Changes will result in second class service

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As a retired postman and a veteran of the 1971 strike, I throroughly enjoyed Harry Reid's recent article ("Modernisation plan for mail services will fail to deliver", January 15).

In addition to the imposition of the 9% award, the Hardman Report also initiated the telescoping of the incremental pay scales that prevailed at the time.

I myself obtained my maximum rate of pay at 25 years, after 10 years' Post Office service. At present, an adult new entrant to Royal Mail achieves maximum pay after 12 months, junior entrants at 18 years, (with 12 months service).
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As this anomaly was previously used to (notionally) fund the Pension Scheme, its demise must have significantly contributed to the current deficit.

Harry's observations on the obselescence of pillar boxes are valid. I recall that as a collections officer in the Drumchapel area, rubber gloves were essential for the removal of the stones, paper wrappers, lollipop sticks and other items unmentionable in a family newspaper that would emerge from these totems.

This, however, is not the point of the Mandy-isation of the Royal Mail and the proposed tie-up with TNT/TPG. Business mail posted in London and the home counties, and for delivery in the same locus, will be airlifted from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or Luton airports.

Thereafter, it will be conveyed via Schipol to be processed on TPG's giant machines and returned for next-day delivery.

This will enact thousands of redundancies amongst Royal Mail workers concentrated in the mail centres, dotted around the M25 corridor.

So much for Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers. Quicklime to the "green shoots".

Jimmy Johnston, Glasgow.