More than warm words

Despite a drop in overall revenue caused in part by a fall in the number of letters Britons sent, the Royal Mail had a successful Christmas, with Royal Mail CEO Moya Greene praising staff today (January 19) for their service over the festive period.

“We delivered a great service at Christmas, even better than last year, with 138m parcels handled in December alone,” Greene noted. “Our comprehensive planning, which started much earlier this year, enabled us to deliver this service for our customers across the UK.”

She thanked the postmen for their hard work, highlighting the extended opening hours and nine temporary parcel sort centres staffed successfully over Christmas.

But her warm words fell flat, as Royal Mail workers now may face cuts to their pensions – some may see their retirement income cut by half.

Management is now in the midst of a consultation process with Unite and other unions and their members over changes to pensions. The consultation is set to end in March.

As threats to members’ pensions loom, the Royal Mail trumpeted the dividends employees, who are also shareholders, will receive – despite the fact that the amount they may get from dividends pales in comparison to the amount they may lose out from pensions cuts.

Unite officer for the Royal Mail Brian Scott hailed the hard work of Royal Mail staff.

“This trading update issued by Royal Mail today confirms the hard work and commitment of our members to deliver a good service to the public in the run up to Christmas,” he said.

“However, it is extremely disappointing that Royal Mail is boasting about paying employee £500 in dividends when at the same time they are seeking to close their pension scheme which will cost those same employees thousands of pounds in hard earned pension benefits.”

Earlier this month Scott said that since the pensions consultation had just begun it was “too early to make any pronouncements on industrial action”, but he warned that “if the company does not respond positively on this and other issues we cannot rule this out.”

Unite has about 6,000 members working for the Royal Mail that is now a privately-owned company, following its controversial sell-off by the coalition government after five centuries of state ownership.