BREAKING: CWU make further attempt to resolve ongoing Royal Mail Group with offer of urgent negotiations 27/11/22

🚨 BREAKING: CWU make further attempt to resolve ongoing Royal Mail Group with offer of urgent negotiations.

The ball is firmly in the court of Royal Mail Group CEO, Simon Thompson.

Please share the letter below as far and wide as possible.

…….

Dear Simon

As you know your proposed agreement has been unanimously rejected by the union’s Postal Executive.

The number of job losses associated with your plans for the future are completely unacceptable and represent the biggest assault on any group of UK workers in decades.

Only 18 months ago your employees and our members were praised as key workers that kept the country and the company going during the pandemic. It is outrageous that you now want to force through mass job losses, including compulsory redundancies, as part of what can only be described as an asset stripping plan.

It is also totally immoral and potentially illegal, for you and the Board to implement these proposals by choosing to simultaneously recruit unlimited numbers of self- employed drivers and new entrants on significantly inferior pay, terms and conditions, rather than retaining loyal and hardworking Royal Mail employees who still want a job.

There is no union or worker in the country that would accept this position.

Your proposals will also lead to the destruction of a 500-hundred-year old public service and the end of the Royal Mail brand as we know it.
Imposing up to 3 hour later starts means you are abandoning the a.m. delivery period, forever denying the opportunity to develop new products and services. This amounts to the company deliberately running down customer services and turning Royal Mail into just another gig economy employer.

On pay, you keep claiming that what you are offering is worth 9%, you know this is not true and our members have seen right through it.

It is now incumbent upon you to re-engage in intensive negotiations with the union to resolve this dispute – this is what your employees, our members and the public expect of the CEO. Nothing else can be more important. This means you personally investing the time required to reach agreement. No more picking and choosing when you attend the negotiations.

The CWU remains committed to a negotiated settlement and will make ourselves available for talks later today and on Monday and Tuesday.

During our ACAS talks, the union put forward an alternative plan for the future, which you and your team acknowledged had a lot of merit. It was also stated by your team that the RMG Board had a similar view. We now want to put our plan in front of the RMG Board and I will be writing separately to the Chair Keith Williams and all Board members on this.

In the meantime, let’s talk later today and make ourselves available as soon as possible for further direct negotiations or talks facilitated by ACAS.

Yours sincerely

Dave Ward
General Secretary

CC: Marina Glasgow, Keith Williams and Stuart McDonald