Privatisation will threaten Royal Mail's six-day service

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Privatisation will threaten Royal Mail's six-day service, warns campaign group

http://www.theguardian.com/public-leade ... l-six-days" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The privatisation of Royal Mail could lead to a reduction in the number of days that letters and parcels are delivered – despite the government's guarantee of a six-day service, it was claimed on Tuesday.

At a Guardian fringe event at the Conservative conference sponsored by Save Our Royal Mail, Mario Dunn, the organisation's campaign manager, said that the privatisation of Royal Mail would lead to a reduced and more expensive service, particularly for people in rural parts of the country, the more challenging areas where deliveries are made.

Government had insisted the six-day-a-week service throughout the UK could only be removed by an act of parliament, but Dunn warned that it could be changed through use of a statutory instrument – secondary legislation – in parliament, and added that future ministers would come under heavy pressure from Royal Mail to allow it to compete with private sector competitors by reducing its service in more remote areas.

Richard Graham, the MP for Gloucester, argued that privatisation would provide the investment needed to compete against the private sector. "I don't want to save Royal Mail because I don't think it's a panda or a tiger," he said. "I want to grow Royal Mail. I want to see it become a world- beating company. It's got 150,000 employees. Wouldn't it be fantastic if it had 200,000 and was running postal services under that great brand all around the Commonwealth?

"It needs to be able to compete against private-sector competitors, and it can only do that effectively if it has the investment it needs to get the technology that the competitors have," he said.

The panel clashed over how privatisation would affect value for money for consumers. Dunn said Royal Mail had historically kept prices low across the market, but expected a sharp increase after privatisation that would allow its competitors to increase their prices, too. Graham, however, predicted that the new ownership would freeze prices after last year's rises.

Ben Harris-Quinney, chair of the right-wing thinktank Bow Group, accused the government of "rushing out" the privatisation. "Research in July showed that almost half of the country were not aware of the privatisation of Royal Mail and 65% of those surveyed were against any notion of privatisation," he said. "There has been no campaign. This has been a Westminster-bubble discussion that hasn't engaged with the public at all."

Graham said: "Some people would love to seal Royal Mail as it is today in aspic: a sort of wonderful thing that needs to be left exactly as it is. Life has to keep moving on. We need different types of communications and we need a new type of Royal Mail."

[thegreatestfreddy]

What does Graham think we are doing wrong....!!??

in a recent survey the vast majority of respondents considered us as significantly best..... not only that but also saying that they were more likely to buy online if they knew that their purchases were going to be made by Royal Mail....

[Brain Fury]

What does Graham think we are doing wrong....!!??

in a recent survey the vast majority of respondents considered us as significantly best..... not only that but also saying that they were more likely to buy online if they knew that their purchases were going to be made by Royal Mail....

Does he say that RM is doing anything wrong? I think he's saying that it can't just stay still and needs to continue to modernise. I also agree with his view about the public perception of RM.

[thegreatestfreddy]

What improvements do you think can be made BF...??

we are already carrying more than we can really manage in what seems to be a very chaotic and poorly managed way...

if the vision is to provide the capital to fund greater staffing levels and a better standard of equipment then i am all for it.... in reality i somehow doubt it...

[UnhappyGremlin]

Richard Graham, the MP for Gloucester, argued that privatisation would provide the investment needed to compete against the private sector. "I don't want to save Royal Mail because I don't think it's a panda or a tiger," he said. "I want to grow Royal Mail. I want to see it become a world- beating company. It's got 150,000 employees. Wouldn't it be fantastic if it had 200,000 and was running postal services under that great brand all around the Commonwealth?

Yes it would. But it's very unlikely. There is not one privatised company that has increased its staffing levels. And, on the off chance they did, most would be foreign based jobs, whilst domestic staffing levels would continually fall.

"It needs to be able to compete against private-sector competitors, and it can only do that effectively if it has the investment it needs to get the technology that the competitors have," he said.

And there is no reason why this investment can't be made whilst in public hands.
Private funding is not the only way to achieve this, despite RM's and the Government's insistence.

[Brain Fury]

What improvements do you think can be made BF...??

we are already carrying more than we can really manage in what seems to be a very chaotic and poorly managed way...

if the vision is to provide the capital to fund greater staffing levels and a better standard of equipment then i am all for it.... in reality i somehow doubt it...

Tracking of more or even all mail? Improved parcel handling and sortation?

[thegreatestfreddy]

What improvements do you think can be made BF...??

we are already carrying more than we can really manage in what seems to be a very chaotic and poorly managed way...

if the vision is to provide the capital to fund greater staffing levels and a better standard of equipment then i am all for it.... in reality i somehow doubt it...

Tracking of more or even all mail? Improved parcel handling and sortation?

I have worked in the business at the sharp end (on deliveries) for 20 years....

20 years ago we were handling more mail (seemingly), had far fewer managers, had a night (manual) sorting team, had all mail sorted to roads for prep by 6.30 in the morning, were delivering twice a day and everything seemed to be like a well oiled machine... and were making £1m a day profit....!!

like a lot of examples of failed IT projects i think going down the route of over mechanising will/ is failing.... we are over complicating the system and introducing greater opportunity for things to fail..... even with 'falling' mail volumes (which incidently not many if us believe on delivery) the comprehension that this ammount of volume can be handled efficiently through simply increasing mechanisation and IT is not well thought out....

i am old school i know, but am open to change, but can see the 'flaws' in what is being attempted..... in my day what was taught was 'keep it simple son'... and i think in large volume, simple task situations this still holds..... we simply have too much volume and too wide a network to behave simply in the way our competitors are doing.... and there are plenty of examples of them getting it wrong without the scale of task that we have got.....

at the end of the day we are 'most trusted' when it comes to not letting people down... and that is without all the frills.... (although we are getting worse through our misguided attempts to progress)

no disrespect BF but, you are making a mistake in what you believe to be a simple task to improve what we do.... it is over complicating, causing chaos, generating greater inefficiency and creating greater failure...


as one of our managers here constantly reminds us on deliveries.... "all we do is put mail through people's doors"

[meweavy]

What improvements do you think can be made BF...??

we are already carrying more than we can really manage in what seems to be a very chaotic and poorly managed way...

if the vision is to provide the capital to fund greater staffing levels and a better standard of equipment then i am all for it.... in reality i somehow doubt it...

Tracking of more or even all mail? Improved parcel handling and sortation?

I have worked in the business at the sharp end (on deliveries) for 20 years....

20 years ago we were handling more mail (seemingly), had far fewer managers, had a night (manual) sorting team, had all mail sorted to roads for prep by 6.30 in the morning, were delivering twice a day and everything seemed to be like a well oiled machine... and were making £1m a day profit....!!

like a lot of examples of failed IT projects i think going down the route of over mechanising will/ is failing.... we are over complicating the system and introducing greater opportunity for things to fail..... even with 'falling' mail volumes (which incidently not many if us believe on delivery) the comprehension that this ammount of volume can be handled efficiently through simply increasing mechanisation and IT is not well thought out....

i am old school i know, but am open to change, but can see the 'flaws' in what is being attempted..... in my day what was taught was 'keep it simple son'... and i think in large volume, simple task situations this still holds..... we simply have too much volume and too wide a network to behave simply in the way our competitors are doing.... and there are plenty of examples of them getting it wrong without the scale of task that we have got.....

at the end of the day we are 'most trusted' when it comes to not letting people down... and that is without all the frills.... (although we are getting worse through our misguided attempts to progress)

no disrespect BF but, you are making a mistake in what you believe to be a simple task to improve what we do.... it is over complicating, causing chaos, generating greater inefficiency and creating greater failure...


as one of our managers here constantly reminds us on deliveries.... "all we do is put mail through people's doors"

we keep getting told mail volumes are falling, does the dsa not get counted?
Do the figures get cooked to look like mail volumes are falling? .
2 years ago I was getting 4 boxes of mail on my walk including sequenced, now on a heavy day I can get up to 10 boxes of mail, ,mostly flats, mostly dsa.
And yet we are constantly told that mail volumes are falling.
In terms of profit maybe due to parasite companies cherry picking.
But physically mail is through the roof.

[meweavy]

What improvements do you think can be made BF...??

we are already carrying more than we can really manage in what seems to be a very chaotic and poorly managed way...

if the vision is to provide the capital to fund greater staffing levels and a better standard of equipment then i am all for it.... in reality i somehow doubt it...

Tracking of more or even all mail? Improved parcel handling and sortation?

How are we supposed to track all of the mail, and imoroved parcel sorting would mean oputting more hours into each office, which aint going to happen.
More work means more labour which means more budget going into each office, and yet the bosses are constantly trying to save hours.

[Brain Fury]

I never said that making improvements especially those involving iT is easy, it isn't. However, we have to recognise that the lack of investment in the business until the last few years means that we are playing catch up with what our customers want and what our competitors offer. The argument that we cannot match our competitors because of the scale of our operation doesn't hold water because some of them provide these services in other countries where they have the majority share of the mail business. And there is no doubt that one of the reasons for investment is to be more mechanised in how we handle mail and so need fewer people and thus reduce our operating costs. Again it's what our competitors have done.

With regard to mail volumes falling, you have to be so careful in describing what you mean. The number of pieces of mail is falling in virtually every country in the world and I don't doubt this is the case in the UK and for RM. RM figures include DSA. But if the physical dimensions of the mail is changing e.g. more large flats then the reduction in the number of pieces is not going to be so obvious. To state the obvious you'll get fewer large flats than DL envelopes in a box so the number of boxes, pouches etc is not a good guide to the number of pieces of mail. Physically you might be handling the same or even more boxes or pouches etc. but in terms of the number of pieces ther are less. That means that RM receives less revenue from letters which is of course what pays our wages.

[thegreatestfreddy]

I never said that making improvements especially those involving iT is easy, it isn't. However, we have to recognise that the lack of investment in the business until the last few years means that we are playing catch up with what our customers want and what our competitors offer. The argument that we cannot match our competitors because of the scale of our operation doesn't hold water because some of them provide these services in other countries where they have the majority share of the mail business. And there is no doubt that one of the reasons for investment is to be more mechanised in how we handle mail and so need fewer people and thus reduce our operating costs. Again it's what our competitors have done.

With regard to mail volumes falling, you have to be so careful in describing what you mean. The number of pieces of mail is falling in virtually every country in the world and I don't doubt this is the case in the UK and for RM. RM figures include DSA. But if the physical dimensions of the mail is changing e.g. more large flats then the reduction in the number of pieces is not going to be so obvious. To state the obvious you'll get fewer large flats than DL envelopes in a box so the number of boxes, pouches etc is not a good guide to the number of pieces of mail. Physically you might be handling the same or even more boxes or pouches etc. but in terms of the number of pieces ther are less. That means that RM receives less revenue from letters which is of course what pays our wages.

I am sure that we handle each day around 95% of ALL mail posted.... so competitors are delivering comaparitively very little over here.....

on that basis you are talking about successful IT processes being applied to around 55 million items each day (using RM daily figures)...


are competitors successfully delivering this ammount of mail abroad with what you seem to be suggesting 100% auditable tracking BF ???...


i am intrigued and would be interested to see such successful and profitable systems...


on the point of processing, yes i can see a credible need for mechanisation... but i think our problems are on the ground and are the most costly at that point, which can really never be cut back on because you will always need human involvement at that point and there is a real danger of overload and over complication which could cost us dearly if we are not careful and equally as importantly the customer as we become more likely to let them down...


as far as i am aware 'generic' deliveries that exist abroad (ie daily combinations of pkt and letter mails (transactional and fulfillment)) is very much low tech with emphasis on poorly paid part time workers with few, if any, workplace protections on their pay and conditions... which is obviously what we fear... in what we see as a 'race to the bottom' in the name of profitabilty and not at all providing an elevated and reliable service to the public which you seem to be envisaging...!!

[Brain Fury]

I did say tracking of more or even all mail. Improvements in tracking for customers sending bulk mail has already been announced with 47 companies in the initial stage for 2014 accounting for 8 million letters per day. The system will be rolled out to remaining business contract customers over the following 2 years. That's a £70 million investment.

New parcel sorting technology is also already on trial.

These are the sort of improvements that we need to maintain or grow our market share and revenue. There will be others.

[thegreatestfreddy]

I did say tracking of more or even all mail. Improvements in tracking for customers sending bulk mail has already been announced with 47 companies in the initial stage for 2014 accounting for 8 million letters per day. The system will be rolled out to remaining business contract customers over the following 2 years. That's a £70 million investment.

New parcel sorting technology is also already on trial.

These are the sort of improvements that we need to maintain or grow our market share and revenue. There will be others.

Which area of RM do you work in BF??

[thegreatestfreddy]

How is this tracking going to be verified at the door BF.... at 8 million letters per day that equates to around 15% of what we carry....

attended call rates are already above what 'model duties' say we can cope with in our calculated delivery time.... so we will either be failing more mail or the company will be paying a lot of overtime to cover this extra work....

are you certain this is going to be profitable??

[barrowc]

The tracking for bulk customers mail - Mailmark, previously known as Enterprise Intelligent Barcode (EIB) -is, I believe, purely going to be done via the mech (as it's only available for letters and large ltrs) so wouldn't have any direct impact on deliveries. Some details at http://www.royalmail.com/mailmark. If this works as it's meant to, it will really show up where there are delays in the network (whether at Mail Centres, DOs or in between)

The (separate) move to track all parcels in the network was covered in an RMTV video we had at work time learning a few months back. Details in this video: http://www.myroyalmail.com/rmtv/parcels-strategy The actual RMTV one I saw was with Catherine Doran - Royal Mail's Chief Information Officer - but that doesn't seem to be on myroyalmail.com