How does Crozier justify cutbacks? macclesfield-express

[stephen500]

How does Crozier justify cutbacks?
Vic Barlow
24/10/2007


''LIKE everyone else I’m greatly relieved the postal service is returning to normal. This strike has been very damaging to all parties.

I know the Royal Mail is in need of modernisation and I’m sure there are some archaic working practices but I do share workers’ frustration. How do you persuade staff to accept cutbacks when Adam Crozier, the group chief executive of Royal Mail rewards himself with a salary, pension, and bonus deal of £1,038,000, the second highest in the entire public sector? Mr Crozier’s pay has escalated in direct proportion to the deterioration in service. Postal staff are not stupid; they can see what’s going on.

Mr Crozier can’t ask hard pressed workers to tighten their belts while he expands his own to gargantuan proportions. It might be justified if he'd turned the business into a thriving enterprise with millions of satisfied customers but Mr Crozier has done no such thing. Quite the reverse, first class post is now so late it may as well be second, local post offices close down on a daily basis and still Royal Mail loses money.

If that performance justifies Mr Crozier’s huge pay deal then why should postal staff accept unwanted changes in their terms of employment?

If Royal Mail staff are to be won over they’ll need to see some genuine sacrifice coming down from the top. Based on his past performance I doubt Mr Crozier is the man to do it.''
http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/n ... y_cutbacks

[dvbuk55]

Well that's the question to ask right enough - it's frequently asked, but nobody's answering it.

[F0zziebear]

1. Royal Mail Group is a private company owned by the government. This angle is important in understanding the direction and the top end wage inflation. By acting as a private company, RM Group feel the need to attract the top senior mgmt. Therefore they need to pay top management wages.

Now you may disagree as to whether the top mgmt are worth their salaries, which is a reasonable question. For example:

CEO: Salary & bonus approx £1M
Finance Director: £500k
Executive board members: £250k
Area General Managers: £100K

There are over 40 employees are RM on over £100k if I remember correctly.

These salaries are probably under what would be paid for equivalent roles in the 'proper' private sector.

2. This is a public service, and as such everyone who works for RM Group is a civil servant and should be paid civil servant salaries. If that were the case then you would see most if not all of the senior mgmt leave. What would happen?

Good question I suppose, as the previous senior mgmt failed to modernise the company at the same time Deutschepost was in Germany, yet in Germany the equivalent of the unions are still very strong.

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this debate, it's a perception as to whether you feel he is worth it. I reckon the time to judge will be in approximately 5yrs time, when the modernisation programme is taking effect, full proper E2E competition is in place and new innovative products come to market.

Only time will tell, but sometimes better the devil you know

[plodsie]

full proper E2E competition is in place and new innovative products come to market.

Only time will tell, but sometimes better the devil you know

You know fine well, there is no inclination of any E2E services from any of our "competitors". Why should they bother when they have the RM Mugs to do their work for them. A postal license in this country is effectively a license to print money. They know it and we know it, feck everyone knows it. We are the big stupid giant who are being controlled by the little people.

[norbet colon]

1. Royal Mail Group is a private company owned by the government. This angle is important in understanding the direction and the top end wage inflation. By acting as a private company, RM Group feel the need to attract the top senior mgmt. Therefore they need to pay top management wages.

Now you may disagree as to whether the top mgmt are worth their salaries, which is a reasonable question. For example:

CEO: Salary & bonus approx £1M
Finance Director: £500k
Executive board members: £250k
Area General Managers: £100K

There are over 40 employees are RM on over £100k if I remember correctly.

These salaries are probably under what would be paid for equivalent roles in the 'proper' private sector.

2. This is a public service, and as such everyone who works for RM Group is a civil servant and should be paid civil servant salaries. If that were the case then you would see most if not all of the senior mgmt leave. What would happen?

Good question I suppose, as the previous senior mgmt failed to modernise the company at the same time Deutschepost was in Germany, yet in Germany the equivalent of the unions are still very strong.

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this debate, it's a perception as to whether you feel he is worth it. I reckon the time to judge will be in approximately 5yrs time, when the modernisation programme is taking effect, full proper E2E competition is in place and new innovative products come to market.

Only time will tell, but sometimes better the devil you know

The points are fair & wellmade , however this is what has been happening since the Major era and New Liebour have just dabbled & meddled with things in the name of "reform".
All that's happened with the railways , the NHS , local government , utilities is simply pretend capitalisim, pretend free market/business like ideas . RM is neither one thing or the other so it's going the same way as the NHS .Not like New Liebour to fall on it's own contradictions and these once services becoming more inefficient due to the level of beaurocracy and control from above . All you end up with is trying to sell something you haven't got , the idiots in charge that think it's possible, trying to make s**t shine .

Neo-Liberalisation isn't necessarily the panacea for all the ills though , Broadband is only half the price in Europe and there's more fibre -optic cables . Here we have antiquated phone cables being used for Broadband . People dying in filthy hospitals as cleaning is subcontracted out and there's layers of management that don't/can't manage ,

On the railways there's a creaking London Underground system, no West to East London link , no sensible tram transport ideas for Leeds , Liverpool , Manchester & Portsmouth , but it's OK to have bus wars and record profits for Stagecoach etc due to PRIVATE MONOPOLIES instead of public !, and trains ending up in Cumbrian Fields as the points wern't maintained properly on a Victorian Infrastructure . Not like the continent of course .

New Liebour do plenty of reports and appraisals and people can't sneeze without the Dept of Transport knowing about it . 5 times more tax subsidy than BR due to the inefficency & overlong chain of command so it's allright apparently!

Finally re RM what outside company would have a management structure that exists solely for those manager's benefit ? , two-thirds that are average /below average , many need retraining , poor morale ,playing politics as they can't manage & dreadful industrial relations instead of actually running a business ?