Postal Strike would be 'catastrophic'
Consignia’s interim chair-man warned yesterday that it would be “catastrophic” for the embattled re-named Post Office if its employees were to strike.
“There is nobody in this organisation who really wants to strike, because everyone understands how catastrophic it would be for the company,” Allan Leighton said.
Pay talks between Consignia and the Communication Workers’ Union are deadlocked. A series of one-day strikes in April is likely, although management is believed to have improved its offer to 2.1 per cent.
Mr Leighton said customers needed to be set straight about the state Consignia and its services were in. “The business is in a poor state. It cannot go on as it is. People need to understand that.”
Consignia revealed that it had missed all of its mail delivery targets between April and December. Just over 89 per cent of first-class mail arrived the day after posting during the period.
The areas in and around London were particularly weak on deliveries. Second-class post delivery was almost on target.
Consignia said it was delivering a “substantially better performance compared to a year ago, but still had work to do in under-performing parts of the country” if its target of 92.1 per cent of first-class mail arriving the next day was to be met.
Mr Leighton believed a series of measures should be put in place at the state-owned company, which loses Pounds 1.5m a day, faces the introduction of competition in its bulk business mail market within months and mislays millions of letters a year.
“We need to make it a great place to work. We need to drive service levels up. We need to be focused on people and customers. We’ve got to return to profitability and we’ve got to generate cash to manage and fund operations. If these things do not happen then the business will get worse.”
The company will soon announce a Pounds 1.2bn restructuring plan, expected to bring 30,000 job cuts. However, Mr Leighton denied that predicted job cuts and relations with the unions would hinder the drive for change.
Consignia hopes planned changes to delivery patterns, such as ending the second delivery and delivering to businesses before households, will help it to reach its target for first-class mail.
Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, the postal consumer watchdog, said the delivery performance results were “very disappointing. The industry was expecting a significant improvement”.
Page 6; Edition London Ed3; Section NATIONAL NEWS
Copyright 2002: Financial Times Group
