Private company by Autumn

[FLUFFY]

Royal Mail WILL be sold off: Posties get shares in 'John Lewis' deal


Postmen are to be given stakes in Royal Mail under radical Government plans to sell it off this year.
Ministers plan to transform the ailing firm into a John Lewis-style trust, like the department store whose employees are 'partners', owning shares and receiving annual dividends based on its profits.
The offer will dramatically undermine attempts by militant trade union leaders to persuade staff to oppose the privatisation, which is expected to be the biggest in Britain for two decades.
Giving employees a financial incentive should also improve Royal Mail's performance, the Government believes.
Ministers are considering a full-scale-sell-off amid increasing concern about the firm's future.
A collapse in the number of letters and parcels being sent and a black hole in its pension scheme has made an injection of private cash urgent, they say.
Ed Davey, the postal affairs minister, told the Daily Mail: 'Employee share ownership can be critical in turning round a company's fortunes.
'With great British companies and organisations like John Lewis already involved, it shows how powerful it can be.'
Legislation is expected in the autumn, and Royal Mail, which runs postal delivery, will then be privatised.
The Post Office, which runs 12,000 branches across the country, is to remain in government ownership.

The amount of the firm that will be sold has yet to be determined, but ministers are considering a 100 per cent privatisation, or disposing of it in stages.
A chunk of Royal Mail shares is expected to be held in trust, with the beneficiaries the 170,000 employees of the company.
They would share the profit, and would also be involved in management decisions.
As at John Lewis, employees would not own the shares as individuals, so holdings could not be sold if the worker left the firm.
The move mirrors the Government's 'big society' agenda, which will see public sector workers given the chance to bid for and run their services themselves.
Under the coalition agreement between the Tories and the Lib Dems, the Government has pledged to 'modernise Royal Mail, in partnership with employees, and will ensure it benefits from private sector capital and disciplines'.
Unions have promised to wage a fierce campaign against the plans, having effectively forced Labour to drop the idea of a part-privatisation.
The Communication Workers' Union has already passed a motion opposing a sell-off.
Enlarge Last July, Lord Mandelson, the former Business Secretary, blamed 'market conditions' for the fact that Labour had failed to find a buyer at a price it was willing to accept.
But critics said the privatisation had been shelved because of massive-Labour opposition.
The Government's revival of the plan will be an early test for Labour's new leader, who will be installed in late September. If the party opposes privatisation, the coalition will seize on it as evidence of a shift to the Left.
The Dutch postal giant TNT and the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, which already owns a Belgian postal company, have expressed interest in buying Royal Mail.
A full-scale privatisation of Royal Mail would rival that of British Gas, which raised £9billion in 1986, and BT, which raised £3.9billion when a 50.1 per cent stake was sold in 1984.
A union leader will call today for the 'biggest show of resistance' since the poll tax riots to oppose the coalition's spending cuts. Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT transport union, will urge ' coordinated strike action' to stop the Government's 'savage assault on jobs'. At his union's annual conference in Aberdeen, he will say: 'This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the trade union movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers.'



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[BELIAL]

Well since we obviously don't have anything to deliver anymore ,can't see an indefinite strike upsetting or inconveniencing anyone

[POSTMAN]

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