Royal Mail defiant over strikes
Millions of letters are being delivered late in the UK, but Royal Mail claimed it was beating the wave of postal strikes across the country, report the Daily Mail. The article continues:
It said preliminary figures showed it was hitting its delivery targets, despite a series of walkouts over the last two months.
But an estimated four million letters are still failing to arrive on time, leading to frustration for customers and a loss of confidence among business users.
Royal Mail said first class performance has been ahead of its target of 93% deliveries the next working day. Some 93.9% were on time in the five weeks to mid-July.
Second class post, which should see items arriving within three working days, was also on target, with 98.5% of mail arriving within three working days.
Almost all business mail services hit or beat their targets.
But with around 80m items sent each day, it means more than four million do not arrive in time.
The postal watchdog Consumer Focus said: ‘These figures look like good news superficially, but we need to look into the detail to get the whole picture.’
The summer of strikes has been called over jobs, pay and modernisation.
Paul Tolhurst, operations director at Royal Mail, said the figures proved that contingency plans to ease the impact of strikes had been effective.
More than 90% of employees have been working normally despite the industrial action.
He said: ‘We are sorry that some customers faced disruption because of strike action by the Communication Workers Union but we remain determined to do everything possible to ease the impact. We again urge the CWU to call off its plans for further strike action and stop blocking change and modernisation.
‘The CWU is not only failing to live up to the 2007 pay and modernisation agreement but is actively opposing change on the ground.’
CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward accused Royal Mail of ‘trying to crush’ the postal service.
‘Postal workers and customers are experiencing cuts to services, cuts to hours, cuts to jobs and threats over future jobs and services,’ he said. ‘This is just downsizing, there’s nothing modern about it.’
The dispute comes as Royal Mail faces a fine of up to £40m over claims that managers rigged research to give a false impression about the efficiency of deliveries.
Staff are accused of manipulating an independent study designed to find out whether mail is delivered promptly at the correct address.
As a result, senior staff were able to claim big bonuses for apparently running a successful service.
Last year, a study by the former watchdog, Postwatch, depicted a service that was failing consumers. It said millions were unhappy that their post was not arriving until the afternoon.
Strikes in 2007 caused a serious slump in standards and the organisation failed to hit nine of its 12 minimum service targets.
Tens of millions of letters were delayed or lost and the reliability of the first-class service fell to 85.2%.
In 2006, record-breaking results showed that 94.5% of all first- class mail arrived the next working day.
But they were said to have been reached partly as a result of controversial changes to collection and delivery times.
