Tag: Royal Mail

Post workers’ union claims 95% support for walkout

Posted by | Jun 30, 2007 | |

Union leaders have clashed with the Royal Mail about the scale of support for the first national postal strike in more than a decade, which has crippled deliveries across the country.

The Royal Mail said backing for the walkout was “patchy”, claiming that up to 60 per cent of its staff were working nationally and up to 22 per cent in London. But the Communication Workers Union said 95 per cent of its members joined the stoppage, making it the best ever supported strike.

“The Royal Mail’s figures are as ridiculous as their pay offer,” said Bill Hayes, the union’s general secretary, yesterday. “The Royal Mail has been in denial about its workforce rejecting a 2.5 per cent pay offer and is now in denial about the overwhelming support for the strike,” he added.

Picket lines were mounted outside mail centres and sorting offices across the country from 3am. Workers at Crown post offices were also on strike until midday in a separate row over plans to transfer postal services into WH Smith stores.

The CWU warned of a fresh round of industrial action at the Royal Mail unless the deadlocked dispute over pay and modernisation is resolved, but it hopes to restart peace talks.

Managers delivered special delivery items and collected mail from post offices. A Royal Mail spokesman said: “The strike is simply ignoring the reality facing everyone in Royal Mail – that we are no longer a monopoly.” He added: “The dispute is about the whole future of Royal Mail and the absolutely urgent need to modernise, as our rivals have already done.”

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Statement – Royal Mail – Strike Update

Posted by | Jun 29, 2007 | |

Royal Mail said today that despite a national postal strike called by the CWU just 26 Post Office branches were closed with the rest of the 14,200-strong network open and serving customers.

In Royal Mail’s letters operation support for the strike was patchy with between 1% and 22% of our people at work in some units in London while nationally the range was up to 60% of people working.

• The pay offer on the table comprises: a 2.5% increase in basic pensionable pay, PLUS an £800 cash dividend if performance targets are hit this year PLUS a 50-50 share in any savings at local operating unit over and above budget.
• Although basic pay for postmen and women is £323 a week, the average fulltime postman and woman earns £440 – above the national average – when pay supplements and overtime are taken into account.
• The union’s pay demand lodged on March 6 was for a 27% rise in basic pay and a cut in the working week, which in total would cost the company £1 billion – money which we simply don’t have.
• One of the Post Office branches closed today was the office in Rotherham, where flood damage – not strike action – had prevented the branch from opening. Strike action ended at 12noon today in Crown Post Office branches.

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Strike worth GBP 10m to Royal Mail rival

Posted by | Jun 29, 2007 | |

One of the private delivery firms competing with the Royal Mail predicted tonight that it already stood to make at least GBP 10m out of the postal service’s 24-hour strike which gets under way in the morning.

James Greenbury, the chief executive of DX, which is backed by private equity group Candover Partners, said the delivery group had attracted an “extraordinary” level of demand from new customers – more in the past week than for the whole of last year.

The comments highlighted the threat to the state-owned postal service from the low-cost and aggressive private delivery firms. Groups such as DX, Global Mail and Dutch-based TNT are coming into the market at a time when overall mail volumes are falling because of email and other electronic media.

Since private operators were given access to the UK postal market, Royal Mail says it has lost 40% of its business customers, including the Department for Work and Pensions, BT and last week online retailer Amazon.

One of the biggest gainers has been Dutch-based TNT, which claims to be distributing more than 1bn items of mail a year in Britain and made profits worldwide of GBP 240m last year. The company has been conducting trials of door-to-door deliveries in Glasgow and Manchester before it starts a full service in all major British cities. TNT, Global Mail, which is backed by Deutsche Post, and others have licenses to collect and sort mail but must hand it over to Royal Mail for the “final mile” delivery to the door.

DX offers next day home delivery for GBP 3.50 and is a direct competitor to Royal Mail’s own special delivery, which costs GBP 4.30. DX has built up an annual turnover of GBP 160m and had set a target to make an extra GBP 10m this year. It says it will easily achieve this because of the strike.

Only around 20,000 of the 150,000 Royal Mail staff are not members of the union. Postcomm, the industry regulator, declined to comment on the conflict.

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Pricing in Proportion and Packetpost Returns

Posted by | Jun 27, 2007 | |

In February 2007, Royal Mail made an application to extend Pricing in Proportion (PiP) to Packetpost Returns.

Packetpost Returns is a service that allows packets to be returned from customers with the postage cost being borne by the original sender.

Royal Mail’s application proposed moving away from the system under which the price per item paid by the original sender is based on the average weight of the mail returned. Instead, Royal Mail proposed that an item returned through this service should be treated and charged as a packet under its PiP framework.

Royal Mail has also requested that Packetpost Returns, consistent with the greater alignment of these prices to those of normal Packetpost, should be included in the same controlled services group as Packetpost.

Postcomm conducted a consultation exercise focused on users of Packetpost Returns and other interested parties and carefully considered the points made in the responses. Following the consultation, the Commission decided to:

– allow Royal Mail to introduce a PiP price structure for Packetpost returns;
– require Royal Mail to give at least 3 months notice of the price changes following this decision;
– and reject the application to include the product in the same controlled services group as Packetpost.

Royal Mail has not yet made it clear when it will implement the new price structure for Packetpost Returns.

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Postcomm agree to Royal Mail request

Posted by | Jun 26, 2007 | |

Postcomm has agreed to Royal Mail’s request to suspend until the end of its current financial year the payment of compensation to bulk mail customers, and to ensure that the company is not subject to a downward adjustment to its allowed revenues (known as the ‘C factor’), where industrial action has taken place and quality of service figures have dropped.

The reason for this decision is that Postcomm wishes to ensure that – against a background of Royal Mail’s current financial position, including its substantial pension deficit – the possibility of having to pay compensation and/or earning reduced revenue next year does not discourage the company from taking the steps needed to modernise its business, which will be to the benefit of all mail users.

Postcomm’s agreement to these suspensions is subject to some important safeguards for customers:

-A final decision on the amount of any relief will not be made until after the end of this financial year (31 March 2008) when Royal Mail’s final quality of service figures will be known. In making its decision at that point, Postcomm will expect Royal Mail to be able to demonstrate that the industrial action (a)arose as a result of carrying out its transformation plans and not for some other reason, and (b) had a direct causal link to quality of service failures.

-After the end of the financial year, Postcomm will convene an open meeting at which Royal Mail will present the main points in its application. Participants will be able to ask for further explanation of the justification for agreement by Postcomm to Royal Mail’s request.

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