Search: Mail strike TNT
One of the Royal Mail's biggest competitors is looking to swoop in for business during this week's planned strikes, as last-ditch talks aimed at preventing the crippling walkouts take place.
TNT, the country's largest private mail company, wants to put its own postmen on the streets if the threatened national stoppages go ahead on Thursday and Friday.
Royal Mail bosses are to meet the Communication Workers Union (CWU) at an undisclosed location in a bid to halt the industrial action, which will cause delivery havoc for millions of people.
Relations between the two sides became increasingly fractious over the weekend when the company announced it was hiring up to 30,000 temporary staff to cope with the walkouts and the Christmas rush.
Union leaders are considering a legal challenge to the move and repeated calls for outside mediators to be brought in to break the deadlock.
Meanwhile Nick Wells, chief executive of TNT Mail UK, revealed his company was prepared to take on the national job, but admitted it would be "a massive challenge".
TNT relies on the Royal Mail for the final mile of its postal network, but has completed several trial runs in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow which have seen postmen in orange uniforms make door-to-door deliveries.
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Mr Wells told the Guardian: "If anyone can do it, TNT can. There are going to be operational challenges, we would be ridiculously naive to think otherwise. It's a massive challenge on a huge scale but the reality is we have the customers, appetite and resources."
A Royal Mail spokesman said on Sunday: "Royal Mail has had about 80 meetings with the CWU in recent months and we are continuing to talk to the union to try to avert their totally unjustified strikes. In addition (chief executive) Adam Crozier has invited (CWU general secretary) Billy Hayes to meet him more than a dozen times and Billy Hayes has not even responded."
CWU officials said they believed the recruitment of temporary staff during a strike was illegal and they had received backing from other union leaders.
