The Royal Mail is preparing to axe as many as one in four of its workers – or 40,000 jobs – over the next five years in the run-up to privatisation.
The postal operator has already agreed a three-year deal with the Communication Workers Union to cut headcount by 8,000 per year until 2013. But according to The Sunday Times, Moya Greene, who became chief executive last July after leaving Canada Post, is close to agreeing a revised business plan with the coalition government, which would result in yet more jobs being eliminated.
The reported aim is now to reduce the organisation’s 165,000-strong workforce by a further 15,000 between 2013 and 2016 in a bid to make it more profitable and attract private investors. Royal Mail has already lost 65,000 jobs since 2002.
A spokesman at the UK’s second largest employer refused to confirm or deny the figures. But a government aide told the Financial Times: “We need to make sure Royal Mail is privatised so we can get private capital into it. Our main concern is that we have a successful business that can deliver letters. We don’t want unnecessary job losses, but the business will have to be smaller and more efficient.”
A CWU spokesman warned that the union would fight any non-voluntary job cuts, however. “We are not going to tolerate compulsory redundancies and we will make that clear to the company,” he said.
A bill to allow the privatisation of Royal Mail is expected to receive royal assent in the next few weeks and the government plans to pump a further £1 billion into the organisation to try and make it a more attractive proposition to potential purchasers. It also proposes to take over its pension scheme, which currently has a £8.4 billion deficit.
