From the Records -EXPERIENCE IN ROYAL MAIL, LONDON

 EXPERIENCE IN ROYAL MAIL, LONDON

The Ten members delegation consisting DDG (Est), Director (SR), Secretary General NFPE and four General secretaries from NFPE (P3,P4,R3,R4), three General secretaries from FNPO (P3,P4,R4) were deputed to London to study the functioning of Royal Mail, United Kingdom from 18.10.2010 to 22.10.2010 by the Department of Posts.

Our experience in the Royal Mail, London and its functioning is furnished below in short notes for the consumption of all members and readers.

Infrastructure: - Royal Mail is a Public limited company under the Government service and is responsible for collection and delivery of articles in U.K. There are 1400 Delivery post offices in UK. The total number of employees is about 1,68,000 which includes regular, contract and casual workers. 70% of the workforce is delivery staff. Apart from delivery post offices there are 10505 post offices and the total number of post offices in existence as on today is 11905. There are 450000 collection centers and 37 million delivery points. 33000 vehicles, 29 Aircrafts, 64 exclusive trains and 27000 bicycles are put into use for the Royal Mail service. 71 million items are being handled every day by these post offices. 120 million customers are approximately on the roll. The Royal Mail is handling about 400 million parcels. Royal Mail is still the national postal service under the Government.

Royal Mail has been segregated in to four independent functions.

1.      Post offices – Handling letters, Packets, retails post

2.      World parcel Force – Exclusive dealing of Parcels. But no logistics. Divided in to two segments; one for European Ground parcels & others.

3.      Mail centre – Collecting all mails, sorting dispatching to respective delivery offices.

4.      Delivery offices – Exclusive dealing of delivery work.

Post offices- Mail & Delivery: Royal Mail which was a loss making organization during 2001-2002 has now earning 30% profit. Its approximate revenue is 6.564 million pounds and now the profit works out to 121 million pounds. There are 1,15,000 pillar letter boxes are available for public in UK.64 Mail centers are in operation besides one Prime Hub situated at Coventry where concentration of all mails collected and sorted through mechanized process.

There are 1390 delivery post offices. 99% of the articles are delivered only by Royal Mail. Couriers are only collecting, processing and handing over the articles to Royal Mail and delivery of mails is exclusively carried by the Royal Mail only. There are 29,900 vehicles for transportation of mails and articles and 31 million items are handled every day. 82% of the mails are walk sorted (beat sorting) by the 368 new and upgraded machines which has saved 3000 postmen staff. First class mails will be delivered D+1 and packets D+3.There is only one delivery uniformly in the entire Royal Mail starts at 09.30 hrs.

Because of the modernization and introduction of sorting machines, 40,000 employees were retrenched. However this transformation was possible only with the support of the Postal union. Minimum wage for the last category i.e. casual workers is 8 pounds per hour. Three shift systems is in existence and the working hours is 6 hours per shift.

Apart from Royal Mail, there is three other areas being look after under the Royal Mail Group Limited which in turn operates the following brands.

1.      Parcel Force Worldwide

2.      Post offices Limited

3.      General Logistics Systems

Parcel Force Worldwide: This is having the profit of 4.2%. Total number of employees working this area is 4,434. There are two Hubs and 47 depots and five satellites. There are 1800 vehicles exclusively using for the transportation of parcels. The average daily handling of parcels will be 2,05,000 and during Christmas seasons it will be around 2,72,000 articles every day.

Post offices- counters: Post offices are exclusively dealing all financial, travel, banking, telephone, bill payments, Govt information, retail and secure transportation of cash etc. Even the mortgage of properties and house developing and marketing are handled across the post office counters. This is earning a profit of 17.8% of income. There are 373 crown post offices and 11905 branch offices. The post offices are having the regular staff strength of 8209. The motto as described for Post office is “The people’s post office always socially and commercially relevant by providing essential services for a fair return”. Thus the post offices are purely commercially oriented rather than keeping the service as people’s service.

European Ground parcels (General Logistics System): It earns 7% profit. There are 38 hubs and 665 depots for processing the articles. 16,950 vehicles are being used for transportation of articles over 36 states in the Europe. 12885 employees are deployed to handle the work. 

Reforms and aftermath: - In U.K. the reforms in the postal sector began in 2006 three years ahead of other European countries. The Postal Services Act 2000 has removed the monopoly of postal services for Royal Mail and the regulatory authority (Post Comm) has granted licences to other couriers. There are 50 Licenced Mail operators including Royal Mail in the service in which Royal Mail claims the market share of 75%. Universal Service obligation is applicable only for Royal Mail and but for that it lost 100 million pounds during 2009-10. No subsidy is granted by the Govt to meet the USO obligation. The postal tariff is fixed by the regulatory authority (Post Comm) only.

Royal Mail proposes to close 2500 post offices which they could not implement since Govt and politician are sensitive to customer facilities and all lobbying ended with futile results. All the centers are fully automated or computerized. The letter sorting machine has a maximum capacity of sorting 40000 letters per hour.

The Royal Mail motto indicates “a commercial business with a social purpose” and “Quality first and value for the money & security”. It is told that the reforms & liberalization has resulted in more efficiency, better service standards, competition, stimulating innovation, reducing prices, quality improvement, and more choice to the public and providing level playing field for all competitors.

In U.K, the post office was first corporatized in 1970 and the telecom was separated during 1976. In 1985, the creation of business units like Royal Mail, Parcel force, Counters, Giro bank etc were made. The Giro bank was subsequently sold during 1990. The Postal service Act was promulgated in 2000 and “thereafter the competition started due to the licensing. The UK Government is further proposing to intensify the postal reforms under” Forward 5 -11 programme.”

Union in Royal Mail & its roll: - The meeting with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) representatives was most informative and cordial. The CWU, the only one union in the Royal Mail was formed on 26.1.1995 as the result of merger of the National Communications Union (NCU) and the Union of Communication Workers (UCW). The CWU is the sixth largest union in Britain. The management and functioning of the union is in a most democratic manner. Strike Ballot is compulsory for calling an industrial action and 51% votes in favour strike is a must for the direct action.

 Annual conferences are held at all levels. Election of office bearers is only by means of secret ballot. CWU has 87 Postal branches and 73 Telecom branches. Postal membership is 148597 and Telecom membership is 74121. The last industrial action took place during 2009.1% of Pay is the Union subscription prescribed.

CWU – The Role and deeds: - The leaders pointed out that because of the transformation and modernization, around 50000 posts were abolished resulting in the 2009 strike. Recovery to the extent of 6% will be made from the employees towards pension contribution and the 20% will be remitted by the employer every month to the Pension fund. The present minimum wage per hour is 8 pounds. Wage revision is being carried out every year through bilateral discussions. The CWU representatives made it clear that they strongly oppose any move of the Government to privatize the Royal Mail either by selling shares or by outright sale to any private postal giants.

The workers of the Royal Mail have full political freedom and the CWU leadership at present is moving hands with British Labour Party. Members can have their own political freedom to join any party of their choice that will not attract any conduct rules as if available in our country.

Best Example: - It is worth mentioning here, that the Royal Mails pays maximum attention for customer satisfaction and is very much concerned with the quality and security of services. Premises of all the centres are kept neat and tidy and state of the art facilities are provided to the public. While discharging the corporate social responsibility in a most commendable manner, they are equally concerned with Revenue protection. Every safeguard is taken to prevent revenue leakage and they are updating the technology for preventing revenue leakage. In west London delivery centre, it is seen in the notice board that delivery complaints received this year to Royal Mail to the extent of 236 is very heavy and this should be avoided. We are surprised to see the sensitive note exhibited by the Royal Mail in the office notice board and its concern with customers and complaints.

All Rosy Pictures? - The above information’s were collected from the interaction we had with several officers of the Royal Mail and also with the representatives of Communication Workers Union. However, it is alarming to learn that the Royal Mail decided to close nine Mail centers including the Hubs in the recent days. The British Government now proposes to privatise the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union is seeking 10% shares of the Royal Mail to go to its workers. The reason for privatization is stated to be as the deficit of 8 billion pounds pension deficit could not be managed. The Government maintains that only privatization will provide new funds to complete the remaining modernization of the service and reduce the burden on the tax payer.

Retrograde: - Meanwhile, the Government come forward to allow Royal Mail to drop its guarantee to deliver post anywhere in U. K. six days a week if it becomes too costly. So it decided to come out from the Universal Postal service obligation and number of day’s delivery may be reduced. In rural areas, public can hereafter receive their posts only three days a week.

Now the Communication Workers Union has given a statement by attacking the Previous Labour Government for the disastrous way it introduced competition into the Postal industry which had allowed competitors to take 60% of the Royal Mail profitable business.

From the above, it could be evident that only rosy picture had been shown to the Indian delegation at the time of its visit but the reality is otherwise. Whether such type of privatization, reducing the number of days in delivery in a week, closure of offices could be allowed only due to the modernization and its after effect and also due to non providing of adequate quantum of work.

India Post – Really Supreme: - To sum up, whether it is possible to implement such huge mechanization in India? Where is the required vacant land and infrastructure? Let us now think whether the Department can be allowed to purchase adequate MMS vehicles required for transportation of mails. Under this situation, such kind of reforms may take very many years for implementation in our country. We should not forget the aftermath of complete modernization carried out in Royal Mail which could not fed the requirements and decided to close down mail offices and hubs resulting to privatization of service curtailing the delivery and other services to public. In our opinion, our India Post is number one and if the required modernization and infrastructure provided, it will provide better service than the ‘Royal Mail’, since our Postal workers are duty conscious. Workers are ready to adopt such changes but it shall be beneficial to the country men and also to the workers. We are in fact in many ways providing better service despite constraints and lack of infrastructures.

An Opportunity: - In short, the visit to Royal Mail provided us an opportunity to understand the developments that are taking place in the Postal Sector in a most advanced and developed nation like Britain and especially in London. While opposing the unbridled reforms and liberalization, there are of course, certain positive aspects which are to be deliberated upon, before putting it into practice in our country.

The Pleasant Moment: - The delegation had an opportunity to visit some important tourist attractions of city of London like Tower of London, Museums London Eye etc. We had the opportunity to visit the High Gate Cemetery, London where the greatest philosopher of working class Karl Marx (1818-1883) was laid to rest. We paid respectful homage to this greatest revolutionary who changed the world order by calling upon “workers of the lands to unite”. This is the most inspiring and memorable moment for us.

- Kayveeyes, General Secretary