Royal Mail: plans to scrap Saturday deliveries in huge shake-up as bosses claim firm is losing 1m a day

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.nationalworld.com/news/roya ... ng-3776524

The cost-cutting move comes as UK sales fell 11.5 per cent in the three months to the end of June

Royal Mail is set to scrap Saturday post deliveries as the struggling company said it needed to “transform the way we work”.

The cost-cutting move comes as bosses claim the firm is losing £1 million a day.

UK sales fell 11.5 per cent in the three months to the end of June for an operating loss of £92 million.

The plans come after 115,000 staff at the Communications Workers Union voted on Tuesday (19 July) to strike and accused Royal Mail of “pleading poverty” in their pay row.

Will Saturday deliveries be scrapped?

Parcels on Saturdays would still be delivered as it still wants a seven-day service to rival courier firms - but it believes a five-day letter service would be OK for 97 per cent of the public.

The Government needs to approve the mooted changes.

However, talks have already taken place.

What has been said about the move?

Asked if Saturdays were to be axed, Chairman Keith Williams told The Today programme: “Yes, Our consumers are not looking for that.”

He said the company is losing “£1million per day and the efficiency improvements which are needed for long-term success have stalled”.

Mr Williams added that Covid had given it extra business from posting testing kits and a jump in online deliveries that made a profit of £758 million - but this was a one-off.

Meanwhile Simon Thompson, Royal Mail chief executive, said: “We have made progress building the infrastructure we need for Royal Mail to compete, especially given the growing demand for more larger parcels, delivering the next day – including Sundays – and in a more environmentally friendly way.

“But building the infrastructure is not enough; we have to transform the way we work too.”

He added: “We need to change – and change now. This is how we can give our team the job security that they deserve for tomorrow and not just for today.

“I am ready to talk about pay and change at any time. But it has to be both.”

What is the dispute over pay?

Royal Mail workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes in a dispute over pay.

A ballot of members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) showed huge support for industrial action in protest at a 2% pay offer.

A total of 97.6%, of those who voted, backed strikes, on a turnout of 77%.

The union said it was an unprecedented result.

General secretary Dave Ward said there will now be a “small window” of opportunity for talks to avoid walkouts before strike dates are set.

He said postal workers received big support from the public for their efforts during the pandemic and would continue to receive backing for their pay campaign.

[Rommagic]

Talked about this before.

[blue1873]

Sadly they will eventually get their way on this
and the general public won't be bothered in any great way
it's all about parcels nowadays. Personal letters are from
a different era letter writing a thing of the past you know
the script everything is text or e-mail or some kind of
electronic jiggery pokery now.

[Cucumber]

Passengers be like

Drivers be like

[SpacePhoenix]

Sadly they will eventually get their way on this
and the general public won't be bothered in any great way
it's all about parcels nowadays. Personal letters are from
a different era letter writing a thing of the past you know
the script everything is text or e-mail or some kind of
electronic jiggery pokery now.

Over the last 2-3 years the amount of letters has really dropped off loads. Wave 2 is walk sort only but even if it weren't, 90%+ of the batches aren't worth sequencing on wave 2, a few batches tbqf aren't really worth even walk sorting. You used to get 3-4 boxes per batch on wave 2, now often you'll just get 1 box

[pieoftheday]

I honestly dont see that letters have dropped much if at all, granted 'live' mail has but from what I was delivering 30 years ago over the same ground,not delivery duty, letters have barely changed. With RM its semantics again, "letters are down" when they really mean ' live' stuff. When I say 'live's I mean stuff with stamps

[pieoftheday]

I honestly dont see that letters have dropped much if at all, granted 'live' mail has but from what I was delivering 30 years ago over the same ground,not delivery duty, letters have barely changed. With RM its semantics again, "letters are down" when they really mean ' live' stuff. When I say 'live'I mean stuff with stamps

[SpacePhoenix]

I honestly dont see that letters have dropped much if at all, granted 'live' mail has but from what I was delivering 30 years ago over the same ground,not delivery duty, letters have barely changed. With RM its semantics again, "letters are down" when they really mean ' live' stuff. When I say 'live's I mean stuff with stamps

Stamped letters are way down, enough to potentially trigger the removal of CFCs from MCs and potentially swapping out IMPs for iLSMs

[aiden01]

I honestly dont see that letters have dropped much if at all, granted 'live' mail has but from what I was delivering 30 years ago over the same ground,not delivery duty, letters have barely changed. With RM its semantics again, "letters are down" when they really mean ' live' stuff. When I say 'live's I mean stuff with stamps

Stamped letters are way down, enough to potentially trigger the removal of CFCs from MCs and potentially swapping out IMPs for iLSMs

Cfc's left our mc years ago.

[pieoftheday]

From a delivery view point I don't get IMps etc, but we still deliver basically the same amount of physical letters over the same ground as we used to many years ago.

[TopperGas]

If a round fails for a few days virtually every household as 6 or more letters waiting to be delivered, I don't really get this notion that letters have dropped, as we're still delivering something which resembles letters. I'd imagine the younger generation aren't fussed about Saturday deliveries but I bet most of the 50+ year old customers still want them.

[SpacePhoenix]

From a delivery view point I don't get IMps etc, but we still deliver basically the same amount of physical letters over the same ground as we used to many years ago.

https://youtu.be/1BVHPmGIxBQ?t=86

The big machine with what looks like the drum from a washing machine is an IMP

[POSTMAN]

There are less letters-but there are more delivery points to deliver them to-I am not a rocket scientist.

[Nickvilla20]

There are less letters-but there are more delivery points to deliver them to-I am not a rocket scientist.

If I have one letter for all of my delivery points I cannot complete the delivery on time. Anything over a 80% call rate and I’m struggling especially on shorter days. From what I remember from parcel Saturdays is that they weren’t very productive

[pieoftheday]

As I said I'm talking about delivering over the same ground, so If I delivered over a duty 25/ 30 years ago I realise this Is now incorporated into a ,much bigger duty, but I can see that the actual letters in the part of the new delivery that was the whole of the old really hasn't changed,