Britain’s six-day mail deliveries threatened by strike

Government adviser Richard Hooper has warned a national postal strike will put Britain’s current six-day mail delivery at risk, reports The Guardian. The article continues:

Richard Hooper, author of a major report to ministers that called for part-privatisation of Royal Mail, told the Observer he found it “immensely frustrating” that the government was unable to act on his recommendations – and the country now faced a crippling strike.

Hooper stopped short of directly criticising Peter Mandelson, the business secretary, who shelved plans for a partial sell-off of Royal Mail in the face of intense opposition from more than 140 Labour MPs in June.

But Hooper made clear he believed it was a decision that – unless reversed by a future government – could only accelerate the decline of Royal Mail, deepen its financial crisis, worsen its massive pension deficit and lead to a scaled-down service for the public.

“What is frustrating is that Peter Mandelson said in the House of Lords that this [the Hooper report] was probably the best researched, the best thought-through, the best evidence-based report they had seen. Virtually everyone except members of the parliamentary Labour party and the unions agreed with the report and it is deeply frustrating it has not been implemented,” he said.

Hooper, a former deputy chairman of Ofcom, argued that the “universal service” – which guarantees one collection from every post box and post office per day, six days a week, and one delivery of letters, six days a week – would be under greater threat than ever, if the national strike went ahead.

“We were clear that the only way forward for the universal postal service was modernisation of Royal Mail and everyone agreed with that. So I think that the universal postal service [is] at risk if the business does not modernise fast enough and as I understand it, this strike is about modernisation.”

Royal Mail has suffered a 10% drop in its volume of business since a year ago. “If this was a business that was growing like Topsy, maybe you could do a strike, but this is about decline of letters volume and there is no doubt that as a result of a strike more people use email, more people use mobile texting, more people move away from types of mail, advertisers start to get nervous about it as a mail medium. So all you have is decline of the business, especially if in addition you have a major pension deficit. It is bad news.”

Last week, the Communications Workers Union (CWU) balloted its members on a national strike, following a series of regional disputes over modernisation plans that predated the Hooper report. The result will be announced by 9 October. Already at least 25m letters are stacked up at delivery centres, mainly in the London area, according to the union. Royal Mail says the number is closer to 9m.