Contingency planning for potential UK postal strike

The Communications Workers Union is currently balloting its members about taking strike action over a wages dispute with the Royal Mail. The ballot is due to close on September 17th and strike action is likely to follow shortly afterwards. UK businesses would be wise to begin assessing their vulnerability in case of strike action and determining the contingency measures that could be taken.

Charlie Maclean-Bristol, business continuity manager for ScottishPower, has providing the following short checklist to help with this process:

Royal Mail strike contingency planning
How to use this sheet:

This is designed to be used as a working sheet and to be changed as the planning develops. The plan will be used to ensure that independencies are captured and plans are coordinated. Business units would hold their own copies and their plans would not necessarily be held centrally.

Plan details
1. What does the business unit use mail for? (Including volume of mail both incoming and outgoing, Royal Mail or internal mail and whether outgoing mail is pre-sorted)
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2. What business activities is the strike likely to affect and what will the impact?
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3. What are the business units’ contingency plans for the following scenarios?
a). Scenario one - Minor disruption (Mail is not collected or delivered every day but only one day is missed at a time, backlogs are dealt with within 1-2 days and mail is delayed at the most by 1-3 days)

b) Scenario two - Major disruption (Mail is not collected for 2-3 days at a time, mail is delayed within the system for 3-15 days. Mail is out of sync so that some mail has a minor delay, some is majorly delayed and some mail is lost within the system and never arrives)

c). Scenario three - Mail system ceases to function

4. What are your assumptions and dependencies on other business units that will allow you to implement your plan?
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5. What is the likely effect of the implementation of your plan on other business units?
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6. What can you offer other business units in the way of help?
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•Date: 8th September 2003 • Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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