Royal Mail and union put diverse stamp on deal

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By Brian Groom, Business and Employment Editor

Published: November 6 2009 18:00 | Last updated: November 6 2009 18:00

Royal Mail and the postal union on Friday offered starkly different interpretations of the interim agreement that has allowed strikes to be called off until the new year.

As details of the agreement were published, the state-owned company said the deal was “on all key issues the same” as that discussed last month, before members of the Communication Workers Union began five days of national strikes.

But the CWU said the agreement contained “significant concessions” by Royal Mail that had mainly emerged in the last few days.

Most of the changes concern the negotiating process, disciplinary issues, overtime and a few more specifics on the scope of the final deal, including all aspects of delivery.

Postal strikes have cost the UK economy £1.04bn to date and could cost Royal Mail up to £40m in lost business, according to an estimate by the Centre for Economics and Business Research for Kelkoo, the price comparison website.

The different views suggested a final deal on jobs, pay and working practices will not be easy to reach, although there are doubts about the appetite of the CWU’s 121,000 postal members to return to strikes after Christmas, when their period of maximum leverage will have passed.

The test will be finding an agreement that sticks at local level in the most militant areas, especially London.

In the interim deal, the two sides agreed to suspend strikes and further changes to working practices until a final agreement on modernisation and job security is reached by the end of December.

They pledged to achieve a “radically different” culture in industrial and employee relations. They will aim for a deal that transforms the business while providing employees with as much “certainty, choice and stability as possible during the period of change”.

The final deal would include better job security arrangements, an improved reward and benefits package and a fair workload – all elements on offer last month.

Also included – unchanged from last month – are local reviews of changes already made. Where these were implemented without agreement, the parties will “engage in genuine negotiations to reach local agreement”.

Royal Mail has agreed that an “agreed independent person” will oversee progress in the negotiations, supported by Acas, the conciliation service.

The interim deal pledged “no victimisation or settling of scores” arising from the dispute. Royal Mail agreed that “the process of taking people off pay is a response to industrial action and is not a measure to deal with individual performance issues”.

Mail that had been diverted to special centres such as Dartford during the dispute will be returned to its parent office and “where there is a requirement for additional resource this will be done in line with normal local overtime allocation arrangements”.

Dave Ward, CWU deputy general secretary, said: ”The union has always been focused on achieving modernisation by consent and now the company has finally acknowledged that is how we must go forward.”

That, however, will depend on reaching final agreement. Royal Mail has only agreed to halt further changes in working practices until the end of the year.

The postal operator has spent £900m of a £2bn investment, including ”intelligent” letter-sorting machines. It has introduced 30 of its planned 500 ”walk sequencing” machines, which sort mail to the deliverer’s exact route.

To benefit, it wants to increase the length of ”walks”, end practices such as finishing work early if workers complete their round, more part-time work, more flexibility between collecting, sorting and delivering mail, and more deliveries by van.

After more than 53,000 job losses in seven years, further reductions are inevitable in the face of a 10 per cent annual decline in letter volumes.

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