STRIKING posties will “not budge” and will “fight as long as it takes” for better pay, working conditions and job guarantees, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) warned today.

Union general secretary Dave Ward demanded Tory ministers intervene, stressing: “We will not give up.”

The call came as tens of thousands of Royal Mail staff launched their latest 48-hour strike as part of a six-month dispute which the union said will make or break the 500-year-old service.

Mr Ward said: “No worker and no union would accept the jobs, losses and terms that they’re attaching for the future of an industry that we care about.

“The government should be calling them to account and looking at their actions over the last six months.”

He repeated his demand that Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson be sacked, accusing him of “intimidating and goading” workers.

“We’re going to fight as long as it takes because we’re not putting up with what is really corporate negligence to a point that we’ve not seen in this country for decades,” he said.

Mr Ward, who joined a group of postal workers on a picket line outside a delivery office in Camden, north London today, said the increasingly bitter dispute is no longer just about the future of the service – privatised in 2013.

“It is also about what’s going on in this country, how appallingly some of these so-called business leaders operate and how on Earth they’re allowed to get away with destroying a company like Royal Mail,” he said. 

Asked if further strike action is possible, Mr Ward said: “If we don’t fight, we can be absolutely certain that our members’ jobs and the service is going to be destroyed.

“We’ve got some other things we’re looking at now because we need to pile the pressure on.”

The union leader also slammed Mr Thompson’s charge that the CWU’s approach to negotiations is “not give and take, but just take” as “complete rubbish.”

The company claimed its latest offer includes “extensive improvements” such as an enhanced pay deal of up to 9 per cent over 18 months alongside proposals to develop a new profit share scheme for employees and make voluntary redundancy terms more generous.