The Royal Mail was in the red in the first half of the year and therefore wants to cut thousands of jobs. Up to 6,000 employees are to be laid off by August 2023, the British postal service announced on Friday.

The company blamed a wave of strikes for the move. It is a response to the impact of industrial action, "delays in the delivery of agreed productivity improvements" and lower package volumes.

Royal Mail lost £219m for the first half of the year, down from a profit of £235m in the same period last year. The parent company International Distributions Services, with a total of around 140,000 employees, is now expecting an operating loss of 350 million pounds (404 million euros) for the 2022/23 financial year (March 31).

Further exits are planned until the end of the year

The day before, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) had again called for a strike in the long-running dispute over higher wages and better working conditions. "Every day of the strike weakens our financial situation," said company boss Simon Thompson. "Regrettably, the CWU's decision to prioritize damaging strikes over dissolution increases the risk of further downsizing."

For months, strikes in a wide variety of sectors - including train services, ports and the communications sector - have repeatedly paralyzed parts of public life in Great Britain. The new Prime Minister Liz Truss has announced that she intends to restrict the right to strike significantly.