The most totemic of these is the “Agenda for Growth,” hammered out by former CEO Moya Greene in December 2013, just months after the company’s bumpy IPO two months earlier. Described as “groundbreaking” and “the first of its kind in the UK”, the contract commits parties to “a can-do culture”, while providing an extraordinary range of protections for workers and even in some cases giving veto powers to CWUs . It includes promises not to outsource any part of the business, to grant all new employees the same terms of employment as staff who joined before them, to allow workers to keep their hours if they want, and not to fire anyone where possible. Although the agreement would have seemed ironclad to the union bosses who signed it at the time, it can be terminated in some exceptional circumstances, including in the case of “national industrial action”. Under the terms of their 2013 agreement, there is an extensive process for both sides to resolve disputes – but at Royal Mail this is now considered pointless. Bosses argue the deal, and others like it, are simply “being used by the CWU to thwart transformation”. On Thursday, the company claimed that, after five months of talks, the CWU “continues to delay and block the changes we need to compete and protect jobs in the long term”. “We need to break the deadlock and move forward with our transformation,” a spokesman said, adding that it had invited the CWU into talks with dispute resolution agency Acas. Williams and the company’s board knew that the decision to end the agreements with the CWU would be an incendiary move, but they felt they had no other choice. When the moment finally came, it appeared to shock union leaders at Thursday morning’s meeting, one of the insiders claimed. “They may have seen it coming, but I don’t think they expected us to actually pull the trigger,” the person added. Royal Mail has come out in favor of the nuclear option as it pushes for changes management believes are vital to safeguarding the future of the business. As the volume of letters decreases and the demand for parcel deliveries increases, the company wants ways of working that are better suited to the age of online shopping. This includes the introduction of automated parcel sorting machines, the construction of huge parcel delivery hubs, rota changes that would require postmen to deliver later in the evening and on Sundays, and the introduction of parcel tracking for customers.
