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A postie warned Royal Mail will “wither on the vine” if the company goes ahead with a proposed 10,000 job cuts and changes to workers’ conditions.
The West Derby postal worker, who asked not to be named for fear of his employer “taking action” against him, said it was a job for life when he joined the Royal Mail 27 years ago. But the 57-year-old said he and many colleagues “don’t see a long-term future with Royal Mail, telling the ECHO: “The public service ethos meant something to me, and gradually over time, that’s been eroded. It’s still there, but it’s hanging on by its fingertips.”
Roughly 115,00 Royal Mail workers started 19 days of strike this month as part of a dispute over pay and conditions, disrupting the postal service for 24-hour blocks on key dates likes Black Friday in the lead-up to Christmas. The company gave staff a 2% pay rise this year, with a further 3.5% to be added, a real-terms pay cut the Communication Workers Union (CWU) said was “imposed” on staff, who earn around £25k per year.
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The union warned the company is planning structural changes like cuts to sick pay, changes to working hours, and inferior terms for new employees, transforming Royal Mail’s employees in secure, well-paid roles into a “casualised, financially precarious workforce overnight”, The Guardian reports.
The Royal Mail worker from West Derby said this would disrupt lives and increase childcare costs for staff whose lives are built around existing schedules. He also said this would reduce the amount of time posties have to form relationships with customers, some of whom are isolated or vulnerable people whose brief chats with delivery workers are some of the few face-to-face interactions they have.
A spokesperson for Royal Mail said it wants to “protect well-paid, permanent jobs long-term” and retain its “place as the industry leader on pay, terms and conditions”. Earlier, this year the company announced a scheme where postal workers would check up on vulnerable residents as part of their rounds.
This is something delivery workers say they already do, and it can be one of the most rewarding parts of their “physically demanding job where you walk the streets for 13 miles a day, five days a week in all kinds of weather”. The West Derby postal worker said the few minutes of conversation and a hug he shares with one elderly woman makes both their days.
But he’s seen the number of addresses he delivers to rise from 250 to 750 since he started the job. With Royal Mail announcing up to 10,000 job cuts by next August, blaming the strike action and losses at the business, he fears further changes will see the postal service become indistinguishable from any other courier driven by profits.
He said: “If that opportunity to engage with other human beings is taken off her, it’s her quality of life that deteriorates. If I’m just delivering parcels for a courier who’s racing against the clock to get an unmanageable workload done, I won’t have time to do that.”
The 57-year-old added: “I think that the schemes and the plans that they’re putting forward are completely unworkable, and I think they will be counter-productive. I think they will worsen the service and see the service wither on the vine.”
Despite opposing what he sees as an attack on terms and conditions, the postal worker said colleagues want to be “part of the solution” to the challenges the company faces. He said there are “1,500 years of service” just in the West Derby delivery office, “generations and generations of public service which has got no value on the balance sheet”.
He said they “want fairness in how we’re rewarded for that”, but the dispute over pay and conditions runs on. Royal Mail and the CWU met on October 25 after agreeing to talks through the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas).
In a joint statement they said: “Following an invitation from Acas, Royal Mail and CWU have agreed to jointly engage with Acas facilitation in an attempt to resolve the current disputes on Pay and Change. There is a commitment on both sides to reach a resolution, however we all acknowledge there are significant difficulties to overcome.”
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We remain hopeful of continuing talks with the CWU through Acas to resolve our dispute on change and pay. This is the only way to get a resolution and secure Royal Mail’s future and jobs for our people.
“To give the talks the best platform to build towards an agreement, we call on the CWU to suspend their planned industrial action. The focus now must be on overcoming the difficulties that have prevented an agreement from being reached.
“We want to protect well-paid, permanent jobs long-term and retain our place as the industry leader on pay, terms and conditions. The CWU rejected our offer worth up to 5.5% for CWU grade colleagues, the biggest increase we have offered for many years.
“In a business that is currently losing £1 million pounds a day, we can only fund this offer by agreeing the changes that will pay for it. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience the CWU’s continued strike action will cause. We are doing all we can to minimise delays and keep people, businesses and the country connected.”
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