David Lock

Now I am missing something here so please put me straight.

I understand that Crozier is CEO at the Royal Mail.

But he seems not to have played any part in negotiations with the unions over this strike. I naively thought that the CEO had the job of keeping the place running smoothly. Isn't that why he is paid £3.5m per year?

Or is he just in bed with Mandelson (horrible thought) who seems to have his own agenda?

Confused of Sussex

Funkii Munkii

He's just another golden boy that goes from one highly paid job to another without any direction making a mess of things as he goes along.

Expect him to be out of that job within the next 2 years with another hefty pay off

NotoriousREV

His job is to squeeze the maximum revenue form the company and realise as large a profit as possible. He plans to do this through modernisation that will cost jobs. The Union don't want this to happen. In fact, I think the Union would be happiest if we went back to the stagecoach and horses to deliver mail.

Holding back the tide of modernisation is never going to happen, the Union should be concentrating on ensuring that those staff that will be affected get the best deal possible.

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

Right lets get this straight, Crozier earns 1.5 million a year (how that halfwit can be paid more than the prime minister is beyond me) plus because Royal Mail went into the black for the first time in god knows how many years he gets £3 million bonus, when Allen Leighton was in charge he promised an above inflation pay rise for Postal Workers, Croziers answer th that was well Mr. Leighton is no longer in charge, I am, the top ten excutives from Royal mail got in bonus's £10 million between them whilst the postal worker didn't get a pay rise at all, now if he wanted to keep the company in the black and the postal workers didn't get a pay rise or bonus why should Crozier and his side kicks, plus a deal was on the table Tuesday night to call of strikes, and Wednesday morning Royal Mail cancelled it, So you tell me who is too blame??
Cheers
Colin

David Lock

OK. But that still hasn't answered my basic question of why he keeping out of all this mess.

I accept that he is there to squeeze as much money from the group as he can (technically, but not morally, as I am a bit of a lefty ). But he seems happy to let the Royal Mail self-destruct which doesn't auger well for future profits.

I also think that there are super opportunities for them to exploit - for example connect with the growth in deliveries of stuff bought on the 'net. Amazon and the like use other couriers but there aren't many around, at present, who will deliver a package in Truro which was posted in John Groats. Just needs some lateral thinking surely. TNT, City Link and the rest don't have an outlet in every town and many villages like the PO which is a fantastic plus for them. And they are going to lose the lot

David

Devildog

The unions are to blame Colin.

When Leighton was in charge The Royal Mail was loss making. What he promised is quite correctly not relevant under a new management structure.

Answer me this - how many postmen and women are employed by the Royal Mail?

And what's the average wage?

I accept that in isolation it seems inequitable that the executives receive £10m in bonuses and the postal workers don't get a pay rise, however the reality is that bonuses are not automatically recurring whereas payrises add costs for every subsequent year in terms of not just direct salary cost, but also in terms of employers NIC, pension and benefit costs.

And in an organisation the size of the Royal Mail, £10m spread throughout the entire properly performing workforce even over one year would be inconsequential in the average postal workers take home wage.

And the unions would have called a strike anyway.

And that's before we get to the point that to strike now, at this time of year, under difficult trading conditions will create zero public sympathy, create animosity amongs all those thousands of businesses that rely on the Royal Mail for deliveries resulting in their seeking alternate carriers.

Its not just akin to collectively shooting yourselves in the foot, more like the head.

"Your" unions are not looking at this long term, appear to have no one's interest at heart but their own, and are causing more damage than good.

Turbo2

As the guy who hired Sven Goran-Eriksson, he must have learnt a fair bit from him about screwing his staff!

james04

jobs for the boys, does adam crozier have any thing to do with the F.A any more? he messed that up

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Nail hit firmly on head. Pity they are too stupid to see it!

CrisPDuk

This government have been trying to run the Post Office down pretty much since the took power, which is why they have been placing increasing numbers of restrictions on what can, and can't be sold over the counter at local POs

Probably so that one of Mandy's private sector cronies can buy all or part of the company at a bargain price


Whilst a portion of the blame for the current situation can be placed squarely at the doors of the unions, I do believe that the 'shop floor' level employees do have a genuine claim.

As for Modernisation, we now have a Police Service, an Education System and an Immigration System that have all been streamlined and modernised under the current regime
Do we really want a Post Office that has undergone the same process

Hanley

It's simple....open up the 'last mile' monopoly Royal Mail still holds and see how long they last.

I read somewhere TNT have been trialling delivering to the door in a few cities...start of the end for RM?

Andy-C

Opening up the 'last mile' would be great for companies like TNT, Citylink etc to cherry pick the most densely populated areas to maximise profit, however your poor aunt Edna who lives in the sticks 10 miles from the nearest delivery office, who has only 1 letter a day delivered will be shafted as she would have to go to the delivery office to pick it up. No profit to be made there you see. That would then trickle down to all non-business mail as profit rules. Royal Mail currently will deliver to ANY address in the UK, not just cherry pick the profitable ones as private companies would.

GC8

None of these firms will take a letter from Devon to Midlothian, let alone Scilly Isels to Orkney Islands for the price of a first class stamp, so the RM dont have as much to worry aboutas people suggest. If others are allowed to cherry pick the business that subsidises this theyll be f*cked though.....

[-(o)-]

iTrader: (1)

All they're doing is damage to their Business customers. Customers who themselves are facing increased workloads and little if any pay increases.

And what was all that about the Managers Union refusing to do any distribution/delivery work? These ex-nationalised 'companies' never get it do they?

BLU

iTrader: (27)

Well lets give you people a postie view eh.

As a postie for nearly 11 years I have watched the slow destruction of Royal mail first hand. We had a revision in our office under the 'way forward' agreement (about 5 years ago) which meant all the walks were streamlined using a computer programme called pegasus, that RM management swear by. This equalled all the walks in our office to 3.30 mins delivery time (yeah right ). Add the indoor prep and travelling time to the equation and we have our 8 hour day. Now bear in mind that this computer programme which works in an 'ideal' world where no one gets packets and everybody gets exactly the same mail every day. Straight away you can see the flaws. Anyway we ironed out our office (what they call working at local level) so that everyone was on average working their contracted hours and everyone had fairly equal workload. Anyway cut a long one short, they came back two years ago and using the same programme (under a diff name which escapes me at the min) wanted to remove even more jobs putting the workload evenly around the office. (this programme removed 7 jobs and despite our mail volumes staying the same the work still took the same time ) Now bear in mind we are already working our full hours with a lot of staff working 'extended overtime' hours on busy days (wed, thur, fri & sat usually) so our office was at full capacity. We argued that this would not work for two years until they decided to bring the changes in using executive action (ie management imposed the changes) Our office is now 10 weeks into our 'revision' and is still in bits which proves we were right argue over the cuts. We have four staff working nights as overtime on top of approx 10 agency staff picking up the bits that the regular staff can't complete!! This is on top of the same amount of staff that were already in the office. Can someone tell me where the modernisation and savings are to be seen?? Coz I certainly can't see it. If anything its been a step backwards!! It has been estimated that it will take approx 3 years for our office to make back what they have spent out trying to sort this mess out. Proof in itself that RM couldn't give a **** about its workforce or its customers

So to those who blame the union think again. We've been in talks over this for two years now and really this is the only option. Believe me being out of pocket is the last thing any of us want.

Also the union and RM negotiation team came to an agreement which would have called the strike off but 'the minister without responsiblity' (Mandelson) and Crozier back heeled it. Proof that Royal Mail are't interested in coming to an agreement.

Turbo2

Why does everyone keep banging on about the Lands' End to John O'Groats postage scenario? How many of you have actually done this? At least 99% of my domestic mail never travels (intentionally ) more than 200 miles, so the RM can happiliy take the rough with the smooth IMO. There are far larger countries out there whose postal systems offer exactly the same service as ours without recourse to bleeting on about distances.

On another point though, do we really want countless extra vans from other companies clogging up our streets whilst delivering mail to our doors?

One thing is for sure though: the RM is going down the pan.

BLU

iTrader: (27)

Which is what our union is doing. The 'modernisation' (sorry destruction) that RM are on about is completely unworkable and unreasonable. (Hence the need for strike action) The fact that 76% of our workforce voted for this must say something. Plus where has all the money that was meant to be invested in machinery gone, coz I can tell you it aint on machinery.............

CaptainJohn

I understand the Posties point of view and agree they are getting shafted and I also understand the other points of view shared by the general public who simply want all their mail delivered efficiently and on time. But looking at this from a purely business point of view I think that the CWU have fallen into the governments trap , they wanted the strike as somebody rightly said in a previous post "Mandelson and Crozier back heeled it". They want profit and "modernization" ASAP. So they are doing exactly what has happened many times before e.g British steel and British Coal. Drive the workers down as far as possible so they have no option but to fight , cause an acrimonious strike , get the public on their side , drag the strike out , wade in as White knights to save the British postal system for the people and get what they want = massive job cuts and a modernized and privatised Royal Mail. Job done on the cheap without massive severance payouts. The CWU are in catch 22 and are going to lose big style whatever they do. It will get nasty and massive job cuts and the end of the Royal mail as we know it are looming.

ronjeramy

iTrader: (1)

The problem with Royal Mail is the government want to run it as a business and make a profit out of it, but not reinvest it, rather than it being a service that the public need. TNT etc don't have the infrastructure or the man power to deliver letters, how do you think they deliver your Barclays banks statements etc? Royal Mail are forced to, at a loss, due to the government/EU meddling.

LanCat

There are about 120,000 people employed in delivery operations. To assume they are all hard working, dedicated staff like blu scoob says he is just plain wrong.
Many know how to "play the game" and work for less than a full day because their work duties are complete and they won't carry out other duties. The problem is that this behaviour and the working practices like this need to change if RM are to survive.

The management are hopeless too. Those at the top have no idea. Lower down the management tree there are a lot of people who give a damn and want to make a difference but the top layers are just as stuck in the past as some of the operations staff who won't change.

The root of the problem isn't Crozier, he's not that important.

In RM if you want to look for the problem then stop at Mark Higson and ask some questions.

Another problem is the regulator. Postcomm were to be wound up if the partial privatisation had gone ahead earlier this year to be replaced by Ofcom. This would have been worth accepting an external partner for. Postcomm and EU rules have brought so many problems.

Finally, the tories. Yep all that time ago when they were in power. They caused the pension deficit. This is holding back the right investment that RM needs.

There is no competition. There never will be. No-one else wants to deliver to all 26 million addresses in the UK. RM has to do that for them. At a loss. While putting money in the foreign pockets of DHL, TNT and others. It's a shame.

scud8

iTrader: (1)

Whoever negotiated the deal with UK Mail to provide "downstream access" to Royal Mail delivery services in such a way that RM now loses money on every item it delivers is ultimately to blame. I don't know whether this was Crozier, Higson or a predecessor - but whoever it was is a moron for not structuring the deal in a way that protected RM against falling volumes. Now RM is left in a position with revenues dependent on declining volumes, a significant chunk of their costs dependent on increasing address that must be served, and forced to subsidise their competitors to the tune of 1.5p per item of mail.

The senior management clearly don't want to own up to this because it will make them look bad - so they are thrashing around trying to find ways of reducing costs way beyond what is sensible or sustainable.

Something I hadn't realised until today was that the original deal with UK Mail was not forced by the regulator (although they did review it and approve it) - it was entered into freely by RM management. This then set a precedent for the deal with TNT.