"ব্রিটেনে ৩৫০০ পোস্টাল কর্মী ছাটাইয়ের কবলে" --- মর্নিং স্টার পত্রিকাতে প্রকাশিত সংবাদটির গুরুত্ব অনুধাবন করে সম্পূর্ণ সংবাদটি নিচে হুবহু প্রকাশ করা হ'ল I

Britain

Royal Mail to shred 3,500 jobs

Tuesday 22 March 2011

by Rory MacKinnon

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London postal workers were left reeling today by plans to cut 3,500 jobs, close half the city's processing centres and the apparent collapse of their employee share scheme.

Royal Mail said on Monday night that it was closing two London mail centres employing around 750 staff and would drop up to 1,000 line managers.

The service has already axed 1,700 staff this year from its finance, IT, human resources and other departments - shedding 65,000 jobs in total over the last decade.

Its centres in Bromley-by-Bow and Nine Elms Lane will close next year, with up to 30 more to follow over the next four years.

The closures were expected to save the service £30 million.

The Royal Mail Group posted a £52m profit for the six months ending September 2010 and £184m for the year before.

Royal Mail said that the company did not believe it would have to resort to compulsory redundancies.

"With people demonstrating reasonable flexibility, Royal Mail expects that everyone who wants to remain in the business will be able to do so," it said.

But a Communications Workers Union spokeswoman warned that compulsory redundancies would be inevitable.

"Royal Mail accepted in 2010 that the overarching objective of business transformation was to avoid compulsory redundancies.

"Given the number of staff in London, today's announcement threatens this commitment."

The union insisted that Royal Mail return to the negotiating table.

An east London employee on RoyalMailChat.co.uk reposted a letter from management warning of troubles with the company's ColleagueShare scheme.

"The difficult outlook for the business means it is likely that colleagues will only receive the remainder of the cash bonus element.

"The ColleagueShares themselves are unlikely to have any value when they start to mature later this year.

"We won't know the exact value of the ColleagueShares until the end of the scheme in 2012."

"How can the share price drop from 1,400 to zero within six months?" one person asked.

"Well there's a surprise ... not," said another.

An employee brochure issued when the scheme launched in 2007 said that employees made redundant would have to sell their shares back to Royal Mail at their current valuation.

"The whole idea of ColleagueShares is to ensure that you are rewarded for your help in making improvements to the business, so they can't be sold, given away or promised to anyone else.

"Once you do sell them back to the company, then of course the money is yours."

A Royal Mail spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

rorym@peoples-press.com