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UNDER-PRESSURE Royal Mail bosses are employing “unusual uses of the English language to give inaccurate statements,” MPs said today in a feisty committee hearing.
The privatised firm’s top brass were hauled back in front of the cross-party business, energy and industrial strategy committee after accusations that they had given “misleading” evidence during a hearing last month.
Company chief executive Simon Thompson, operations development director Ricky McAulay and Royal Mail Group chairman Keith Williams are deliberately ignoring the strike-hit company’s statutory universal service obligation (USO) to deliver letters six days a week, focusing on parcels instead, MPs said.
Worker testimony also shows that bosses are using intrusive technology to “manage the performance” of intimidated workers, they added.
Committee chairman and Labour MP Darren Jones repeatedly asked Mr Thompson to provide a “yes or no” answer to his assertion that there is a “systemic failure” to meet the USO.
The chief executive failed to give a direct answer, suggesting the firm is now “doing better.”
He put his previous denials that letters are not being prioritised down to “context,” saying “policy had differed from operational reality.”
Mr Jones queried the response and others like it as “unusual uses of the English language.”
MPs dismissed suggestions that ongoing strike action — launched by the CWU union last August amid fears that bosses plan to impose gig-economy-style conditions alongside thousands of job cuts — is to blame, saying some workers argue the USO has been neglected “for years.”
Former shadow cabinet minister Andy McDonald and SNP MP Alan Brown ridiculed claims that “postal digital assistants,” featuring a yellow dot which gets bigger the longer a postie stays in one place, are not being used to monitor staff.
Mr McAulay claimed the tech is only used to “generate follow-up conversations” if needed.
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