Up to 200 Royal Mail delivery staff across Teignbridge are today expected to take 24-hour strike action after a similar stoppage yesterday by other staff when talks to end the long-running modernisation dispute failed to find a way forward.

According to Royal Mail, the organisation continues to lose business with volumes down ten per cent year on year as competition from email and the internet increases,

Royal Mail has condemned the strike as totally unjustified and damaging to customers. Managing Director Mark Higson said: 'The ballot further underlines the CWU's determination to renege on the existing 2007 agreement on pay and modernisation which the union's leadership signed in the presence of the TUC.

'The CWU leadership is well aware that it has already agreed all the changes Royal Mail is making and we urge them to recognise the tough economic conditions faced by all our customers and Royal Mail itself and to live up to their claims to support modernisation and to focus, as the company is doing, on delivering the postal service on which so many customers depend.' FOR THE FULL STORY GO TO OUR ONLINE EDITION