Disappearing Posties?

We have just heard that Royal Mail is thinking of closing the sorting office in our small market town, and requiring a journey of perhaps 10 miles to the next sorting office. This will require special arrangements for undelivered parcels and mail, - you know, those for which they put a card through the door because they haven't time to ring the bell! We are fortunate still to have a post office, and we shall be able to collect our mail from there.

This is part of a rationalisation scheme, to cut costs, as Royal Mail desperately seeks to remain solvent in the face of Luddite postal staff who want more and more despite the losses occurring at Royal Mail. (They have made profits, but too small to undertake investment or to maintain the staff pension fund.)

The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday that although Royal Mail deliver most letters and parcels, it collects and sorts only two thirds, - 46 million units each day out of 72 million.

A growing list of companies are no longer using Royal Mail, - Barclays, Sainsbury's, Lloyds Group, RBS, Powergen and Aviva (as evidenced by the printed franking on the envelope or package.

The private and commercial firms which do the collection and sorting, such as TNT Post or UK Mail ,currently do not do delivery, but there must come a tipping point soon when it will be worthwhile. At that point the supposition is that Royal Mail will fade away. At the moment these companies do most of the bulk mail.

The change goes back to 2004, when competition was introduced. Since then with electronic communication the number of letters has dropped by more than 12 million daily In 2005 TNT handled 300 million letters a year, in 2007 1.7 billion and currently about 2.6 billion.

All this makes it very clear why Royal Mail must come to an efficient accommodation with its trade union. The union is regularly involved in aggressive campaigns, and you wouldn't want to bet on the future of Royal Mail. How different on the continent, where Dutch and German postal services adapted to the new situation!