After a tough week for Royal Mail boss Moya Greene, who was booed by Royal Mail staff when she met with union members at a Birmingham conference, she may be concerned about the future of Royal Mail as the privatisation process starts. The question is, should you be too?
The Government has moved to assure workers and the public alike through new legislation. It says the six-day-a-week delivery timetable must continue, and this will be monitored by Ofcom. It also ensures that “affordable and uniform” prices and universal deliveries will continue.
To guarantee the real sense of Britishness a stamp gives can endure, an Act of Parliament specifically forbids any new owners removing the Queen from our stamps.
Opponents to the deal, including the Communication Workers Union, claim they will face mounting pressure to remove the classic uniform and six-day deliveries, and that standards will suffer as a result of the prioritisation of shareholder dividends.
Some of the new laws also only carry a time limit of 10 years, meaning that some of the Government’s guarantees are not ring-fenced against future changes.
At this point in time, it is perhaps too early to tell what the effects on Joe Public will be, but it is certainly something worth keeping an eye on as the fundamental postal structure of the UK starts to change.