Royal Mail workers are on strike today and will walk out again next Tuesday in their dispute over change which the company says is vital to deliver the service which businesses and consumers demand in today’s world.
While many are striking over Pay (and Royal Mail have separate strike days asking for a massive bump in pay for which the CWU have a second strike ballot), today is about change to how Royal Mail want to operate. Posties don’t want to start and finish work 3 hours later than they currently do, don’t want to work shorter hours in the summer balanced with longer hours in the winter when it’s busier, and don’t want to work one Sunday in four.
The CWU say that changes will mean Posties working during dark evenings in Winter and in Summer will be walking their rounds in the heat of the day – and if future summers are anything like this year we all know how cripplingly hot the heat wave was.
Balance that with just about ever other carrier and ecommerce demands later deliveries so that parcels shipped in the early evening can be delivered next day and consumers are now accustomed to parcels arriving 7 days a week. While the CWU want to protect the Universal Service which the Royal Mail are obligated to delivery, Royal Mail now consider themselves a parcel company that also delivers letters and their parcel service is falling woefully behind their competitors.
What this means for you in the short term, is anything posted yesterday won’t be delivered today (Thursday) Anything you wanted to ship today won’t move until Friday tomorrow, and just as the Royal Mail network starts to recover on Monday it will start all over again as Posties walk out again next Tuesday.
Royal Mail’s main response so far has been to change the company name to Universal Distributions Network, say that GLS profits won’t be used to subsidise Royal Mail and threaten to split the businesses, rip up agreements with the Union and announce that 10,000 jobs will be lost.
If your business depends on Royal Mail, seeking ways to change your inventory to make using other carriers cost effective has to be a priority.
2 Responses
Has anyone asked the public if they want Sunday deliveries? I for one don’t.
When will you start sending those “news” on time?!?! What’s the point to send them day later?!?!
Back to Royal Mail – they should shift delivery of the parcels to evening hours – most people work during the day – it would save a lot of time and money.
Then – introduce 5kg 50cm cube for £5 – they have vans anyway – this would kill all competitors overnight…