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The Royal Mail is in such a state of chaos that postal workers are warning election material for May’s upcoming Holyrood vote, including postal ballots, will not be delivered on time, causing a crisis for Scottish democracy.
Postal workers met with The Herald on Sunday to warn that the Royal Mail is “broken”. Craig Anderson, head of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) in Scotland, which represents postal staff, said: “It’s failing the public badly.”
Staff said the Royal Mail was in “chaos. It’s a company in crisis”. The CWU claimed the Royal Mail could collapse sometime between 2028/31.
Anderson and the postal workers he represents said they “weren’t confident that ballot papers will get delivered on time”, or that election material from prospective MSPs would arrive before votes were cast. The postal workers spoke to The Herald on Sunday on condition of anonymity due to fears for their jobs.
Anderson said there was evidence to back up his fears for the election as four trade unions had delivery of ballot papers delayed, which affected their members voting. He has written to First Minister John Swinney about his concerns, asking for a meeting between the Scottish Government, the CWU and the Royal Mail.
He warned that if a decision is taken to prioritise election material, then the knock-on effect would be other vital mail being delayed. He said that could cause delays for mail related to hospital appointments, cancer treatment, and jury selection.
The CWU claims that “mail which in the past went out the same day can now sit [in a sorting office] for two weeks. That’s the sort of delays customers are seeing”. Postal staff said some material posted in December didn’t arrive until mid-January. There were “extreme examples” of Christmas cards arriving on Valentine’s Day.
Anderson added: “It was a disaster before Christmas, a disaster at Christmas, and it’s still a disaster.”
No overtime has been arranged to ensure the Royal Mail copes with the delivery of election material, the CWU claimed.
If delivering election material is made “top of the list of priorities that basically means all other mail, including parcels, will no doubt fail”.
Postal workers said: “There’s real concern that any political material may not be delivered in time – or at all – during the election timetable due to staffing issues.”
On top of all these pressures, postal workers must put up with pouring rain, blistering sun, dog attacks and violence from members of the public, who are increasingly taking out their anger on staff over delayed deliveries.
Despite the public affection for the service, given its “500-plus years of history”, Anderson said routes had been suspended in Scotland due to abuse of staff, and postal workers have been “severely injured”.
Privatisation
SO, what’s gone so wrong with a service that was once considered “the jewel in the crown” of Britain’s utilities? The mail is a reserved power over which the Scottish Government has no control. The Royal Mail was publicly owned until 2013, when it was privatised by the Conservative-LibDem government and floated on the stock exchange.
Last year, it was taken over by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský as sole owner, putting the Royal Mail under foreign control. The UK Government retains what’s known as a “golden share”.
The postal workers who The Herald on Sunday spoke to say that life for posties has always been a hard slog, but until privatisation the job had its rewards. Now morale has collapsed. Staff are leaving at an astonishing rate.
Posties start at 5am and work six days. After sorting their deliveries, rounds usually involve up to 20,000 steps and can take five-and-a-half hours. On average, postal workers deliver more than 100 parcels daily and hundreds of letters.
When the Royal Mail was shareholder-owned it was losing £1 million every day. Despite being privatised, the Royal Mail has a public service to deliver.
It operates under what’s known as the Universal Service Obligation. That legally requires post to be delivered six days a week under a “one price goes anywhere” model.
Anderson said despite the Royal Mail operating as a public service, “shareholders still got their pound of flesh in dividends”. Since 2013, he said, “well in excess of £2 billion has been delivered to shareholders”.
As a consequence, the quality of the service was “driven down to cut costs to make dividends. We’re a failing service for the public and we’re failing badly”.
Postal workers say that “since privatisation, there has been a race to the bottom” due to “the need to fill shareholders’ pockets”.
Under the privatised model, the CWU explained, “Scotland is subsidised by bigger parts of the UK due to the costs to service rural communities and the Highlands and Islands”.
The CWU fears that, as a private company, the Royal Mail will cut Scotland loose to maximise profits.
Flights and trains, which brought mail to Scotland, were stopped. That caused “delays in getting mail to the mail centres across Scotland”. This increased workload for staff. “It’s had a massive impact on the service in Scotland.”
Since new terms and conditions were introduced in 2023, huge numbers of workers have quit.
The Royal Mail, the CWU claims, “has employed 54,000 new entrants and 27,000 of those left”. New entrants are paid less than staff hired prior to the introduction of changed employment conditions.
“So they don’t stick around.”
The Royal Mail is also, the CWU insists, “prioritising parcels over letters”. Parcels create more revenue. As a result, “letters sit for days, sometimes weeks, before they’re delivered”.
Postal workers said: “Hospital appointment letters used to take priority. Now they lie with other mail. The courts removed the need for individuals to sign for jury duty letters. They also sit undelivered now.”
They added: “Across Scotland’s rural and island communities, the service is beyond bad. Staffing levels are so poor managers have been sent to deliver mail.
“To be honest, you can’t trust the Royal Mail to deliver a birthday card. Can you trust the Royal Mail to get a bank card to you on time?
“You might end up sitting in a police cell as you haven’t got your jury service letter. We must stabilise this service.”
Shareholders
THE CWU says postal workers were told that privatisation was required for the Royal Mail to “survive”. However, Anderson said that “investment never materialised”, and money that should have gone into the company instead “went to shareholders”.
Under the publicly-owned model, there was always “cover if somebody was off sick or on holiday. There were reserves”. Today, Anderson said, “more than 70% of our offices are well understaffed. They cannot keep people”. That means postal workers are always “struggling”.
Every postal worker has their own “walk” – the route they deliver post to each day. With staffing problems, posties are often moved from their own walk to cover walks which aren’t manned. As a result, that creates “a backlog when they return to their own walk the next day”.
The CWU estimates the Royal Mail needs “around 400” additional staff in Scotland.
Just 77% of first class mail is delivered on time. The target is 93%. A first class stamp will rise from £1.70 to £1.80 from April. For second class mail, 92.5% are delivered on time. The target is 98.5%.
Postal workers say that on days when they are told to prioritise parcel deliveries, the amount of letters they have to deliver the next day “doubles” as there isn’t enough staff to cover. “It’s just constant,” one postie said. “It’s a vicious circle.”
It isn’t uncommon for post to be left in sorting offices undelivered “for a week”. Anderson said there were cases of staff going on holiday for a fortnight and the letters on their round “just left sat there. That’s because there’s not enough staff and we don’t have the reserves we once did”.
Although the Royal Mail is now prioritising parcels over letters, according to postal workers and their union, the company must compete against a range of rival parcel companies for its share of the market.
“Royal Mail’s whole focus is solely to try to grab as much of the parcel market as possible off these other guys,” said Anderson. “But they seem to forget that we still have to deliver letters.”
The shift in tactics is due to the decline in the number of letters in the digital era.
The CWU estimates that the revenue from delivering one parcel can equal 10 letters.
Market
THE Royal Mail also has to deal with what postal workers call “cherry-picking” companies. These firms collect bulk mail – like bills and invoices, or marketing material – which is posted at a rate lower than the cost of a stamp, but still delivered by the Royal Mail. It’s a byzantine system.
“They pick up bulk mail from the sender, drive it to Royal Mail centres and the Royal Mail has to process it, which is a huge cost,” said Anderson. “They just basically pile stuff into the Royal Mail, and the Royal Mail doesn’t make the same money as the private company.”
The CWU blames Ofcom – which regulates the postal service – for “allowing private companies to use the Royal Mail network in the name of competition”. Anderson added: “We’ve a real issue with what Ofcom is trying to do. They’re allowing companies to cherry-pick and abuse the market to their financial advantage.
“The private companies make money by just picking up mail and dropping it at the mail centre. The onus is then left on the Royal Mail to deal with it for a fragment of the cost that it would have been if there was a stamp on it.”
It was suggested that cost difference could run to around 70p per item. A guesstimate was made that bulk mail cost around 22p per item versus a second class stamp which will cost 91p from April. “And you’re potentially talking millions of items,” postal workers said. “It’s affecting the financial viability of the company.”
The union and postal workers said this system wasn’t a “choice” made by the Royal Mail. “It’s down to Ofcom. When you open access to the market, people can cherry-pick the most profitable parts.”
The cherry-picking companies specialising in bulk items put all the cost of “sorting that mail, and getting it delivered, on the Royal Mail. It’s astronomical”.
The CWU says companies making money from Royal Mail are exploiting the “period of economic decline” that the country is experiencing, and now demanding to use the service at cheaper rates than before. “You either do it or you die,” Anderson said.
Yet, unlike any of its rivals, the Royal Mail provides a service at a single, fixed price, based on the cost of stamps. “Other companies can turn around and say ‘it’ll cost you an extra tenner to post to the Highlands’, and pass that on to their customers. Whereas the Royal Mail is one price fits all. It has no other option.” Other companies can refuse to deliver, the Royal Mail cannot.
Due to all the competing pressures on time and money, postal workers say they’re being told by managers to not prioritise second class letters. “They’ll leave it as long as they can until they can get someone to deliver it,” Anderson claimed.
Private delivery companies also choose the most easy, profitable and accessible routes, while off-loading unprofitable and inaccessible routes on to the Royal Mail. A delivery in London or Glasgow is far cheaper than sending a delivery driver to Stornaway. When the price of delivery becomes prohibitive for profit, private companies simply use the Royal Mail as a cheaper alternative – thereby ramping up costs for the Royal Mail.
A private delivery company “will look at the cost of sending somebody to Stornaway on the ferry and just go to the post office, stick a stamp on it, throw it in the network and then the Royal Mail delivers it. So they get a massive profit on the delivery”.
Ironically, many of the Royal Mail’s rival delivery “cherry-picking” companies use a self-employment model for workers, which means their costs are lower due to not paying national insurance. “The country is losing out massively,” Anderson says. “All we want is fair competition. But like everything these days, it’s a race to the bottom.”
Many private delivery firms have come in for widespread criticism from the public over delayed, lost, or damaged items.
Crisis
ANDERSON claimed the “crisis” in the Royal Mail was “of the company’s own making. It’s been driven by senior management”. The union accuses the company of siphoning off profits for shareholder dividends and executive bonuses in the past, rather than investing in the company’s future. During Covid, the company made £758m in profit due to the increased use of the postal service.
In the wake of these profits, the CWU took strike action over pay and conditions. “Money should be spent on infrastructure and keeping people in the company,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t spent that way. It was given to shareholders.”
Postal workers say they remain “angry” at what happened. “We’ve pride in our jobs,” they said, “but we can’t to that job properly any more. It’s very frustrating and it must be frustrating for the public as well.”
Postal workers said they are regularly asked by the public why they have waited “days and weeks for letters, including hospital letters. People are getting angry. Passports are late, people are being fined for not meeting payment dates, jury letters aren’t arriving on time so people are getting threatened by the courts”.
Medical letters “were once sifted out to make sure they were delivered”. But that no longer happens. “They’re just sitting there collecting dust as much as any other letter.”
Since privatisation, the CWU says, management hasn’t involved frontline staff in decision-making. “They look on this business as theirs to run however they like.”
Anderson claimed that during the strike action, many union representatives were targeted. “They tried to break the union.” The dispute was finally settled. Anderson believes workers ended up with a “two-tier contract”, with new employees given worse pay and conditions than existing postal workers.
“Legacy” workers get £14.22 hourly, new starts £13.60 – “just above the real living wage”. New starts don’t get paid breaks like legacy staff. They can also be relocated “anywhere in the UK within 24 hours”. Many managers, the CWU says, earn more than £50,000. Morale is “terrible”. Discussions have been held about “equalisation”, which means bringing new staff up to the same standards as legacy staff.
There is an economic hit to the UK due to delays in delivery from both the Royal Mail and its rival companies. “Small businesses are really suffering,” Anderson said. Delayed invoices, for example, cause cashflow problems.
The CWU said that in terms of national infrastructure the mail network “isn’t reliable, and that was one thing the Royal Mail was always good for – a reliable service”. Rural communities are particularly affected by poor deliveries.
Postal staff were designated essential workers during the pandemic due to how much the country relied on them. They now feel “let down”. They say postal workers are “an essential part of the community”.
Asset-stripped
AFTER privatisation, many Royal Mail buildings were sold off and others have been left in a state of disrepair. “It was asset-stripping,” Anderson claimed.
“We’re dealing with decaying infrastructure and decaying buildings, unfit for this day and age. They’re too old and too small for communities which have got bigger and bigger as more houses are built. Repairs aren’t being made. One postal worker told me recently their office hadn’t been painted in 30 years. There’s no upkeep of roofs or drains. Windows are falling apart. Seating is ripped. It’s disgusting. Yet we still deliver seven billion letters a year. It’s all take, take, take.”
Workers showed The Herald on Sunday pictures within Royal Mail buildings as evidence, though asked for them not to be printed for fear staff in particular offices would be targeted as whistleblowers.
The CWU believes that under the shareholder model the Royal Mail was so damaged that there was no option but to sell to Daniel Křetínský, who is a major shareholder in West Ham football club. Anderson claimed the Royal Mail was “virtually bankrupt. They took it to the brink. It was on its backside and there for the taking”.
He fears that under the new regime, though, the intention remains to one day ditch letter delivery and concentrate on revenue-producing parcels. Denmark’s state postal service recently stopped delivering letters.
Anderson worries the Royal Mail could “hand the letters back to the British government and ask them to try to run it. You’re never going to make money delivering letters”.
A letter from Belfast to London costs the same, after all, as a letter from one side of Glasgow to the other. “That’s the Universal Service Obligation,” said Anderson.
The irony isn’t missed on postal workers that Britain effectively invented the modern mail system 500 years ago but struggles to run the system today.
Ditching letters would increase profits considerably. “If they can move away from the Universal Service Obligation [the legal requirement for the privatised Royal Mail to deliver letters] then they’d see that as sheer profit,” says Anderson. “They’d lose the bulk of their costs as the costs are people.”
In order to reduce labour costs, the Royal Mail, the CWU says, is “driving up” the use of automated machines. The CWU claims this has led to an increase in items being damaged or going missing.
Postal workers fear that in order to maximise profits jobs will go. “The only way to make profit is to decrease head count,” Anderson said.
On island communities, postal staff are leaving the service to work at fish farms for better pay and conditions, he added. “Retaining staff is nigh on impossible.” Fish farms pay around £15 per hour – higher than Royal Mail wages.
Anderson insisted that staff wanted to “work with” management in order to make the Royal Mail “fit for the future”, but claimed the company had been “systematically ground down” by management. Rather than “manage decline”, the CWU wants to “arrest decline and rebuild the Royal Mail back up again and modernise”.
Deliveries
THE CWU said the Royal Mail wants to introduce a new type of delivery system, called the Optimised Delivery Model, in order to improve costs and service. The intention is to use some of the savings to put legacy and new staff on the same footing.
Anderson says, however, that the ODM was piloted in 35 sites, including four in Scotland, and failed. “Only 25% of sites were successful.”
The ODM increases the number of delivery points for postal workers and the time they are out on deliveries. Effectively, postal workers say, it means there are three staff for every four rounds.
Anderson added: “It’s cheaper but it fails dramatically.” He claims the company is “adamant” it will press ahead with the model. “We know it will make the service even worse. We see this as them setting fire to the company once again.”
To make the model work would require far more resources, manpower and money and, the CWU claims, would therefore “bankrupt the business”. If the model was implemented without additional resources, then it would “fail the public even more”.
The CWU is proposing its own alternative model. The union is now in a “dispute resolution process” with the Royal Mail over the ODM and has met with both the owner Křetínský and UK Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle.
The CWU says “if required” it would take industrial action, including strike action, to prevent the new model being implemented.
Anderson reiterated that he believed the ultimate objective was to abandon letter deliveries and concentrate only on parcels “as that’s where the money is”.
This would see letter deliveries returned to government hands to be subsidised by the taxpayer, while private business took the profitable parcel service.
The CWU says if letter deliveries were ditched, then the postal system would become “like the wild west”. Anderson said that as the Labour government “sanctioned” Křetínský’s takeover “they have to step up, step in and sort this out”.
However, he added: “Though tell me a government that has rowed back on capitalism? If we continue on this path there will be no service.”
The CWU also speculates that the entire Scottish service could be jettisoned due to the additional costs involved in deliveries north of the Border. The Royal Mail, Anderson claims, “could easily say: we aren’t delivering for the same money in Scotland as we are down south due to geographical spread, transport, rural issues”.
Over a decade ago, management made it clear to the union, the CWU claims, that “the Scotland side of the Royal Mail wasn’t profitable and they’d get rid of it in a heartbeat if they could”.
There was some speculation at the time about the possibility of the Holyrood government being allowed to take over responsibility for the Scottish service.
Anderson said that in terms of the “crisis” facing the Royal Mail, the Scottish Government “should be shouting about this from the rooftops given there’s an election on the horizon”.
The CWU added that in its opinion the regulator Ofcom “is not delivering for the people”. The regulator was also accused of undermining the role of postal workers.
Anderson said: “We understand that we need to change the Royal Mail to get a better delivery service.” That needs to be worked on “together”, with staff and management on the same side. He claimed all management “is bothered about is parcels”.
He added: “If this service collapses, it is going to impact so many people.” The CWU estimates the Royal Mail has between two and five years before it folds.
One postal worker said: “Most of us thought we’d retire in this job. We don’t think that any more. This used to be a good job. It wasn’t the best money, but the conditions were good. Nobody says that now. People are looking for a way out. That’s why new staff don’t last.”
Anderson says there’s also an effective recruitment freeze as well as an overtime ban. “It’s a perfect storm,” he added. “It’s just asking for trouble.”
Right of reply
A ROYAL Mail spokesperson said: “We know how important it is that customers receive their mail as expected, and recent UK-wide figures show 92% of letters arriving on time.
“We take our role in supporting elections extremely seriously and have well-established processes in place, working with partners to prioritise postal votes and ensure they are delivered securely. We reject claims that postal services in Scotland pose any risk to the delivery of election material.
“Pilots of changes to the Universal Service have shown improvements in service levels and efficiency, including during peak periods, and we believe these changes will help deliver a more reliable service for customers.”
On the issue of the prioritisation of parcels, the Royal Mail said that its “aim is always to deliver both letters and parcels on time. Parcels now make up a much larger share of the mail we handle and take up far more space than letters.
“Many delivery offices were designed when letters were the main item, so large volumes of parcels can quickly fill the space. When parcels build up they can block walkways and create health and safety risks, so they sometimes need to be cleared first to keep offices safe and keep mail moving through the network.
“Ofcom recognises that there are occasions when prioritising parcels is necessary as part of contingency planning.”
An Ofcom spokesperson said: “If other delivery firms use Royal Mail’s network, they pay Royal Mail for that. Royal Mail sets these prices, not Ofcom.”
