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Trade union bosses have claimed the service is ‘chaotic’
Trade union bosses claimed Royal Mail workers were being told to leave hospital and GP letters on racks to prioritise parcels.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) told MPs postal workers were led by a pyramid framework which told them which deliveries to prioritise.
According to the CW, special delivery items were at the top, followed by parcels or tracked items, then first-class mail, leaving second-class mail at the bottom.
Royal Mail disputed that and said first-class parcels, letters and 24-hour tracked items were prioritised in the same section of the pyramid.
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Martin Walsh, deputy general secretary of the CWU, told the Business and Trade Committee that Royal Mail was facing a ‘retention crisis’.
Postal staff were ‘working harder than they’ve ever done in really challenging conditions, because they can’t clear the workload every day’, he said.
He told the committee: “There is a pyramid process where it is understandable people are getting delays.
“All employees want to deliver and they know their customers, and some of them feel very aggrieved 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.
He said: “On a daily basis, it’s extremely difficult to get through all the workload.”
This was the experience for frontline postal workers in the majority of post offices, he said.
Royal Mail’s owner Daniel Kretinsky, who has also given evidence to the committee, insisted 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 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 its letters were being delivered more quickly.
Mr Kretinsky said currently a ‘minority’ of NHS providers were using the service as it was still new.
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But he said making parcel deliveries part of the service was 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 apologised to customers affected by the delayed delivery of letters.
He told MPs: “I’m deeply sorry for any letter that arrives late.
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“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 don’t evidence that at all.”
Later, Mr Kretinsky said his motivation for buying Royal Mail was ‘driven by the challenge, not by profit’.
He added: “But I know if we do things right, we will also create value at the end of the day.”
Royal Mail was headinh towards generating ‘roughly zero’ profit because the company had invested ‘everything’ back into the operations, he said.
He argued issues to the service could not be fixed until plans for reform of the universal service obligation (USO) were put in place, including proposals to scrap second-class post on Saturdays.
Mr Kretinsky said he could not give assurances he would meet his obligation to improve the service unless the USO was reformed.
Intensive talks with the CWU over the plans have been extended until the end of March after the sides failed to agree on how to rollout changes nationwide.
The CWU said it was working towards an agreement on a different way of putting the reforms in place following pilot schemes.
Mr Ward said though progress was being made in talks and, while the CWU did not want to take industrial action, ‘we cannot rule it out’.
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