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ROYAL Mail’s boss has suggested that Saturday post may be scrapped – even claiming that postcodes delivering six days a week is no longer “economic”.
The company’s chairman Keith Williams believes that as customers are sending fewer letters but more parcels then changes need to reflect their new habits.
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Currently Royal Mail has to deliver letters for a fixed price to every address in the country from Monday to Saturday.
Speaking to the Financial Times, he said: “We should be pivoting towards parcels, as well as keeping the basic tenets of the universal service obligation… but recognise that people want parcels equally.
“We need to deliver what customers want – as long as it’s economic.
“In its current form, the USO is not economic, because if you look at the [UK] business, profitability has been in decline year after year.
“It’s incumbent on us and the union to be able to change more quickly. You can’t keep kicking the can down the road.
“A change in roles is inevitable but that doesn’t mean to say there will be job losses. Overall, I think if we do this pivot successfully over time, it will increase the number of roles at Royal Mail.
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The Communication Workers Union fears that a shake-up of the system might lead to job losses after Mr Williams struck a deal with the CWU over their threats to strike.
Royal Mail’s profits fell by 95 per cent in the past five years, and is expected to make a loss at the end of this year, despite the number of parcels surging by 34 per cent in the first five months of this year.
Mr Williams added that as the demand for parcels were on the rise, that service was likely to switch to seven days a week.
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