Uso agreement

[Mickeybrowneyes]

Decimation.
Still one of, if not, the best paid low skilled jobs out there with job security and union representation on every shop floor.
Not including the new t's and C's in that.
If the equalisation of terms is achieved the CWU will be the first union in history to reverse a two tiered workforce.
Besides the sick policy changes that will hopefully be addressed within time I really don't see the decimation that you do.
EP have committed to addressing both these issues within time.
The reality is the company need to achieve healthy profits again for all this to filter down.
Our jobs have got harder with the increase in parcels but the uberisation of the delivery industry have created an environment that it's hard to complete with these other firms that don't offer any of the benefits to employees that we get.
The return off delivering parcels is not as financially beneficial as it should be for royal mail.
It's not a equal playing field as it stands.

"Low skilled" imho is a corporate term that is used to justify low pay and it is a tad disrespectful coming from anyone who claims to represent us. Obviously, I understand why you said it (and we often think it) but skill isn't just about formal qualifications. Many RM managers don't have qualifications (nor common sense for that matter) and most of them are very well paid for what they do. How did line managers who used to earn roughly an extra £70-80 a week more than full-timers suddenly end up as COMs with a hefty salary increase to £45k?

As I've mentioned in a previous post, a postie's real wages is down when you account for inflation which has outstripped any of the pay rises that the Union has secured over the last 10-15 years, and that includes this current pay rise. It is very naive of any Union to think that the company needs to achieve healthy profits again in order to pay its staff well. In 2022, RM managers voted to strike over threats to jobs, pay and working conditions and their Unite union came out and said that RM is awash with cash and that it was all about boardroom greed and profiteering and nothing to do with securing this vital public service. They were absolutely right then and they are right now. But what we have is a Union that prefers to feed us a load of bull about what everything costs to the business instead. This union keeps using the same language time after time - "competitive", "profitable", "modernisation" and it is all code that means less for us, and more for them.

The "profits will filter down" that you mentioned is nonsense. It's a stalling tactic because IDS and RM have structured their losses via inter-group transfers and asset sell-offs disguised as investment. What the Union really needs is for IDS to open the books independently and get someone in who understands the financials to see the real picture of what is going on. I know it's a bitter pill for many Union reps to swallow...but the fact is this CWU leadership have got far too close to the RM board during negotiations. They have asked their own members to accept pay deals in the past that have been tied to brutal terms and conditions like reduced sick pay and seasonal variations. Has that not actually saved anything?

And when you talk about the "CWU being the first union to reverse a two-tier contract" - wasn't this tied down to the company making a return in the last agreement? What have they made since then exactly? There is a real danger of doing negotiations that are tied down in this way. But let's be honest, if the Union really intended to reverse the two-tier contracts then that would have been the starting point of these negotiations rather than another optional future clause just like in the last agreement. Don't believe me? I've already said that 17,000 staff on inferior pay, terms and cons over 17,000 legacy staff is saving the business roughly over £100 million per annum. And that is a very hard saving for this company to reverse!

Hopefully, I'm wrong but I'm just being realistic about the empty promises that we have had in the past on resourcing and maintaining any resemblance of quality of service. Our job is underpaid and increasingly overloaded. The union has lost trust in the past by accepting deals that have gutted terms and conditions while they claim some sort of victory that they have saved mass redundancies. And the company has been making money but hiding it very well through creative reporting. Not Union bashing here - just saying it as it is. What we really need is to stop accepting vague promises and start demanding clear timelines, open financial scrutiny and imho a negotiating position that prioritises the reversal of the two-tier terms as the first clause, rather than the last one.

Like i said low skilled work is just a term that is used for any work that requires minimal training, there are many jobs out there that fall under that bracket and wasn't meant to cause offence.
I can see why it may though, personally is doesn't offend me and I have been a postman all my working life that's why I didn't think using it would trigger such a reaction by many on here.
I apologise to those it may offend.
Royal Mail at the minute are turning over a very small profit, miniscule amounts that will not be able to fund things like overtime rate increases and equalisation.
Any private firm will what to see a coherent growth or restructure plan that gives it financial stability and optimism of turning over more profits in the future.
EP group has agreed to work towards equalisation of contracts through a flight path.
It is a main priority for a union.
Having two people doing the same job and one earns considerably less will never sit right with a decent union.
Allot of this will hinge on how quickly to USO reform debate is finished and if the changes are successful implemented.
When you have the amount of staff Royal Mail do any slight changes to contracts costs millions, millions more than they are making at the minute.
The playing field in the parcel delivery sector is unfair and the company don't get the revenue back on delivering those products they deserve as they have to compete with gig economy firms.
Seasonal variations wasn't a brutal change in my opinion, it made sense to be honest.
Earlier days in the summer and slightly longer during peak, less need for lapsing.
This current pay deal is has no strings attached and is higher than inflation.
Considering all the problems the company are facing and the limbo is sits in around the implementation of of the USO and the current climate of the world economy, the union have done a more than decent job on this.

[postslippete]

Considering all the problems the company are facing and the limbo is sits in around the implementation of of the USO and the current climate of the world economy, the union have done a more than decent job on this.

For a union pushing for a decent pay rise, calling our work “unskilled” is massively underselling us. We are now multi-tasking across multiple roles (parcels, letters, collections) and taken on expanded responsibilities and heavier workloads but we are still expected to do more with less while maintaining a level of service, reliability, and professionalism that gig economy firms simply can’t match. Calling this “low-skilled” only serves to justify keeping our pay and conditions suppressed.

RM might claim it’s only making modest profits; but this company has a long history of misleading the public, the workforce and even the regulator. I've tried to explain this in many of my posts, but it’s easier for some to ignore it and pretend RM is strapped for cash even though it's just been bought by a multi-billionaire. Back in 2022, Unite (representing RM managers) rightly said the company was “awash with cash”, and that its reported losses were manufactured to justify job cuts and restructuring. Has that fundamentally changed? Or has it just been rebranded?

A proper union demands fair pay and conditions now, not someday when the books allegedly say that it is safe because here’s the harsh truth: there is no binding guarantee that the two-tier workforce will be reversed. The so-called “flight path to equalisation” is tied to future profits which gives RM endless flexibility to delay or claim that “we are not there yet.” All they need to do is move money around, spend millions on parcel lockers, vans, or IT systems, and the books show less profit. Meanwhile, they continue recruiting thousands of new entrants on worse contracts every year. The CWU must know this but they’re not confronting it directly. If reversing the two-tier system were genuinely a priority then they would have demanded it up front, not parked it in a vague future clause for kicking the can a bit further down the road. Why won't they? Because the cost of reversing 17,000 inferior contracts would immediately run over £100 million per year. Do we honestly believe EP Group will just sign that off? Especially when they keep pushing the narrative that we are competing with the gig economy?

If this whole thing “depends on the successful implementation of the USO reforms” then we are already screwed. It is simply not going to happen or at least not in a way that benefits us. You only have to look at the trials to see that. Even the CWU on the shop floor has admitted that more duties need to be reinstated for the new delivery model to meet quality-of-service standards. But that’s not what Royal Mail wants. They're not interested in investing to make it work, they are more focused entirely on how much more they can cut. Take the seasonal variations. It just gave RM a way to squeeze more out of workers during peak and shift delivery pressure without addressing the root problem: overworked and understaffed offices.

As for the current pay deal, CPI inflation over the last two years already outpaces this offer. Backpay is being used as leverage rather than as a bonus or goodwill gesture. We will wait to see if there is a restoration of past losses: return of overtime rates, sick pay improvements etc. If the union wants to rebuild trust, it needs to stop treating corporate goals as member victories and start fighting for real gains rather just slowing the decline.

[Mickeybrowneyes]

Considering all the problems the company are facing and the limbo is sits in around the implementation of of the USO and the current climate of the world economy, the union have done a more than decent job on this.

For a union pushing for a decent pay rise, calling our work “unskilled” is massively underselling us. We are now multi-tasking across multiple roles (parcels, letters, collections) and taken on expanded responsibilities and heavier workloads but we are still expected to do more with less while maintaining a level of service, reliability, and professionalism that gig economy firms simply can’t match. Calling this “low-skilled” only serves to justify keeping our pay and conditions suppressed.

RM might claim it’s only making modest profits; but this company has a long history of misleading the public, the workforce and even the regulator. I've tried to explain this in many of my posts, but it’s easier for some to ignore it and pretend RM is strapped for cash even though it's just been bought by a multi-billionaire. Back in 2022, Unite (representing RM managers) rightly said the company was “awash with cash”, and that its reported losses were manufactured to justify job cuts and restructuring. Has that fundamentally changed? Or has it just been rebranded?

A proper union demands fair pay and conditions now, not someday when the books allegedly say that it is safe because here’s the harsh truth: there is no binding guarantee that the two-tier workforce will be reversed. The so-called “flight path to equalisation” is tied to future profits which gives RM endless flexibility to delay or claim that “we are not there yet.” All they need to do is move money around, spend millions on parcel lockers, vans, or IT systems, and the books show less profit. Meanwhile, they continue recruiting thousands of new entrants on worse contracts every year. The CWU must know this but they’re not confronting it directly. If reversing the two-tier system were genuinely a priority then they would have demanded it up front, not parked it in a vague future clause for kicking the can a bit further down the road. Why won't they? Because the cost of reversing 17,000 inferior contracts would immediately run over £100 million per year. Do we honestly believe EP Group will just sign that off? Especially when they keep pushing the narrative that we are competing with the gig economy?

If this whole thing “depends on the successful implementation of the USO reforms” then we are already screwed. It is simply not going to happen or at least not in a way that benefits us. You only have to look at the trials to see that. Even the CWU on the shop floor has admitted that more duties need to be reinstated for the new delivery model to meet quality-of-service standards. But that’s not what Royal Mail wants. They're not interested in investing to make it work, they are more focused entirely on how much more they can cut. Take the seasonal variations. It just gave RM a way to squeeze more out of workers during peak and shift delivery pressure without addressing the root problem: overworked and understaffed offices.

As for the current pay deal, CPI inflation over the last two years already outpaces this offer. Backpay is being used as leverage rather than as a bonus or goodwill gesture. We will wait to see if there is a restoration of past losses: return of overtime rates, sick pay improvements etc. If the union wants to rebuild trust, it needs to stop treating corporate goals as member victories and start fighting for real gains rather just slowing the decline.

There maybe some skewing of figures to some degree but is it against the realms of possibility when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit in it's current make up.
Letters make a bigger profit overall than packets and the decline in letters, especially 1st class, is clear to see over the last few years.
It is much more costly to deliver packet/parcels so even though we see our daily working lives get tougher it's less profitable then when we were delivering three times the amount of letters we were a day.
The cost of running all the delivery offices and mail centres plus the fuel bills since the economic downfall will have a negative effect on profits too.
Yeah, you are right that the equalisation of terms will cost a huge amount but EP have agreed to work towards that.
The fact they were willing to give a over inflation based pay rise which isn't liked to USO reform is surely a positive while it's at a crossroads.
I don't think you would have got that from the people the union have been dealing with for the last ten years.
Gives hope that the other agreements will be adhered to in time.
It will take time though.

[Playmail]

The only time we will be equal is when we are all on min wage in 2 years time.

[jagger]

Or is it 33 hours in processing at the nearest MC every Sunday?
70 hours a week

My office has several maxing out. SA’s on Saturday. Doing two walks, extra parcels, plenty of excess daily.
Yet there are others who aren’t allowed to work their day off .

[Mickeybrowneyes]

Or is it 33 hours in processing at the nearest MC every Sunday?
70 hours a week

My office has several maxing out. SA’s on Saturday. Doing two walks, extra parcels, plenty of excess daily.
Yet there are others who aren’t allowed to work their day off .

Yeah, it can be done, pre-starts, LATs, collections, picking up walks on overtime.
I appreciate this may not be available everywhere.
Hats of to some of them, they do graft, have done it at times.
Not on the regular though. Knackering.
Should have a system where overtime is covered fairly really, everyone should have same earning opportunities.

[postslippete]

There maybe some skewing of figures to some degree but is it against the realms of possibilities when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit in it's current make up.
Letters make a bigger profit overall than packets and the decline in letters, especially 1st class, is clear to see over the last few years.
It is much more costly to deliver packet/parcels so even though we see our daily working lives get tougher it's less profitable when we were delivering three times the amount of letters we were a day.
The cost of running all the delivery offices and mail centres plus the fuel bills since the economic downfall will have a negative effect on profits too.
Yeah, you are right that the equalisation of terms will cost a huge amount but EP have agreed to work towards that.
The fact they were willing to give a over inflation based pay rise which isn't liked to USO reform is surely a positive while it's at a crossroads.
I don't think you would have got that from the people the union have been dealing with for the last ten years.
Gives up that the other agreements will be adhered to in time.
It will take time though.

It's great that you continue to reply to my posts. Not to prove a point because it doesn't matter - we are not the ones negotiating!

This that you mentioned:

There maybe some skewing of figures to some degree but is it against the realms of possibilities when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit in it's current make up.


imho there has been a lot of skewing. We all remember when RM claimed a £1 billion loss in 2022-23 which made the national headlines but this figure was massively inflated by accounting impairments of write-downs of asset values, rather than an actual cash or operating loss. The actual adjusted operating loss was only £71 million. Not great, but they gave the impression that RM was on the brink of collapse to justify aggressive cost cutting even though the core business wasn't nowhere near as bad as being portrayed. I could list a load of other examples of the company skewing figures from its refusal to cross-subsidise with GLS profits that is a deliberate decision to frame RM as loss making to not being able to afford staff pay rises because it is losing money when it could award executive bonuses instead.

But the real key:

when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit


Key word = could. No one doubts that there are costs associated with everything from running delivery offices, it's transport network and fuel bills etc but you appear to be giving the company the benefit of the doubt that they could be struggling. Has the CWU ever been allowed to examine the books directly? From my understanding, they do not have legal or formal access to RM/IDS financials beyond what they have been told in the boardroom or what has been publicly disclosed. Without any formal audit rights any union exposure of IDS's financial reality will remain partial and dependant on inference and public data. What they need to insist on is a clear audit trail, especially on audit write downs, cross-subsidisation (because I know that IDS has heavily invested in Europe with GLS hubs these last few years) and executive payouts. Without that independent analysis there is no robust verification for claims of whether RM's profits are deliberately withheld from GLS in the official accounts or whether dividends or executive compensation are hidden by investing in asset purchases or restructuring.


Letters make a bigger profit overall than packets and the decline in letters, especially 1st class, is clear to see over the last few years.
It is much more costly to deliver packet/parcels so even though we see our daily working lives get tougher it's less profitable when we were delivering three times the amount of letters we were a day.

Completely agree and the path the company is taking towards prioritising parcels over letters is putting us in more direct competition with them yet they have a gig economy model.

It’s ironic how quickly Ofcom moved to allow RM to reduce 2c letter deliveries to every other weekday to help a struggling business model yet they did nothing to stop Downstream Access (DSA) providers from cannibalising the very part of the business that was still profitable. If Ofcom genuinely believed that RM was in financial trouble, they should have stepped in years ago to prevent private operators from cherry-picking the easy, high-volume urban mail and leaving Royal Mail to shoulder the full cost of the USO.

Losing the monopoly on letters is what triggered Royal Mail’s repeated stamp price hikes. Not greed, but a desperate attempt to recover revenue from a system where competitors got to skim the cream while Royal Mail was left delivering to the expensive, rural parts of the network for less than cost.

[postslippete]

My office has several maxing out. SA’s on Saturday. Doing two walks, extra parcels, plenty of excess daily.
Yet there are others who aren’t allowed to work their day off .

If the work is there (and clearly it is) and people want the hours, then the company should be prioritising fairness and consistency rather than picking and choosing who gets the overtime based on favouritism. This isn't a resource issue but a management's choice and until that is addressed the office will keep running on unequal workloads and growing frustration.

We have similar issues where I work but managers don't really care as long as the work gets done. If you don't raise it as an issue then they will simply overlook it.

[Mickeybrowneyes]

There maybe some skewing of figures to some degree but is it against the realms of possibilities when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit in it's current make up.
Letters make a bigger profit overall than packets and the decline in letters, especially 1st class, is clear to see over the last few years.
It is much more costly to deliver packet/parcels so even though we see our daily working lives get tougher it's less profitable when we were delivering three times the amount of letters we were a day.
The cost of running all the delivery offices and mail centres plus the fuel bills since the economic downfall will have a negative effect on profits too.
Yeah, you are right that the equalisation of terms will cost a huge amount but EP have agreed to work towards that.
The fact they were willing to give a over inflation based pay rise which isn't liked to USO reform is surely a positive while it's at a crossroads.
I don't think you would have got that from the people the union have been dealing with for the last ten years.
Gives up that the other agreements will be adhered to in time.
It will take time though.

It's great that you continue to reply to my posts. Not to prove a point because it doesn't matter - we are not the ones negotiating!

This that you mentioned:

There maybe some skewing of figures to some degree but is it against the realms of possibilities when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit in it's current make up.


imho there has been a lot of skewing. We all remember when RM claimed a £1 billion loss in 2022-23 which made the national headlines but this figure was massively inflated by accounting impairments of write-downs of asset values, rather than an actual cash or operating loss. The actual adjusted operating loss was only £71 million. Not great, but they gave the impression that RM was on the brink of collapse to justify aggressive cost cutting even though the core business wasn't nowhere near as bad as being portrayed. I could list a load of other examples of the company skewing figures from its refusal to cross-subsidise with GLS profits that is a deliberate decision to frame RM as loss making to not being able to afford staff pay rises because it is losing money when it could award executive bonuses instead.

But the real key:

when you look at all the varying factors that they could be struggling to turn over a healthy profit


Key word = could. No one doubts that there are costs associated with everything from running delivery offices, it's transport network and fuel bills etc but you appear to be giving the company the benefit of the doubt that they could be struggling. Has the CWU ever been allowed to examine the books directly? From my understanding, they do not have legal or formal access to RM/IDS financials beyond what they have been told in the boardroom or what has been publicly disclosed. Without any formal audit rights any union exposure of IDS's financial reality will remain partial and dependant on inference and public data. What they need to insist on is a clear audit trail, especially on audit write downs, cross-subsidisation (because I know that IDS has heavily invested in Europe with GLS hubs these last few years) and executive payouts. Without that independent analysis there is no robust verification for claims of whether RM's profits are deliberately withheld from GLS in the official accounts or whether dividends or executive compensation are hidden by investing in asset purchases or restructuring.


Letters make a bigger profit overall than packets and the decline in letters, especially 1st class, is clear to see over the last few years.
It is much more costly to deliver packet/parcels so even though we see our daily working lives get tougher it's less profitable when we were delivering three times the amount of letters we were a day.

Completely agree and the path the company is taking towards prioritising parcels over letters is putting us in more direct competition with them yet they have a gig economy model.

It’s ironic how quickly Ofcom moved to allow RM to reduce 2c letter deliveries to every other weekday to help a struggling business model yet they did nothing to stop Downstream Access (DSA) providers from cannibalising the very part of the business that was still profitable. If Ofcom genuinely believed that RM was in financial trouble, they should have stepped in years ago to prevent private operators from cherry-picking the easy, high-volume urban mail and leaving Royal Mail to shoulder the full cost of the USO.

Losing the monopoly on letters is what triggered Royal Mail’s repeated stamp price hikes. Not greed, but a desperate attempt to recover revenue from a system where competitors got to skim the cream while Royal Mail was left delivering to the expensive, rural parts of the network for less than cost.

Yeah, completely agree with your comments around downstream access.
The company have had to restructure and focus on designing duties that deliver later into the evening and also Sundays.
This is the part of the company where there is growth and they need to capture that.
It is difficult to deliver an efficient model around them times as the parcel traffic figures differs daily.
Even deliveries now, it's all dependent on traffic how long it takes you on any given day.
The fluctuations in tracked numbers differ from day to day.
Years ago it was quite predictable how long a duty would take you now it's less predictable.
You would have letters for most addresses and a few packets parcels. The variations in time were minimal.
These are all difficult hurdles for the company.
Allot of people don't want to pick up the out of hour duties either which is understandable so agency fill the gaps which comes at an even greater cost to the company.
If we could deliver all our parcels in the timeframe of a delivery duty times if would prove much more profitable but that's not where the growth or what the customer wants.
Although the lockers aren't popular amongst many they cost less to deliver and you may drop of many in one go.
Will probably see many more of them popping up.

[clashcityrocker]

This bromance is really sweet but you don't need to keep requoting pages of the previous post.
The admin have asked people not to.

[Mr Rush]

It’s ironic how quickly Ofcom moved to allow RM to reduce 2c letter deliveries to every other weekday to help a struggling business model yet they did nothing to stop Downstream Access (DSA) providers from cannibalising the very part of the business that was still profitable. If Ofcom genuinely believed that RM was in financial trouble, they should have stepped in years ago to prevent private operators from cherry-picking the easy, high-volume urban mail and leaving Royal Mail to shoulder the full cost of the USO.

Postcom certainly stood idly by particularly as the huge upswing in DSA happened right as letters were on the downturn, which deprived RM and the provision of the USO of full revenue at a critical time. That set everything in motion for the last 15 years.

Indeed, Royal Mail’s own annual report for 2006/07 notes declining mail volumes as competitors using this ‘downstream access’ picked up 2.4 billion letters, far more than the 1.9 billion forecast by Postcomm.
Public Finance (dead link)

[postslippete]

Yeah, completely agree with your comments around downstream access.
The company have had to restructure and focus on designing duties that deliver later into the evening and also Sundays.
This is the part of the company where there is growth and they need to capture that.
It is difficult to deliver an efficient model around them times as the parcel traffic figures differs daily.
Even deliveries now, it's all dependent on traffic how long it takes you on any given day.
The fluctuations in tracked numbers differ from day to day.
Years ago it was quite predictable how long a duty would take you now it's less predictable.
You would have letters for most addresses and a few packets parcels. The variations in time were minimal.
These are all difficult hurdles for the company.
Allot of people don't want to pick up the out of hour duties either which is understandable so agency fill the gaps which comes at an even greater cost to the company.
If we could deliver all our parcels in the timeframe of a delivery duty times if would prove much more profitable but that's not where the growth or what the customer wants.
Although the lockers aren't popular amongst many they cost less to deliver and you may drop of many in one go.
Will probably see many more of them popping up.

Ok, you've now turned this is into entirely different topic...

RM are reacting to it's competitors and feels forced to try and match their delivery windows by trying to stay relevant in a race-to-the-bottom market. It only makes sense to restructure the evening/Sunday parcels growth if they can still deliver those parcel efficiently and profitably and right now that doesn't seem to be happening, so the more they chase volumes without fixing the delivery model, the more risk they are taking on. What makes it worse is that RM is also a universal service provider and is legally obligated to deliver to those rural unprofitable areas whilst Amazon can still cherry pick the most profitable areas and dump the rest on us. It's not a level playing field and it costs RM more to do the job.

RM is trying to copy Amazon and DPD without the tech, cost model or workforce structure. It's a bit like them bringing a robin reliant to a formula one race! And let's not forget that Amazon UK plans to invest £40 billion over the next 3 years - how much is RM investing?? A few hundred million on parcel hubs? I know it reduces failed delivery costs but if we still end up delivering more parcels but making less profit per parcel due to the "gig-economy" then It is not unfeasible to suggest that RM's biggest profits in the future are likely to come from the side of the business that they say they want rid of - letters. But that is only if they can manage to successfully roll out the ODM and deliver the bulk of the letters 3 days a week so I would argue that this is probably more important than delivering parcels on an evening and a Sunday.

[billycat]

If Royal Mail want to save a lot of money manage the delivery of Sunday parcels a lot better than they currently do at the office I work at if you have more than 25 parcels to deliver then it is a busy day it must be costing a fortune when mentioned to our office manager when he was telling us he was under pressure regarding overtime he said in around about way he couldn’t care less what overtime was been booked on a Sunday it’s not part of his budget and there lies the problem the majority of managers do not care.

[Mickeybrowneyes]

Yeah, completely agree with your comments around downstream access.
The company have had to restructure and focus on designing duties that deliver later into the evening and also Sundays.
This is the part of the company where there is growth and they need to capture that.
It is difficult to deliver an efficient model around them times as the parcel traffic figures differs daily.
Even deliveries now, it's all dependent on traffic how long it takes you on any given day.
The fluctuations in tracked numbers differ from day to day.
Years ago it was quite predictable how long a duty would take you now it's less predictable.
You would have letters for most addresses and a few packets parcels. The variations in time were minimal.
These are all difficult hurdles for the company.
Allot of people don't want to pick up the out of hour duties either which is understandable so agency fill the gaps which comes at an even greater cost to the company.
If we could deliver all our parcels in the timeframe of a delivery duty times if would prove much more profitable but that's not where the growth or what the customer wants.
Although the lockers aren't popular amongst many they cost less to deliver and you may drop of many in one go.
Will probably see many more of them popping up.

Ok, you've now turned this is into entirely different topic...

RM are reacting to it's competitors and feels forced to try and match their delivery windows by trying to stay relevant in a race-to-the-bottom market. It only makes sense to restructure the evening/Sunday parcels growth if they can still deliver those parcel efficiently and profitably and right now that doesn't seem to be happening, so the more they chase volumes without fixing the delivery model, the more risk they are taking on. What makes it worse is that RM is also a universal service provider and is legally obligated to deliver to those rural unprofitable areas whilst Amazon can still cherry pick the most profitable areas and dump the rest on us. It's not a level playing field and it costs RM more to do the job.

RM is trying to copy Amazon and DPD without the tech, cost model or workforce structure. It's a bit like them bringing a robin reliant to a formula one race! And let's not forget that Amazon UK plans to invest £40 billion over the next 3 years - how much is RM investing?? A few hundred million on parcel hubs? I know it reduces failed delivery costs but if we still end up delivering more parcels but making less profit per parcel due to the "gig-economy" then It is not unfeasible to suggest that RM's biggest profits in the future are likely to come from the side of the business that they say they want rid of - letters. But that is only if they can manage to successfully roll out the ODM and deliver the bulk of the letters 3 days a week so I would argue that this is probably more important than delivering parcels on an evening and a Sunday.

Not really a completely different topic, I can't answer whether their is cooking of the books because I don't know.
We were talking about why the company may be struggling to turn over a profit and trying to compete with other firms on an uneven playing field is one of the main reasons.
They have to offer that out of hours service otherwise they will lose the contracts completely, and it is where the growth is.
Comparing figures like you have and equipment between royal mail and Amazon indicates where the firms are financially.
They would rather we started later in the day I'm sure and have a hybrid sort of duties which could incorporate delivery, collections and LATS.
Obviously not a popular one across the membership, unless you had maybe a four day week or even a three day week on longer days maybe.
EP group and union have talked about working with with the government in some way to hopefully create a more equal playing field across the delivery industry.
With some set of regulations.
I don't know if that will happen but it has been mentioned.

[ted_e_bear]

If Royal Mail want to save a lot of money manage the delivery of Sunday parcels a lot better than they currently do at the office I work at if you have more than 25 parcels to deliver then it is a busy day it must be costing a fortune when mentioned to our office manager when he was telling us he was under pressure regarding overtime he said in around about way he couldn’t care less what overtime was been booked on a Sunday it’s not part of his budget and there lies the problem the majority of managers do not care.

And there lies the cause and possible solution to rather a lot of Royal Mail's problems....the calibre of the people they appoint as "manager"