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mail massacre!

concernedz | 24.03.2002 22:37

mail massacre!
30,000 consignia jobs to go, 12,000 tomorrow in parcelforce, 3,000 urban post offices to go. Looks like Tony's going to do to the posties what thatcher did to the mining communities.

just saw this on urban75

mail massacre!
30,000 consignia jobs to go, 12,000 tomorrow in parcelforce, 3,000 urban post offices to go. Looks like Tony's going to do to the posties what thatcher did to the mining communities.

article earlier today, bbc 10 o clock news says 30,000 jobs...

Consignia 'to cut 11,000 jobs'

Consignia has been losing £1.5m a day

Consignia is reportedly set to announce thousands of job losses today as part of a massive shake-up to boost flagging profits.
Consignia, formerly known as the Post Office, will cut 11,000 jobs in a bid to trim costs and compete with rivals, newspapers suggest.

Consignia acting chairman Allan Leighton last month promised to come up with "radical solutions" to the company's problems, saying "everything is under review".

Mr Leighton will be named as Consignia's permanent chairman in the next few days, the Observer reported.

More pain to come?

Consignia, which is losing £1.5m a day on operating the Royal Mail, Parcel Force and the Post Office network, is expected to warn that cost cuts are far from over and more job losses could follow.

Most of the job cuts will come at Parcel Force, which is losing £15m a month and has not made a profit for a decade.

Around half of Parcel Force's 12,000 workers will lose their jobs in the shake-up, which will result in several depot closures, the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph believe.

Other jobs are expected to go in Post Office administration and central management, while cuts are anticipated at a later date in Royal Mail.

Severance pay

Consignia will offer a voluntary redundancy package worth £400m, according to the Sunday Times.

Consignia says it hopes to save £1.2bn a year from the cuts, which aim to streamline the company as the market for postal deliveries is opened up to competition in a three-stage process starting this year.

Consignia's profits have suffered from increasing use of email, a one penny loss on every first class letter delivered in Britain and major losses at Parcel Force's international division.

concernedz

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

RIP

25.03.2002 08:33

So the post office survived two world wars,
the invention of the telephone, radio, TV,
fax, mobile phone and Margaret Thatcher.
Only Neo-Labour has the power to destroy.
In the future, the only post we will reliably
receive will be credit card bills and
junk mail. Your grandmother is not a
profitable corporation, so she doesn't
deserve to get her cards delivered.

goatchurch

The farce of privatisation

25.03.2002 09:37

New Labour call it "opening up to Competition" it is Privatisation by any other name.

They know that the Post office cannot compete and that the private firms will take only the most profitable business contracts.

That leaves the post office with little option but to sack it's workers and raise prices.

More profits for the City, more pain for individual worker/consumers, it is a case study in liberalisation.

Jules

If Consignia is to be consigned to the bin

25.03.2002 13:45

it is plainly NOT for the "small" sum of its losses; "a million quid a day" SOUNDs a lot but in terms of GDP its pretty small beer, and was evidently put out to get the concurrence of those Sun readers who want to hear what suits them. Note that the Railtrack shareholder settlement will involve much larger sums. This is an argument of expediance, almost the invert of when for example, a new military contract is announced, ALWAYS in terms of jobs created, NEVER the loss making costs thereof.
I dont think we should cry for the Post Office per se, but certainly for the thousands of people facing a horrible jobless future if this isnt prevented .

A Triffid

.

25.03.2002 13:46

resist

25.03.2002 17:08

Would this be agood occasion for a letter-writing campaign?

With posties' solidarity, all you'd have to do would be address comments, turds etc. to 'the boss, Con-signia'...

laura

we haven't lost yet!

25.03.2002 17:13

I don't think post workers are going to roll over for this. They've been angry for a long time and this may be the last straw. Even mild-mannered CWU leader Billy Hayes has threatened strike action (see latest press release on CWU website, link below).

If they do come out they'll need support and solidarity. Watch this space.

internationalist
Homepage: http://www.cwu.org

Bear in mind this is more like Railttrack

25.03.2002 17:31

than the coal mining industry. The tories closed the mines to reduce unprofitable overproduction, and was an act of political economy (bad enough) but like Railtrack, the impetus for the Post office sell-off comes entirely from geo- political motivations; there is no case in terms of capitalist economics per se for the state to subsidise these fake-privatised ventures. This point cannot be overstressed: The only directive comes from the WTo and IMF, which Blair supports enthusiastically. This is the true, chilling, meaning of Private-Public Partnerships: the cost will be billed to the public as before except shareholders and managers will take the ownership and the cash.
The difference is that The Post Office is one of the rare examples of an 'original state monopoly'. unlike more recent nationalised industrial concerns, the crown had its communications sorted out a long while ago, and it was never intended to BE profitable !

a Triffid

Branding consultants should be branded

25.03.2002 23:10

While I'm no fan of "Royal" anythings, at least everyone had heard of Royal Mail and The Post Office. So who on earth had the dumb idea to spend millions changing the name, logo, paperwork, signs, website etc to a name that meant absolutely nothing to anyone?

Now we hear that "Consignia" is to be ditched and the P.O rebranded as, er, The Post Office!!!

Funny how we keep hearing in the corporate media how its the stroppy workers fault that monies being lost when it's clear the management are complete idiots.

Ron F

junk fest

26.03.2002 08:01

The great thing about the "reforms" is it is to make it
much much cheaper to send "bulk" mail (means "junk"
to you and me). But I quite like it the way it is
where there is a monopoly and the post office can
over-charge for sending junk mail and use the
profits to help send people's ordinary post.
One could think of it as fair, like using advertising
refenue to help fund the cost of a newspaper.
Put this way, the reforms are like advertisers
demanding that they only pay cost price for the
printing, and so are a waste of time.