Tag: Mail Services

Opinions over GBP 4.5m Royal Mail bonuses

Posted by | Feb 26, 2008 | |

Royal Mail bosses received more than GBP 4.5 million in bonuses last year – enough to prevent the closure of dozens of post offices.

Royal Mail accounts released yesterday show that Adam Crozier, the chief executive, was paid GBP 1.3 million in salaries and bonuses in the financial year 2006/07.

Overall, the company’s board received GBP 3.1million in “long-term incentive plans” on top of their GBP 4.1 million remuneration, of which GBP 2.5 million was salaries and the rest other bonuses.

The payouts prompted unions to ask why senior executives were getting such large bonuses while post offices were being closed and sub-postmasters were losing their jobs.

Earlier this week, Royal Mail announced a six-week consultation on plans to close 169 post offices in London by the summer. The move comes after a string of closures in rural areas.

Critics pointed out that the bonus figure was equivalent to a GBP 26,000 subsidy for each London branch facing closure.

Campaigners have said that depriving villages of rural post offices will cut a vital lifeline, particularly for elderly people.

But the Government says many offices are not profitable enough to justify a large subsidy from the taxpayer.

A spokesman for the Post Office said: “This is not simply about saving running costs – the problem facing Post Office branches is that there are too many chasing too few customers and too little income.”

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Union wants delay in opening up Dutch post market

Posted by | Feb 26, 2008 | |

The Netherlands should open its postal market to full competition only when all workers in the sector get minimum wages and have labour contracts, a senior official at Dutch union FNV Bondgenoten said on Tuesday.

“We do not want workers to pay for an open market,” Jan de Jong, an FNV Bondgenoten director responsible for road transport and haulage affairs, told Reuters in an interview.
“At this moment, lots of postal workers do not have minimum wages. Workers at Selekt Mail and Sandd earn less than 40 percent of minimum wages. They only work two, three days a week. There should be a level playing field for everybody,” he said.

The Dutch government postponed the full opening of the market, due in January, in part because of the introduction of a minimum wage for postal workers in Germany, which it said impedes competition and where TNT had hoped to expand its operations.

It also cited ongoing talks on labour conditions for postmen in the Netherlands. The economy ministry is expected to update Parliament by this week on the situation.
Dominant mail company TNT NV has the remaining monopoly for letters up to 50 grammes, with the market estimated to be worth about 1 billion euros in 2007.

TNT’s workers have employment contracts, but rivals Sandd and Deutsche Post’s Dutch unit Selekt Mail usually do not offer contracts and pay postal workers by the number of items delivered.

This situation should only be tolerated in the short term until the companies are able to compete more effectively with TNT, said de Jong.

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Canada Post Launches Customized Postal Indicia

Posted by | Feb 26, 2008 | |

In response to its business customers’ demand for opportunities to differentiate their LettermailTM from their competitors, Canada Post has launched Customized Postal Indicia. The innovative service allows businesses to design a ‘stamp-like’ postage indicia, with an image of their choice, printed onto envelopes.

“Our business customers have expressed continued interest in picture postage, which indicated a market for a customized postal indicia for commercial customers,” said Alice Lafferty, Director of Product Development at Canada Post.

Customized Postal Indicia provides a number of benefits to the business customer including:

– an additional branding medium and unique finishing touch which can increase the likelihood of customers identifying, opening and reading Lettermail

– opportunity to leverage significant real estate on the envelope, twice the size of a traditional stamp, for marketing and branding

– An opportunity to communicate with customers before they even open the envelope – Special events can be highlighted, including launches and announcements, and key audiences can be recognized, including preferred and loyal customers

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UAE, China look at postal tie-up

Posted by | Feb 25, 2008 | |

A high-level delegation from China Post Group, led by Zhang Yafei, President of the Group, explored the potential for stronger business ties with Emirates Post, at the end of an official visit.

The Chinese officials held talks with Ebrahim Karam, CEO of Emirates Post, Salem Al Shaye’e, Assistant Director General, Operations, Emirates Post and Saif Ali Al Shehhi, Director of Operations, Emirates Post.

The two sides agreed to pursue new business partnerships and agreed there was potential for stronger cooperation.

Karam briefed the visitors on the establishment of the Emirates Holding Group and outlined the responsibilities of subsidiaries.

Al Shehhi referred to the existing cordial relations between China and the UAE.

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U.S. Postal Service undercharged countries for mail

Posted by | Feb 25, 2008 | |

The U.S. Postal Service undercharged countries including China, India and Canada by millions of dollars because of errors in processing mail at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, auditors said.

The Postal Service may recover USD 2.2 million of the USD 3.4 million that it said it is owed by the postal agencies of the other countries, a report by the service’s inspector general said. The remainder stemmed from computer, billing and employee errors made in 2006, too long ago to be recovered under law.

The Postal Service’s JFK Airport facility made billing errors on 78 percent of the overseas mail received from Oct. 1, 2006, to May 31, 2007, according to a Jan. 24 report displayed on the agency’s Web site last week.

About 39 percent of the mail was from China. The JFK Airport facility processes international mail from more than 190 countries, Yoerger said.

The Postal Service is a government agency required by law to set its rates to cover costs. It had USD 75 billion in revenue last year, and ran a deficit of about USD 5 billion, Yoerger said.

The JFK Airport location, the largest of five Postal Service facilities in the U.S. that process international mail, handles 60 percent of all overseas express mail entering the U.S. If auditors hadn’t caught the errors, the facility would have undercharged foreign agencies USD 12.5 million over two years, the report said.

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