Posties told to leave hospital letters in racks to prioritise parcels – union

The postal service has become “chaotic” with Royal Mail workers being told to leave doctors’ and hospital letters on racks to prioritise parcels, trade union bosses have warned.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) told MPs that postal workers are led by a pyramid framework which tells them which deliveries to prioritise over others.

At the top of the pyramid is special delivery items, followed by parcels or tracked items, then first-class mail, leaving second-class mail at the bottom, according to the CWU.

Royal Mail disputes this and says first-class parcels, letters, and 24-hour tracked items are all prioritised in the same section of the pyramid.

Martin Walsh, deputy general secretary of the CWU, told the Business and Trade Committee that Royal Mail is facing a “retention crisis”, with postal staff “working harder than they’ve ever done in really challenging conditions, because they can’t clear the workload every day”.

He told the committee: “There is a pyramid process where it is understandable that people are getting delays.

“All employees want to deliver and they know their customers, and some of them feel very aggrieved that they’re told to leave doctors’ letters, hospital letters in the frames to prioritise tracked. And we often get feedback on that issue.”

Dave Ward, general secretary of the CWU, said the “service at the moment is chaotic” and it was a “demoralising environment” for postal workers.

“On a daily basis, it’s extremely difficult to get through all the workload,” he said.

He said this was the experience for frontline postal workers in the majority of post offices.

Royal Mail’s owner Daniel Kretinsky, who was also giving evidence to the committee, asserted there was no “management decision” for parcels to be prioritised over letters.

He said: “I have never heard any instruction, any discussion, or any exchange which would suggest that Royal Mail is prioritising parcels over letters.

“Categorically this is not any management decision and nobody is incentivised to do that, and we think it is actually not happening.”

Royal Mail recently introduced a specialised NHS barcode to ensure NHS letters are being delivered more quickly.

Mr Kretinsky said it is currently a “minority” of NHS providers who are using this service because it is still new.

He nevertheless said making parcel deliveries part of the service is a “way to preserve Royal Mail for a longer period of time”.

Mr Kretinsky is chairman of Royal Mail’s parent firm EP Group, which took over the institution last year.

The billionaire businessman also apologised to customers affected by the delayed delivery of letters.

“I’m deeply sorry for any letter that arrives late,” he told the MPs.

“I’m deeply sorry if we are not delivering the letters on our promise, but I can’t adhere to your sentence that quality of service is declining as the numbers just don’t evidence that at all.”

Later on in the session, Mr Kretinsky said his motivation for buying Royal Mail was “driven by the challenge, not by profit”.

He added: “But I know that if we do things right, we will also create value at the end of the day.”

Royal Mail is headed towards generating “roughly zero” profit because the company has invested “everything” back into the operations, he said.

The boss argued issues to the service cannot be fixed until plans for reform of the universal service obligation (USO) are put in place, including proposals to scrap second-class post on Saturdays.

He added that he cannot give assurances that he will meet his obligation to improve the service unless the USO is reformed.

Intensive talks with the CWU over the plans have been extended until the end of March after failing to agree on how to rollout changes nationwide.

The CWU said at the committee that it is working towards an agreement on a different way of putting the reforms in place following pilot schemes.

Mr Ward said while progress was being made in talks and that the CWU did not want to take industrial action, “we cannot rule it out”.