Royal Mail mentioned it could want to chop as much as 10,000 roles by subsequent August, blaming strike motion by its staff and the persevering with decline of its core enterprise.
In an unscheduled buying and selling replace a day after Royal Mail staff staged a 24-hour strike over pay and circumstances, the corporate mentioned 1000’s of roles must go due to injury and disruption brought on by industrial motion, in addition to declining parcel volumes.
Royal Mail mentioned it expects to make an annual working lack of about £350m within the yr to the top of March 2023. It mentioned that would rise to £450m if prospects flip to rivals due to the disruptions to its supply companies.
The corporate mentioned that it wants to chop as much as 6,000 full-time frontline roles in supply and processing by March and search an general discount of 10,000 full-time equal roles by subsequent August. It employs a complete of about 140,000 folks.
“We will probably be beginning the method of consulting on rightsizing the enterprise in response to the influence of commercial motion, delays in delivering agreed productiveness enhancements and decrease parcel volumes,” the corporate mentioned. “Wherever doable, we are going to look to attain FTE rightsizing via reductions in extra time, short-term employees and pure attrition.”
Royal Mail mentioned eight days of commercial motion have taken place or been notified to the corporate by the Communications Employees Union (CWU), with an additional 16 days of potential strike motion deliberate for November and December.
“If these happen, the loss for the complete yr would improve materially and will necessitate additional operational restructuring and headcount discount,” the corporate mentioned. “We will even proceed to push for talks with CWU at Acas, which have to be time certain because the injury from additional strikes will solely necessitate additional modifications within the enterprise, past these already introduced.”