Royal Mail and the future of the universal service obligation : A Westminster Hall debate

[norris9]

Can an agreement between the CWU and Royal Mail even be made when the government are taking forever to decide what to do with the USO and whether Royal Mail can go down to a 5 day service.

How can any revisions start when this has yet to be decided.

[postslippete]

Can't you see though that things are not going back to the good old days. That ended when we were privatised. We had no say in that. As a business, you make money or go bust. We are going to struggle to compete with all the other delivery companies whilst we are providing a free service in the form of the USO. Gotta ask yourself, do you want less workforce in a job or soldier on and everyone is out of a job?

The USO is not a free service and at least 40% of our revenue comes from letters. Postage prices have also increased yet again this year. In its current form we make money from delivering both parcels AND letters and our business has been massively profitable.

The only thing that will soldier everyone out of job in the long run is what the Royal Mail board are doing because they are trying to get rid of your existing terms and conditions, giving you less pay and trying to force you to do more work in return.

If we just delivered letters and no pkts , there's no way a profit would be made.

And if we only deliver packets, without picking up the all that revenue that we currently get on letters, theres also no way a profit would be made.

The USO is a contractual obligation for Royal Mail to deliver letters 6 days a week, it is not a FREE service that we provide although what Royal Mail want is to be able to charge our customers more and deliver on less days when it comes to letters.

[k979aaa]

The fact of the matter is the system was set up to make letters unprofitable ie the Downstream Service Access or DSA providers were and are milking the cow that is Royal Mail.
This is unsustainable they the DSA companies should pay a fair price to sustain the USO so communities don't suffer a lack of service due to them cherry picking up business.
Fine if they want to compete and set up their own delivery service on the same regulatory basis.
We all know that letters are declining but are no less important most of the stuff is DSA and they could sue the whole business but alas the clown is still in charge tonight.

[rambo1]

Can't you see though that things are not going back to the good old days. That ended when we were privatised. We had no say in that. As a business, you make money or go bust. We are going to struggle to compete with all the other delivery companies whilst we are providing a free service in the form of the USO. Gotta ask yourself, do you want less workforce in a job or soldier on and everyone is out of a job?

The USO is not a free service and at least 40% of our revenue comes from letters. Postage prices have also increased yet again this year. In its current form we make money from delivering both parcels AND letters and our business has been massively profitable.

The only thing that will soldier everyone out of job in the long run is what the Royal Mail board are doing because they are trying to get rid of your existing terms and conditions, giving you less pay and trying to force you to do more work in return.

If we just delivered letters and no pkts , there's no way a profit would be made.

And if we only deliver packets, without picking up the all that revenue that we currently get on letters, theres also no way a profit would be made.

The USO is a contractual obligation for Royal Mail to deliver letters 6 days a week, it is not a FREE service that we provide although what Royal Mail want is to be able to charge our customers more and deliver on less days when it comes to letters.

I meant by 'free' that the revenue we get from letters does not make a profit. GLS subsidise us at the moment.

[postslippete]

The fact of the matter is the system was set up to make letters unprofitable ie the Downstream Service Access or DSA providers were and are milking the cow that is Royal Mail.
This is unsustainable they the DSA companies should pay a fair price to sustain the USO so communities don't suffer a lack of service due to them cherry picking up business.
Fine if they want to compete and set up their own delivery service on the same regulatory basis.
We all know that letters are declining but are no less important most of the stuff is DSA and they could sue the whole business but alas the clown is still in charge tonight.

Whilst there is no doubt that DSA providers were set up to ensure that Royal Mail does not have a full monopoly on the processing of letters. If you check through some of OfCom's earlier reports Royal Mail actually received most of the income that a customer pays for downstream access mail (it used to be about 90%). But I do agree with you our letters business can be even more profitable than it is now but Royal Mail absolutely hate having no real control over it.

[k979aaa]

The fact of the matter is the system was set up to make letters unprofitable ie the Downstream Service Access or DSA providers were and are milking the cow that is Royal Mail.
This is unsustainable they the DSA companies should pay a fair price to sustain the USO so communities don't suffer a lack of service due to them cherry picking up business.
Fine if they want to compete and set up their own delivery service on the same regulatory basis.
We all know that letters are declining but are no less important most of the stuff is DSA and they could sue the whole business but alas the clown is still in charge tonight.

Whilst there is no doubt that DSA providers were set up to ensure that Royal Mail does not have a full monopoly on the processing of letters. If you check through some of OfCom's earlier reports Royal Mail actually received most of the income that a customer pays for downstream access mail (it used to be about 90%). But I do agree with you our letters business can be even more profitable than it is now but Royal Mail absolutely hate having no real control over it.

Well the final mile is the killer ie fuel costs and urban charges ie travel tax and ULEZ zones it takes investment and that is a cost.