Adam Crozier calls for more efficiency
Adam Crozier spoke to Jeff Randall on BBC 5 Live on Sunday night about the changes at Royal Mail in more recent years.
He said that Royal Mail had suffered from lack of investment by previous governments and that meant they were technically lagging behind as well as not being as efficient as they need to be.
However he said there was no point in dwelling on what should or should not have been done and they needed to get on with the job of modernisation and providing an efficient service. He said that Royal Mail is bringing in new products to widen the scope of the services they provide and to help Post Offices but 14,000 are private businesses and far too many are creating massive losses for Royal Mail.
On High Street closures he said that many of them have very high rents and are unsustainable. Money saved by transferring service to WH Smith can be spent on other crown post offices.
One postman asked how much more efficient can a postman be? Crozier said automation was really the key to efficiency as many posties are presently spending 40% of their time sorting.
On pay, he said it was clearly a difficult time for Royal Mail and it needed to be competitive. Postal workers are currently paid 25%-30% more than competition. All Royal Mail directors are also having a pay freeze this year and that finding a way to reward workers for being efficient is something they are trying to organise. If not, they will lose more business and more jobs.
On the issue of security and lost mail, he said there have been incidents but fortunately few and Royal Mail as a group and on an idividual basis hate such stories. Royal Mail has a zero tolerance to delay or theft of mail and is one of the few companies with its own internal police force
Interestingly he echoed Hellmail’s view that business is likely to benefit from deregulation but domestic customers are unlikely to benefit and in the longer term prices would have to rise to meet the cost of the service. However, they are achieving most targets set and Special Deliveries achieve a 99% next day delivery figure.
Postcomm said that they think regulation has been fair and that Royal Mail has made huge strides.
Howard Webber (Postwatch) said they would be concerned if the cost of stamps rose any more and that reliability and security was the most important factor to customers. He said the quality of service has improved significantly over the last three or four years.
Nick Wells of TNT Post said he did not see the present market situation as ‘cherry picking’ Royal Mail business and instead referred to VAT which he said was a stumbling block. Currently Royal Mail is exempt from charging it but TNT have to charge VAT to their customers. He does envisage orange postmen on the street in years ahead but it would clearly need investment
Billy Hayes said they had committed to growing the business but not in favour of race to the bottom and workers should be on decent pay and conditions.
Crozier said that the CWU requests were perfectly reasonable but the company has to become more efficient in the process.
