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Now a year on from the start of the CWU’s industrial action against Royal Mail, many printers have felt the cost of not being able to rely on an institution they have previously been able to take for granted.
But with news coming last week of a deal agreed in principle and today’s update that it has been approved by the CWU’s postal executive, Printweek heard from the industry how the strikes have affected it – and what a deal would mean for business.
Bruce Thomson, founder and managing director of direct and business mailing firm Bakergoodchild, said that while his firm had managed to avoid much of the fallout from the strikes, he was very pleased to hear of a potential resolution.
He told Printweek that the strikes had damaged customer confidence in mailing, particularly after the larger spate of strikes that landed in December 2022.
He said: “I think it made me appreciate how much we actually do rely on Royal Mail.
“Up until December, it didn’t really affect us too much, because if a client is going to send a mailing order of 10,000, and they want it to arrive on Monday and Tuesday, and it arrives on Tuesday and Wednesday, it doesn’t really make any difference.”
In December, however, 10 days of strike action stopped short a month that is already quiet for mailing companies.
“We did a lot less business last December than the December before – and I think it put people off in January, too.”
Brendan Perring, general manager of the IPIA, said that his members had seen a similar fall in customer confidence.
He told Printweek: “The ongoing strike, among with many other things, has caused a further dent in overall print volume.
“One of the industry’s biggest growth areas is direct mail, or partially addressed mail. And the continuous industrial action does rob the market of confidence – customers think twice before placing the next order.”
Perring was confident, however, that a restoration of calm would help the mailing sector bounce back: “It has caused some overall loss of market share. But most [printers] are fairly confident that if some stability can be reached, that it will come back over time.”
The CWU’s ‘negotiator’s agreement’ with Royal Mail has seen the union’s postal executive meet in the past few days to discuss the deal, which it will put to its members for a vote.
Any end to the action would be a big relief for printers, according to Charles Jarrold, chief executive of the BPIF.
“Mailing and distribution is a hugely important part of our sector, and the disruption has clearly been very difficult for a lot of organisations that rely on the Royal Mail,” he said.
He added that the dispute had thrown into sharp relief the need for change within the struggling postal service.
“It’s pretty clear that Royal Mail needs to change how it operates.
“That may be difficult for both Royal Mail and its employees, but it clearly has to be in everyone’s interest to find compromise, and to change and adapt for the future. The sooner that everyone gets beyond this, and actually starts to talk about how to develop a better business for the future, the better – because there is a lot of opportunity out there.”
Part of the difficulty, according to Perring, is that Royal Mail is still stuck somewhere between the public and private sector, in “the worst of both worlds”.
Royal Mail’s trouble, he said, is that while it has control over the ‘final mile’, there is little enough money to be had in that section of the market. In more profitable parts of the market, too, the company is up against fully privatised companies with the agility to change with the market.
He said: “So they still have this hold on the final mile, but they aren’t able to be competitive outside of that.
“A system that was developed, originally theorised 20 years ago, today just doesn’t work very well. It’s almost as if they have one hand tied behind their back.”
Whatever the difficulties faced by the group, mailing companies need just one thing from Royal Mail, according to Allistair Hunter, managing director of print marketing firm DS Group.
“A deal would make life easier for everybody, for both mailing houses and clients. We just want consistency.
“For far too long, there has been some kind of an issue with Royal Mail. Whether it is industrial action, or technology, like the ransomware [data hack] a few months ago, there just needs to be consistency within the industry.”
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