Britain's Royal Mail said on Sunday it would hire 30,000 temporary staff to help cope with the backlog expected to be created by planned strikes and the higher Christmas workload.

The state-owned postal operator's Chief Executive Adam Crozier said he would double the annual intake of temporary seasonal staff and deploy them earlier in the autumn to deal with the extra work.

The Communication Workers Union, which called the move "provocative", will stage a series of one-day strikes from Oct. 22 in a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernisation.

"We are continuing to urge the union to halt its appalling and unjustified attack on customers," Crozier said in a statement. "At the same time, we are absolutely determined to do everything we can to minimise delays to customers' mail, especially in the run-up to Christmas."

The extra workers will clear the backlog between the strikes, rather than doing the work of striking workers, he added. The recruitment drive complies with employment law, Royal Mail said.

About 85,000 people have applied for temporary work at the company in the pre-Christmas period, it said in a statement. Around 5,000 managers will also work to clear any extra post.

Businesses have warned that strikes, which would cripple deliveries across the country, would be extremely damaging, with one analyst suggesting it would cost the economy an estimated 1.5 billion pounds.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said any strike would be "suicidal" for a company that is losing revenue each year to private rivals, email and text messages. The government wants the company to be part-privatised to help it to modernise.

A union spokesman said Royal Mail and the government were working together to undermine his members and that they should return to talks rather than hiring extra temporary staff.

"It is not only provocation by Royal Mail...I think they are both colluding in the fact they don't want an agreement," he told the BBC. "They want the union crushed and our members' terms and conditions ruined forever."