Goole subpostmaster calls for review of bonus payments

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And he and his colleagues around the UK fear the decision to withdraw the payments could herald plans for a quick “fire sale” of Royal Mail to a foreign buyer at a knock-down price.

Mr Harrison, who runs the Hedley Court Post Office, explained the Royal Mail Group – the umbrella company which includes Post Office Ltd (POL)and Royal Mail Letters – launched a phantom share scheme called the Colleague Share Plan in 2007, which saw subpostmasters and employees across the Group rewarded with ‘shares’ and dividend payments each year if performance targets were met.

He said the company was due to buy back all of the shares in 2012, with £12m in payments due to subpostmasters.

Royal Mail Group was, he said, now set to announce that the shares were worthless and that no payment would now take place, while senior managers continued to earn record bonuses.

“Once again it is one rule for the bosses and another for the rest of us,” said Mr Harrison.

“Personally I am devastated. It is yet another nail in the coffin. It follows news just recently that the Government is to withdraw the contract for processing benefit cheques.”

National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) General Secretary, George Thomson, this week said of the shares issue: “This scandalous decision is morally unjustifiable. The company’s workforce has taken a lot of pain over the past five years, with 2,500 post office closures and 30,000 Royal Mail jobs lost.

“Subpostmasters are now rightly asking how it is possible that shares which were worth £12m are, at the stroke of a pen, suddenly valued at zero? Does this mean that Royal Mail, which the government plans to privatise next year at a price of several billion pounds, is now also worth nothing?

“We will not allow committed, hard-working subpostmasters who provide vital services to their communities and to local economies to lose out.”

They will drive for the shares to be transferred on privatisation.