A UNION leader has warned that industrial action by postal workers will hit York unless Royal Mail agrees to negotiate over proposed changes in working practices.

A fresh wave of strikes by thousands of postal workers, including many elsewhere in Yorkshire, took place yesterday as industrial relations continue to worsen ahead of a national ballot for action.

Paul Clays, spokesman for the Communication Workers Union (CWU), said the current strike did not affect York, but members remained concerned about the future of the city’s sorting office in Leeman Road if national proposals for a rationalisation of Royal Mail went ahead.

“Industrial action will be coming to York – it’s inevitable – unless the Royal Mail agrees to sit down around the table and negotiate with the union,” he said.

The union threatened industrial action last autumn over plans to transfer the sorting of second-class mail from York to Leeds, which many workers saw as the forerunner to the transfer of first-class and other mail and the eventual closure of the Leeman Road offices, with the loss of more than 350 jobs.

The second-class mail transfer eventually went through but in July, the union claimed Royal Mail intended diverting most York letters to Leeds for sorting during the summer, before dropping the proposals at the last minute following opposition.

One postal worker told The Press then that staff believed that if the mail went to Leeds, it would not return to York, and the Leeman Road office would be closed within a year. Royal Mail said then it had no plans to transfer first-class mail processing to Leeds.

A spokeswoman for the company said today it urged all its staff not to take strike action over changes which were covered by a 2007 Agreement on Pay and Modernisation, which the CWU leadership had signed in the presence of the TUC.

“They are now reneging on that agreement in a way that clearly hurts our customers and our people and damages Royal Mail,” she said. “The union claims to support modernisation, yet acts to destroy it.”