Royal Mail response to planned CWU strike

Royal Mail said today the CWU’s planned strike action next week would only add to the very difficult competitive challenges the company and its people are already facing.

Royal Mail Chief Executive Adam Crozier said: “Royal Mail will do all it can to mitigate the impact of strike action but we are very disappointed for our customers at the disruption they are now facing. We remain very willing to sit down with the CWU to explain again the absolute need for Royal Mail to modernise and to underline how damaging a strike would be for postmen and women, and our customers.”

According to Royal Mail website:
• The mail market in the UK is declining by 2.5% per year
• Royal Mail has already lost 40% of bulk business mail to rival postal operators
• Royal mail’s rivals are 40% more efficient not because their people work harder but because they have already modernised and have much more technology
• Royal mail’s rivals pay their people 25% less than Royal Mail

Mr Crozier added: “We are losing business because we have failed to change and modernise – and as a result our costs and therefore our prices are higher than those that rivals are charging in the intensely competitive business mail, which makes up 90% of all postings.

“Whatever the outcome of this dispute, Royal Mail is still going to have to modernise – it is unavoidable and the longer we delay, the more gains competitors will make. Yet it is in this context that the union wrote to us on 6 March setting out a series of demands which included an increase in basic pay from £323 to £395 and a reduction in the working week. The demands in aggregate were equivalent to a cost to the company of over £1bn and equivalent to a 27% increase in basic pay.

“Nonetheless, we do want to increase pay and rewards for our people. The offer on the table is a fair and realistic one – a 2.5% increase in basic pensionable pay, an £800 dividend if performance targets are hit and a 50-50 share of any savings above budget at local office level. Against the backdrop of an increasingly tough and shrinking market we simply can’t afford to pay more.