continue strike action ahead of RCN walkout

Postal workers in the Communication Workers Union are holding fresh strike action on Wednesday as part of a 48-hour national walkout.

It is the third of six days of Royal Mail strikes in the run-up to Christmas, as a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions rumbles on.

The final posting dates for Christmas cards has been brought forward to December 16 for first class mail, and December 21 for special delivery guaranteed.

It comes ahead of a walkout by nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on Thursday and Tuesday, after talks with the government broke down on Monday night.

The nursing union has been urged to do more to "avoid patient harm" and "alleviate unnecessary distress" for dying patients on strike days by the UK's four chief nurses and the NHS' head of cancer care.

In response, the RCN insisted that "cancer patients will get emergency and clinically urgent surgery, it is not in doubt".

"This is a politically-motivated smear from a Government that is failing cancer patients," a spokesperson for the union said.

Separately, Dame Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, and her counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, also wrote to Ms Cullen raising a series of concerns about patient safety.

They said chemotherapy is being rescheduled from the strike days at some hospitals despite the union agreeing it would be exempt nationally.

The chief nurses also asked for assurances that community nursing services providing "end of life care and good pain and symptom relief" continue in order to "alleviate unnecessary distress" for palliative patients and their families.

The RCN said on Tuesday that it had agreed further exemptions to the strike action, including emergency cancer services and "front-door" urgent care assessment and admission units for paediatric-only A&E departments.

"The safety of patients is everybody's top concern," the union's spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, commuters in England, Scotland and Wales face a second day of severe rail disruption on Wednesday as members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) are joining walkouts.

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