Royal Mail staff to receive 'phantom' shares
Ministers are likely to approve plans that would give tens of thousands of Royal Mail workers “phantom shares” in the company, linking their pay to the state-owned postal operator’s performance.
The plan, the details of which have yet to be agreed by Alistair Darling, trade and industry secretary, and Allan Leighton, Royal Mail chairman, could lead to its employees being handed up to GBP5,000 each in the shares over five years.
The shares would be bought and sold like real ones, within a trust mirroring the scheme at John Lewis, the retail group.
The phantom shares favoured by ministers would behave like shares and go up and down in value in line with the company’s performance. But they would confer no ownership rights.
Ministers rejected Mr Leighton’s plans on the grounds they would require complex legislation and be opposed by Labour MPs and the Communication Workers’ Union. Gordon Brown, chancellor, and Mr Darling are anxious to avoid a full-scale parliamentary rebellion. Labour’s last general election manifesto pledged to keep Royal Mail publicly owned.
Both sides said on Thursday night no final decision had been taken on how to incentivise staff. It is believed Mr Leighton would accept a phantom scheme, provided the value matched his proposal of GBP5,000 over five years.
Mr Leighton has been lobbying the government to set up an employee share ownership scheme as an essential move to win the co-operation of employees in restructuring and modernisation. But the CWU argues this would be tantamount to privatisation and 199 Labour MPs have opposed it in a Commons motion.
Mr Leighton, who launched a similar scheme at Asda when turning the supermarket chain round, sees the scheme as essential to winning support from the staff of almost 200,000 for restructuring that could lead to up to 40,000 job losses. He has strong support from John Neill, a non-executive director who is chief executive of Unipart, the car components group that is majority owned by its employees and directors.
