To: All Branches with POSTAL Members
Dear Colleague,
Project Pride - Door 2 Door Item 12th & 13th June 2014
Branches and CWU representatives will be aware of the fact that Royal Mail operates in an extremely competitive environment for direct mail and advertising revenue. The CWU recognises this and continues to support the businesses drive to increase revenue through growth in addressed and unaddressed products in order to protect jobs and terms and conditions. There is however a significant number of Door to Door customers that Royal Mail cannot currently capture for a variety of reasons and these potential customers end up advertising through competitors, using television, radio, press or other mail carriers such as TNT who as we are all aware are eating into what was traditional workload in Royal Mail. TNT is also the largest competitor in the D2D market.
In order to improve Royal Mail’s prospects of capturing more work and revenue in this competitive market we agreed at short notice to a D2D drop back in March in an attempt to get a foothold in this particular sector. The intention at the time was to demonstrate to customers in this area of the market that Royal Mail can cope with this type of contract, and that remains our objective.
Unfortunately Royal Mail did not deliver on its original commitment to the CWU in terms of information share, involvement and planning and we have had to urgently attempt to put things in place to avoid what can only be described as a commercial disaster waiting to happen. Below for the information of our Branches and representatives is an extract from the original exchange of emails on the 6th and 7th March 2014 to demonstrate the basis on which we agreed to support this contract. Please note that we are not informed who the customer is at this stage.
Royal Mail email
I agree it is unlikely to be prepped into the frame and it will increase the call rate and replenishment. The average call rate is around 82% for Thu and Fri and this rises to 85 with D2D at 1/6th per day. With this contract over two days, it would move to around 91%.
June is a low month for D2D in general and this week was only 53m last year v an average of 62m. Even with the World Cup we are not seeing a significant increase in demand. The special Event Planning team have not flagged any issues.
I appreciate this is short notice – I was asked to join a call Tuesday pm and it was only yesterday that the customer confirmed they would like Thu and Fri.
At present I am looking for your support to work through this, so that we can confirm it is possible to the customer. If they decide to go ahead I would appreciate your support in working up the solution, along with the delivery and special event teams.
CWU email
This will take careful planning to get it right and get the items delivered to the timescale. On the basis that we have the commitment from Royal Mail to provide a joint statement ASAP and put in place sufficient time for this to be planned at local level with Area and Divisional input if necessary we can agree to your request.
Branches and representatives may ask themselves why we are cooperating when Royal Mail failed to deliver on its original commitment. The reason is that in the last few days others within their organisation realised the seriousness of the situation and agreed to get round the table to try and sort this out, hence the lateness of the joint statement. Additionally we have been assured by those people that this will never happen again, and perhaps it is a good example of what could happen when the CWU is not involved. Furthermore we as a Union have a responsibility to our members to work with Royal Mail to stem the threat of competition and the associated loss of workload and revenue, and to bring as much work as possible into our workplaces to help protect jobs and terms and conditions, that is why we agreed to the contract in the first place. Putting aside the lack of involvement and operational concerns we want this to be a success.
As far as the joint statement is concerned we have attempted to put in place things we believe will assist our representatives arrive at sensible operational arrangements through dialogue with their local managers, recognising that this will require willingness and commitment on their part as well to bring this about. Whatever was agreed in respect of resourcing to workload for next week will need to be reviewed in light of the joint statement and that is not maybe or might be that is a will be and is an essential requirement of the joint statement. We have attempted not to be too prescriptive but have attempted to provide guidance and examples of what probably needs to be put in place to support our members and the operation over the whole week including any jointly identified additional resource being paid at SA rate. Serious consideration will also need to be given to the provision of replenishment and the feeder runs required to support this, and it is important that H&S issues are taken fully into consideration indoor and outdoor.
Attached to this LTB are the postcodes where the items are being provided for delivery and those that have been excluded, additionally those units who are due to receive more than 6 items are also included for information purposes and will need to be factored into local discussions.
Finally we have recognised the sensitivity of this contract that will undoubtedly stir sentiment and raise concerns and emotion in some of our members and quite rightly so. This will need to be dealt with sympathetically and with complete respect for the wishes of those concerned.
It would be appreciated if all Branches could please ensure that this LTB is circulated to all Delivery offices and CWU Delivery representatives without delay.
Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 230.03
Email address:
hnutley@cwu.org
Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson - CWU Assistant Secretary
