The Royal Mail is to retain all of the temporary workers it has hired, despite suspension of industrial action.

Last week, the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union agreed that there would be no further industrial action over the Christmas period.

A Royal Mail spokesman told Recruiter: “We said we’d hire up to 30,000 directly engaged and fully vetted temporary workers to help clear delayed mail. The actual number would always depend on the length and nature of the strikes, how quickly we can clear delayed mail, and the volume of mail up to Christmas. That remains the case and although we are obviously pleased that we have a period of no strikes, which will reduce the need for temporary workers, we are also hoping that customer confidence is helped by the period of calm which means that we will have at least normal Christmas volumes. All of the temporary workers we have hired will be kept on.

“The amount of mail delayed by the recent CWU strikes is now around three million items - compared to an average daily mail bag of 75m items.”