Scratch

Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.

Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.

On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.

 

Royal Mail (again)

Royal Mail has been under fire in recent months following a survey that revealed thousands of letters get delivered to the wrong address every month. A further survey by Postwatch reckons that 14.4m letters get lost every year. Alarmingly, 60% of these are lost because postal workers put them through the wrong letterbox. A recent TV documentary alleging that fraud and theft took place in a London Royal Mail sorting office has led to disciplinary action against a number of postal workers.

Add to this the recent 'wildcat' strikes by Royal Mail workers over pay have eroded the public's confidence in the postal service and further plunged the Royal Mail into debt. Its most recent annual loss was £611m.

So why is it losing so much money?

Aside from the impact of last autumn's unofficial strikes, the Royal Mail was criticised for being overstaffed and inefficient. Plans are underway to reduce its 200,000 strong workforce by 30,000 and introduce more efficient working practices aimed at saving £1.3bn. Unfortunatley, whole thing riled workers and created a Catch 22 scenario. Attempts to cut costs and introduce reforms led to strike action by workers, creating even deeper potential losses for the company.

Admittedly, despite the crippling strike action Royal Mail looks set to make operating profits of £200m in 2004. It has already bounced back into profit to the tune of £3m in the first half of its financial year, the first time in five years it has been in the black at that stage of the game.

Around 800 of its 1,400 delivery offices have now agreed to accept the changes, including a single daily delivery policy, which will trigger an overall pay rise of 14.5% over 18 months for 160,000 postal workers.

However, Mr Crozier has warned that future profits will be under pressure because the Royal Mail still has to find up to £150m a year to fill a looming gap in its pension fund. Add to this the deregulation in April 2007 and it should be interesting to see if in an increasingly competitive market, Royal Mail can become leaner and meaner in order to survive.

The thing that prompted this entry: "single daily delivery policy". Why? Because this morning, over the last three hours, I have spoken to three seperate Royal Mail postmen (or should that be postpeople?) as they dropped of different items of mail. Perhaps one day I'll return home to find them camped by the door waiting for me, packages in hand.

Or maybe not.

15 May 2004 10:56 | (0) comments | Thoughts

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