POST Office workers will be back at work today after a lightning strike.

About 100 staff at Hartlepool's Post Office depot in Clark Street stopped work at 6.30am yesterday in a dispute about overtime.

The walkout came a year after workers took similar unofficial action over the same issue.

Workers are unhappy at pressure put on them to meet overtime demands when they thought they had reached agreement months ago.

No deliveries were made yesterday, and businesses were asked to collect their own post from the sorting office. The Department of Social Services also had to make emergency provision for people who were expecting benefit cheques to arrive before the weekend.

A spokesman for the Royal Mail criticised the action, saying: "It was unofficial and illegal action. As far as we are concerned, it was totally unnecessary and we can only apologise for the inconvenience that it has caused. The workers will be back at work on Saturday. We have had discussions with the unions, and the workers are going back to work this morning."

He said it could be days before the service returned to normal.

Union bosses were confident throughout yesterday's disruption that workers would be back in the offices today.

No one from the CWU post office union was available for comment about the end of the strike last night