Are Royal Mail Cooking The Books?

Royal Mail not only have a reputation for losing letters, they have now mysteriously turned a £121m profit (see chart on left) into a £100m+ LOSS for 2010-11, if Sky News has it's figures right. That means around £220m has vanished from Royal Mail letters in one year, a figure quite unbelievable yet some how convenient for those who wanted to privatise this national service.

While mail volumes are expected to show a 5% decline for 2010-11, the head count reduction more than offsets that decline - meaning the £100m 'loss' has appeared, in yet another accountancy trick of massaging the figures in order for Royal Mail to paint a grim picture ahead of industrial action and privatisation.

Is Royal Mail really in need of a private cash injection as ConDem MP's claim or are we being hood winked into allowing our national daily postal service to be handed over to private hands in order to eventually end the daily delivery (as has now happened in Holland following privatisation of it's postal service)?

The truth is - Royal Mail letters are NOT losing money, it is the cost of modernisation that has cost the service over £220m during the past year. As Sky reports, "The costs of the company's modernisation programme, led by Moya Greene, the new chief executive, have been taken into account as part of the reported numbers for the first time." For those not familiar with what modernisation at Royal Mail entails - it means the purchase of thousands of new vans and equipment for Royal Mail's new delivery methods. The cost will be offset by the reduction of staff involved with delivering the mail (according to the same report, up to 40,000 jobs could be at risk). New sorting machines are being deployed around the country and it seems that these costs are now being added to the balance sheets, even though the previous government loaned Royal Mail £1b for it's modernisation programme.

Royal Mail will now try and present a bleak picture with the aim of trying to scare employees and give the government the free hand as it tries to sell off the nations silverware on the cheap. Royal Mail workers have bent over backwards since the liberalisation of the postal market by New Labour at the start of this millennium. They have accepted below inflation pay rise while at the same time seen thousands of jobs disappear, all in the name of 'moderisation'. London workers are facing the prospect of compulsory redundancies if Royal Mail closes the three mail centres in the capital.

The CWU have tried to work with Royal Mail, putting forward alternatives that would help build the business but Royal Mail have consistently ignored such proposals as they remain hell bent on selling off assets ahead of privatisation. Postal workers know the stakes are high, and they are often the last line of defence in protecting this valued public service. The Royal Mail financial figures may not match up, but the need for co-ordinated industrial action matches. It is time workers stood up to the ConDem government and opposed the sell off of Royal Mail. Posties need to see through the Royal Mail propaganda that will be coming their way over the coming months and stand united in defending jobs and conditions.