Next Year, Royal Mail Will Lay Off 10,000 Full-Time Employees

Royal Mail today announced plans to make up to 6,000 employees redundant by next August, as it blamed continued strike action for increasing losses at the company.

The postal company said it will start informing employees of its proposals, as part of a drive to decrease its headcount by 10,000 overall.

Half of those positions are expected to be axed by March, followed by the last 5,000 by August.

On top of the redundancies, the company will seek to scrap the extra 4,000 positions by not replacing staff when they leave, cutting temporary jobs and decreasing overtime.

The company said the move is in response to the impact of industrial action, delays in delivering agreed productivity improvements and lower parcel volumes.

Royal Mail is predicted to plunge to a £350 million operating loss for the year after being struck by industrial action, parent group International Distributions Services stated.

The cuts announcement comes a day after Royal Mail employees in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) launched a new strike in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.

Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson said that it was an extremely sad day and he regrets they’re announcing these job losses.

He said that they will do all they can to sidestep compulsory redundancies and support everyone involved.

He said that they have announced losses of £219 million in the first half of the year and that each strike day depletes their financial position.

He said the CWU’s decision to pick damaging strike action over resolution regrettably boosts the chance of additional headcount reductions.

Yesterday saw postal workers stage a new strike in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions, with a string of 19 further walkouts scheduled for the forthcoming weeks.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) characterised the action as the biggest walkout in a year that has seen industrial turmoil across several industries, including rail.

Some 115,000 members across the United Kingdom took action yesterday, with picket lines mounted outside Royal Mail offices on what was the sixth walkout day in recent months.

The CWU tweeted images of employees on strike yesterday morning in areas including Leicester, Sheffield, Oxford, Aberdeen, Worcester, Belfast and across London.

Picket lines were also mounted at Bognor Regis in West Sussex, King’s Lynn in Norfolk, Sidcup in Kent, Romsey in Hampshire and Thirsk in North Yorkshire.

Well done Royal Mail, now all we will see is miles and miles of people jobless queuing for their dole money.

Now Royal Mail workers will be on the dole in the very same way as it was with British Leyland, Steel, Coal and shipbuilding et cetera, and then they’ll be replaced by zero-hours staff who’ll just toss your letters in a hedge.

Eventually, Royal Mail will die out because it’s become antiquated, and they haven’t moved on or competed.

Royal Mail was once part of an outstanding British Institution like the NHS, but management is now lousy with the unions being part of the problem – next instead of having street lights we’ll have lamp lighters instead.

Royal Mail has now shot themselves in the foot, which isn’t a good look for a postie – perhaps instead of calling them Royal Mail we should call them the ‘hop along gang’?

Online sellers such as eBay are being affected because the walkouts are causing delays or the post is being lost, and it’s money that some people just can’t afford to lose, especially when they have families to feed and the fact that they will then get poor feedback. So, it appears that Royal Mail is screwing with the little guys again, as per usual.