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Royal Mail axes night shift staff
Cuts set to hit deliveries for businesses
MORNING postal deliveries for businesses in Camden are set to become a thing of the past after Royal Mail bosses announced the night shift at its central delivery office is to be axed.
The blow to dozens of staff at the Camden delivery office in Barnby Street, Euston, comes on top of swingeing cuts at the Kilburn, Cricklewood and Hampstead offices that union chiefs say has left post piling up to unprecedented levels and led to at least 60 employees taking stress-related sick leave every day.
Camden members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) will strike on Saturday as part of a wave of protest against the programme of cost-cutting by Royal Mail.
CWU north London rep Tony Davis said: “The night shift at Camden sorting office is going. This is going to be a major problem for businesses in Camden – many pay extra for early delivery. I don’t see how they are going to get the post out until the afternoon without the night shift.”
He added: “Royal Mail is not interested in quality, only costs. These are sad days for the customer.”
Royal Mail said the rise of the internet meant that staff cuts were inevitable. They are proposing cutting 40 per cent of their service in London.
Staff cuts in Camden have already begun with all delivery staff with fewer than two years’ experience having their contracts terminated earlier this month.
Mr Davis said the CWU had forced management to reinstate the eight junior delivery staff on Saturday – one day before they were due to leave.
Staff in Camden have told the New Journal that they are have been asked to agree to be available for overtime shifts whenever management calls. They said they are struggling to deliver post on time and that full-time staff were being replaced with inexperienced “casuals”.
A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “These changes are all covered by the 2007 Agreement on Pay and Modernisation, which the CWU leadership signed in the presence of the TUC but which they are now reneging on in a way that clearly hurts our customers and our people and damages Royal Mail. The union claims to support modernisation, yet acts to destroy it.” |
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