Ofcom’s “investigation” into Royal Mail: A cover for sabotaging the Universal Service Obligation

[stage3]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/0 ... -m27.html

Tony Robson

On May 23, regulator Ofcom announced an investigation into Royal Mail’s continued failure to meet statutory delivery targets for First and Second Class mail during 2024/25. These Quality of Service (QoS) targets have been ignored for years.

Postal workers won’t be taken in. They have demanded action against the management policy of prioritising more profitable parcels over letters—a practice institutionalised with the complicity of Communication Workers Union (CWU) leaders Dave Ward and Martin Walsh.


Riverside House, Bankside, London. Home of OFCOM offices [Photo by Jim Linwood / CC BY 2.0]
Ofcom’s investigation is not an act of enforcement but a smokescreen for the dismantling the Universal Service Obligation (USO)—the legal requirement to deliver letters six days a week to every UK address at a fixed price and parcels over five days.

Royal Mail delivered only 76.5 percent of First Class mail within one day—well below the 93 percent target—and 92.2 percent of Second Class mail, versus the required 98.5 percent. This is the third consecutive year of systemic failure. Ofcom’s threat of a fine follows token penalties of £5.6 million and £10.5 million in 2023 and 2024—paltry amounts for a company being restructured to gouge out hundreds of millions in profit.

The CWU is fully aligned with Ofcom, Royal Mail, the Labour government and billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group in a joint enterprise to gut the USO under the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM). This is to transform Royal Mail into a low-cost parcel courier by slashing jobs, pay, and working conditions.

USO breaches: engineered decline
Royal Mail’s failures are in fact a policy of engineered decline. The company flouts its obligations while Ofcom issues meaningless fines to maintain the pretence of oversight and regulation.

The collapse of the mail service is accompanied by an assault on postal workers, who face staff shortages, overwork, and burnout. The CWU sellout agreement in July 2023 ending the year-long national dispute opened the floodgates for a historic attack on hard won rights, including slashing company sick pay, and implementing a two-tier workforce with new entrants on vastly inferior pay and terms. Royal Mail thanked the CWU for achieving the biggest revision in its history, based on the cost cutting drive to cull duties and expand workloads.

In Shetland, some delivery workers report 70-hour weeks to cover around 25 percent of unfilled vacancies. School children have been used to sort mail on Saturdays, according to local press. This is the sharpest expression of a crisis afflicting 1,200 delivery units across the UK.

Tasked with upholding the USO, Ofcom is laying the groundwork for corporate restructuring in league with Křetínský and the Starmer government. Its 2024 “Call for Inputs” branded six-day delivery an “unfair financial burden.”


Before its sham consultation over “USO reform” ended in April, Ofcom had already endorsed Royal Mail’s ODM in a 198-page January report. It proposed watering down First Class next-day delivery targets from 93 percent to 90 percent, and extended delivery windows--First Class up to three days, Second Class up to five. Its justification? That the USO “over caters for the reasonable needs of users as a whole.”

Ofcom’s objective is clear: to enable, by its own estimates, between £250–£425 million in structural cost cuts—a windfall for EP Group.

Walsh and the CWU apparatus welcomed Ofcom’s report, using it to browbeat postal workers. They told members to abandon a “romantic view” of public service, citing letter volume decline from 20 billion in 2004–05 to 6.7 billion in 2023–24 as justification. But Royal Mail has been allowed to flout this still major public need for a reliable mail service.

The CWU has not issued a public statement on Royal Mail’s breach of the USO for a third year running. But watchdog Citizens Advice explained, “Our research has shown the damaging consequences of late post, like missed health appointments, fines, bills and vital government communications.”

ODM: delivering profits, not letters
ODM is the tool to dismantle the USO. It underpins the “pilot” schemes launched in February at 37 delivery offices, secretly agreed by Walsh and Royal Mail last December. Their impact is being concealed to rubber-stamp imposition nationally.

ODM scraps fixed duties, extends weekday hours, and expands delivery spans. Parcel prioritisation is being formalised, with six-day delivery for parcels, while Saturday deliveries are ended and reduced to alternate weekday for all letters except for First Class.

On April 30, EP Group finalised its £3.6 billion takeover of Royal Mail. Křetínský is an asset-stripper, transforming Royal Mail into a logistics firm run on skeleton staff, backed by automation and intensified exploitation. ODM and USO “reform” seeks to complete Royal Mail’s transformation into a logistics empire, the “Amazon of Europe.” Through its takeover of Royal Mail and parent company IDS, EP Group also captured its global parcel arm GLS.

CWU officials: Křetínský’s enforcers
The May 16 CWU Letter to Branches underscored how the union bureaucracy is embedded with Royal Mail and EP Group. Signed by Walsh and National Executive Chair Mick Kavanagh, it dressed up capitulation as “strategy.”

The CWU leadership isn’t negotiating pay, Section 5 [“Resolving Outstanding Issues”], or the USO. It is joined at the hip with management under the slogan, “Working Together”—pushing a deal agreed with Křetínský behind closed doors unleashing brutal restructuring.


Communication Workers Union Deputy General Secretary (Postal) Martin Walsh, (left) and CWU General Secretary Dave Ward speaking at a CWU Live event [Photo: screenshot of video: CWU/Facebook]
The Framework Agreement was signed last December without a member vote, rubber-stamped by Ward, Walsh, and the postal executive. CWU officials then withheld the pay award for 130,000 Royal Mail workers due last month to tie it to a deal with Křetínský. Walsh has claimed four above-inflation offers were rejected but only based on the lower CPI measurement. The CWU presided over a 14 percent real-terms pay cut over three years based on the 2023 agreement. There is no plan to reverse this. Walsh says his task is rather to “manage expectations”--holding down pay to promote performance-related bonuses, enforced by management surveillance through the My Performance app.


Walsh claims there will be “only” around 1,000 voluntary redundancies, but this is based on endorsing the elimination of 6,000 jobs through “natural wastage.” The vague pledges of “improvements” in Section 5 on sick pay and harmonising new entrant terms cover hard-won rights surrendered in the 2023 sellout.

Pilot offices are testing grounds for intensified exploitation. In at least one site, heart monitors have been used—by union agreement—in a study of “fatigue” as workers are pushed to new extremes with no health and safety protections.

The CWU is racing to finalise a national agreement with Royal Mail and EP Group by May 30, dressed in jargon about 'deployment planning' and 'flexibility options.” They offer Royal Mail logistical support: mapping frame moves, reserve coverage, and smoothing pilot rollouts. Their role is to sell the company line and suppress opposition in the name of “partnership.”

For rank-and-file control

The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) has exposed and opposed this conspiracy, fighting to restore power to the shopfloor and build resistance across Royal Mail. The PWRFC calls for:

An inflation-busting, no-strings pay rise to recover lost wages
An end to the two-tier workforce—equal pay and conditions are non-negotiable
Rejection of performance-linked pay and management surveillance
Defence of the USO as a public service and social right
Workers’ control over new technology—to shorten hours and improve safety, not destroy jobs
This is an international fight. United States Postal Service and Canada Post workers resisting a drive to privatisation face betrayal by union bureaucracies acting as corporate and government enablers. The PWRFC is affiliated to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), building a global counteroffensive of postal and logistics workers.

Join the PWRFC. Build rank-and-file committees in every office. Organise democratically. Link up internationally. Fight to prioritise workers and public service over corporate profits.

To contact the PWRFC, email: RoyalMailRankAndFile@gmail.com

[tramssirhc]

More hot takes from the WSWS/SEP.

[moon71]

And still no answers.

Some things ring true, but the decline of letters issue still unadressed by the PWRFC. The USO is already damaged beyond repair. There simply isn't enough letters to be delivering to everydoor door, every day.

Something has to change for the future. And chances are it will be in the employers favour.

[menditsa]

And still no answers.

Some things ring true, but the decline of letters issue still unadressed by the PWRFC. The USO is already damaged beyond repair. There simply isn't enough letters to be delivering to everydoor door, every day.

Something has to change for the future. And chances are it will be in the employers favour.

If there is such a decline then how come our walks with 2 days worth of mail are impossible to cover ?

[tramssirhc]

And still no answers.

Some things ring true, but the decline of letters issue still unadressed by the PWRFC. The USO is already damaged beyond repair. There simply isn't enough letters to be delivering to everydoor door, every day.

Something has to change for the future. And chances are it will be in the employers favour.

Moon71 is a cheerleader for a lost cause. Just like the CWU Moon71 is bankrupt.

[SkiSunday]

And still no answers.

Some things ring true, but the decline of letters issue still unadressed by the PWRFC. The USO is already damaged beyond repair. There simply isn't enough letters to be delivering to everydoor door, every day.

Something has to change for the future. And chances are it will be in the employers favour.

If there is such a decline then how come our walks with 2 days worth of mail are impossible to cover ?

[SMS1969]

The explosion of tracked, particularly small packets are the things that RM and the CWU want to ignore. It’s just the start of a reduction in the USO, until we end up delivering letters once or twice a week. Less posties needed. Pathetic attempt at a cover up.

[moon71]

And still no answers.

Some things ring true, but the decline of letters issue still unadressed by the PWRFC. The USO is already damaged beyond repair. There simply isn't enough letters to be delivering to everydoor door, every day.

Something has to change for the future. And chances are it will be in the employers favour.

If there is such a decline then how come our walks with 2 days worth of mail are impossible to cover ?

I remember when you could open a postbox 3 times a day and it would be half full on each occasion.

Now you lucky to get 5 letters, 1 birthday card and 4 DSA not known at this address in the box. Won't be long before the decline of postboxes too.

[stage3]

The comments in reply to Moon71 are 100 percent right but its pointless trying to engage with him. He should be the anchorman for RM TV with his pro-company messaging.

"still no news" from the PWRFC. I'm taking it this means we don't advocate an alternative. Untrue yet again, you just don't want to hear it and you are gaslighting, just like CWU HQ.

The article states the basic demands of the PWRFC.

An inflation-busting, no-strings pay rise to recover lost wages
An end to the two-tier workforce—equal pay and conditions are non-negotiable
Rejection of performance-linked pay and management surveillance
Defence of the USO as a public service and social right
Workers’ control over new technology—to shorten hours and improve safety, not destroy jobs.

Moon71 has tried to smear the PWRFC as "mood hovers" but here you have it his message to anyone opposing the cover-up of the sabotage of the USO and wanting to resist - roll over and play dead so the employer can dictate the terms.

[Jefferson Starfish]

The article states the basic demands of the PWRFC.

Anybody can write on an internet forum that they demand this or they demand that.
I could demand to win the Euromillions, but it's not going to get me anywhere!

The point is that RM don't recognise the PWRFC as employee representatives, they recognise the CWU.
You are not in negotiations with the company to change terms and conditions to how you think they should change, the CWU are.
You have a fraction of the membership the CWU have and no sign of that increasing any time soon.

If Facebook followers is anything to go by, you have 300 compared to the CWU's 96,000!

Who knows whether the PWRFC will be a force to reckon with in the future. But until your membership increases drastically, all you'll be doing is sitting in your bedroom writing your articles, slagging off the CWU at every opportunity and preaching to a few hard core followers on this forum and not doing a thing on the ground to help improve the terms and conditions of any posties.

[Sean06]

[stage3]

The article states the basic demands of the PWRFC.

Anybody can write on an internet forum that they demand this or they demand that.
I could demand to win the Euromillions, but it's not going to get me anywhere!

The point is that RM don't recognise the PWRFC as employee representatives, they recognise the CWU.
You are not in negotiations with the company to change terms and conditions to how you think they should change, the CWU are.
You have a fraction of the membership the CWU have and no sign of that increasing any time soon.

If Facebook followers is anything to go by, you have 300 compared to the CWU's 96,000!

Who knows whether the PWRFC will be a force to reckon with in the future. But until your membership increases drastically, all you'll be doing is sitting in your bedroom writing your articles, slagging off the CWU at every opportunity and preaching to a few hard core followers on this forum and not doing a thing on the ground to help improve the terms and conditions of any posties.

More stale tropes from someone who clearly feels uncomfortable about any criticism of the CWU top table. You equate this with "slagging off" and preaching to a "few hard core supporters". May I suggest you are the one that needs to get out more. I don't know if you are a rep but you clearly hold an affinity to Ward and Walsh otherwise you would not dignify what they are up to as "negotiating" rather than another organised surrender. You clearly don't have an issue with their whereabouts : endless closed door talks and jolly ups with RM and Kretinsky to try and get a rotten deal over the line and giving pride of place to senior management at the CWU National Briefing under the title "Working Together".

By your account 96,000 members are content with the leaders rather than hostile or deeply alienated from this branch of management incorporated, their drip feed of information and company spin. If the PWRFC were "not doing a thing on the ground" you would not be playing such close attention and raising whether it can become a force in the future.

As everyone on the level knows we are the only ones to provide reports from the ground floor on the pilots about the mail failures and safety contraventions as part of a mobilisation against the wrecking ball operation of "USO reform." We do not claim to have a magic wound or seek to replace the CWU as the company's favoured partners. We are engaged in a campaign to organise postal workers in a struggle : to remove the sellouts merchants and dismantle the bureaucracy and restore power to the shopfloor to wage a fight, to prioritise postal workers and the public not the profits of oligarchs like Kretinsky and EP Group. That is what gets your back up.

[tramssirhc]

And with that they all disappeared. Just like the union bosses that they so dearly admire and follow unquestioningly. The working class are better than that. We dont need Ward and Walsh and their paternalism and patronising nonsense. Up the WSWS, up the SEP, up the rank and file.

[clashcityrocker]

We do not claim to have a magic wand or seek to replace the CWU as the company's favoured partners. We are engaged in a campaign to organise postal workers in a struggle : to remove the sellout merchants and dismantle the bureaucracy and restore power to the shopfloor

Yes but how long is that going to take?
In the meantime .........

[Jefferson Starfish]

More stale tropes from someone who clearly feels uncomfortable about any criticism of the CWU top table. You equate this with "slagging off" and preaching to a "few hard core supporters". May I suggest you are the one that needs to get out more. I don't know if you are a rep but you clearly hold an affinity to Ward and Walsh otherwise you would not dignify what they are up to as "negotiating" rather than another organised surrender. You clearly don't have an issue with their whereabouts : endless closed door talks and jolly ups with RM and Kretinsky to try and get a rotten deal over the line and giving pride of place to senior management at the CWU National Briefing under the title "Working Together".

By your account 96,000 members are content with the leaders rather than hostile or deeply alienated from this branch of management incorporated, their drip feed of information and company spin. If the PWRFC were "not doing a thing on the ground" you would not be playing such close attention and raising whether it can become a force in the future.

As everyone on the level knows we are the only ones to provide reports from the ground floor on the pilots about the mail failures and safety contraventions as part of a mobilisation against the wrecking ball operation of "USO reform." We do not claim to have a magic wound or seek to replace the CWU as the company's favoured partners. We are engaged in a campaign to organise postal workers in a struggle : to remove the sellouts merchants and dismantle the bureaucracy and restore power to the shopfloor to wage a fight, to prioritise postal workers and the public not the profits of oligarchs like Kretinsky and EP Group. That is what gets your back up.

Please don't attempt to tell me(or anyone else) how I think or what I believe to be the case. As you don't know me and you clearly haven't got a clue!

I don't feel uncomfortable about criticising the CWU at all thanks, and I'm certainly not a rep.
I happen to think Martin Walsh isn't a particularly good advert for the union and comes across as a bit of a melon.

But you and the PWRFC come across as bigger melons!

The PWRFC might hold some power at some point in the future, who knows?
But at this moment in time, you hold no power at all other than in your own head.

When or if the PWRFC builds up a decent level of membership(what is it currently, has it reached double figures yet?), you may have a case to be able to 'organise postal workers in a struggle....blah, blah, blah'.
Until then you're nothing more than the WSWS version of Walter Mitty.