Anger over £4.5m Royal Mail bonuses

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ail122.xml

Royal Mail bosses received more than £4.5 million in bonuses last year - enough to prevent the closure of dozens of post offices.

Royal Mail accounts released yesterday show that Adam Crozier, the chief executive, was paid £1.3 million in salaries and bonuses in the financial year 2006/07.

Overall, the company's board received £3.1million in "long-term incentive plans" on top of their £4.1 million remuneration, of which £2.5 million was salaries and the rest other bonuses

The payouts prompted unions to ask why senior executives were getting such large bonuses while post offices were being closed and sub-postmasters were losing their jobs. Bill Hayes, the general secretary of the Communications Workers Union, said: "The Royal Mail bonus scheme is outrageous.

"Investment should be made in the post office network, not in the managers who are closing it down."

Earlier this week, Royal Mail announced a six-week consultation on plans to close 169 post offices in London by the summer. The move comes after a string of closures in rural areas.

Critics pointed out that the bonus figure was equivalent to a £26,000 subsidy for each London branch facing closure.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat business spokesman and MP for Brent East, in north London, said: "These figures will leave Londoners furious.

"The Post Office directors are happy to trouser huge bonuses at the expense of Londoners who are being forced to endure longer and longer queues."

Campaigners have said that depriving villages of rural post offices will cut a vital lifeline, particularly for elderly people.

But the Government says many offices are not profitable enough to justify a large subsidy from the taxpayer.

A spokesman for the Post Office said: "This is not simply about saving running costs - the problem facing Post Office branches is that there are too many chasing too few customers and too little income."

[DGP1]

Why would anybody be surprised by what :cfo :lfo do anymore, it's just jobs and money for the boys, all you have to do is look at Northern Rock who are still getting big bonuses even though the company has failed completely.

If any of us did our jobs as badly as senior managers do then we'd have been sacked instead of being given big bonuses

[Darren Bent]

Business need to stop rewarding for massive failure in this country.