Member Info for Redceo

Oli. "handed over to H.M.Treasury? I stand to be corrected"
Well remembered Oli ;-)
The company must now pay the £50m fine to Ofcom, plus interest, and our legal costs. The money will be passed on to HM Treasury.

JB. "pay it as a bonus/cost of living payment to RMG frontline workers"
NOPE! Nurses first, then pensioners and teachers.

Yes Mike it's all stacked in others favour. No point dining some of the others they wouldn't pay anyway. I'm wondering though if the imminent decision is connected with the hurried discussion with TP. ?

Supreme Court rejects Royal Mail appeal against Ofcom fine for competition law breach
The Supreme Court has refused Royal Mail’s request to appeal against Ofcom’s 2018 decision to fine it £50 million for breaching competition law.
The Supreme Court’s decision concludes the appeal process, after Royal Mail was unsuccessful at both the Competition Appeal Tribunal and Court of Appeal. The company must now pay the £50m fine to Ofcom, plus interest, and our legal costs. The money will be passed on to HM Treasury.

We welcome the Court's decision. All companies must play by the rules, and Royal Mail had a special responsibility to ensure its behaviour was not anti-competitive – its actions were unacceptable.
We hope that our fine, which has been upheld in full by the courts, will ensure that Royal Mail and other powerful companies take their legal duties very seriously.
Ian Strawhorne, Interim Director of Enforcement at Ofcom

The case

In 2018, Ofcom fined Royal Mail £50m for a serious breach of competition law, after the company abused its dominant position by discriminating against its only major competitor delivering letters.
The penalty followed an investigation into a complaint, made to Ofcom by Whistl (one of Royal Mail’s wholesale customers). The complaint was about changes Royal Mail made to its wholesale customers' contracts in early 2014, including wholesale price increases it was introducing.
At the time, Whistl was expanding its business to compete directly with Royal Mail by delivering business letters (known as bulk mail) to addresses in certain parts of the UK – becoming the first company to challenge Royal Mail’s monopoly in the large-scale delivery of bulk mail.
The 2014 wholesale price increases meant that any of Royal Mail’s wholesale customers seeking to compete with it by delivering letters in some parts of the country, as Whistl was, would have to pay higher prices in the remaining areas – where it used Royal Mail for delivery.
Following notification of these new prices, Whistl suspended plans to extend delivery services to new areas.
Our investigation found Royal Mail’s actions amounted to anti-competitive discrimination against customers, such as Whistl, who sought to deliver bulk mail.

Supreme Court rejects Royal Mail appeal against Ofcom fine

DAN SYMONDS  June 21, 2022

The UK’s Supreme Court has refused Royal Mail’s request to appeal against Ofcom’s 2018 decision to fine it £50m (US$61.4m) for breaching competition law.

The Supreme Court’s decision concludes the appeal process, after Royal Mail was unsuccessful at both the Competition Appeal Tribunal and Court of Appeal. The company must now pay the £50m (US$61.4m) fine to Ofcom, plus interest, and legal costs. The money will be passed on to HM Treasury.

Oli. The Company should of course do "essential" maintenance or they risk future complications. It's a question of priorities.
Workers want a pay increase. Investors want a return on investment. Buildings need to be fit for purpose. A juggling act that needs careful consideration.
My impression is that's what's happening.

Pensioners, Teachers, Nurses I believe received 2-3%.
Don't recall either of those groups using Pickets at their gates either?

Oli "Better start dehydrating those freeze dried staff that we've had in storage for such an emergency.....lol"
Even frozen is better than the militant posties that have become stiff with lack of movement lololol ;-))

Yes indeed Arsenal reminds me of words I heard at the refinery years ago. My old Dad always said when faced with such people go for the loudest........

Todays news :-
Agency worker law change unworkable - TUC and agency sector
The government plans to introduce legislation this week to make it legal for employers to bring in agency staff to replace striking workers.

But these plans have been criticised by the Trades Union Congress and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation as "unworkable" and they say they "will only prolong the conflict between employers and their staff".

Under the government's plan, any employer - public as well as private, including schools, councils and the NHS - would have flexibility to bring in outside staff to cover striking workers. This would be made legal by repealing a law that's been in place in the UK for almost half a century.

The TUC and REC - which represent unions and the agency sector respectively - say they oppose the move "in the strongest possible terms".

The current ban should be kept in place "as a key element of a sustainable national employment relations framework", they say.

They also say the plan is not practical because there are 1.3 million job vacancies and data shows the number of people available to fill them is falling.

"In this tight labour market, agency workers are in high demand and can pick and choose the jobs they take. Agency staff are very unlikely to choose a role that requires them to cross a picket line versus one that doesn’t," the organisations say.

Oli. I read today the government are intending to enable agency workers to stand in. Seems they haven't changed their intention ?

I wonder though. Which are the more efficient human robots. Amazon or RMG ?

Telegraph Article
Royal Mail’s new “superhub” in Warrington, outside Manchester.
“This place is going to change so much for us as a company.” That’s the hope, at least. The robotic plant is part of the 506-year-old institution’s aim to automate almost all of its increasingly lucrative parcel business by 2023-24, up from a current roughly 50pc.
It comes amid cut-throat competition from other logistics players such as Amazon, and increasingly demanding customers. Meanwhile, the top brass is under pressure to arrest the company’s share price as Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky, who owns around 20pc, watches on. Royal Mail has shed almost half of its value since the start of the year as fears over industrial unrest loom large this summer. Parcels are a key plank of chief executive Simon Thompson’s vision. Currently accounting for about 56pc of the group’s £8.5bn revenue, sites like the one in Warrington are targeted to boost those figures higher. The 32,000 square metre depot - equal to 4.5 football pitches - is capable of sorting more than 800,000 parcels a day using robots, before delivering them across the north-west of England. It is expected to employ 600 staff at full capacity, albeit making some jobs naturally redundant elsewhere in the ecosystem as few packages are expected to touch the human hand. As demand for handwritten notes dwindles and shoppers turned to home deliveries in record numbers amid the pandemic, Royal Mail has become a self-professed “parcel business that also delivers letters”.
Five billion parcels were sent in the UK in 2020, up from 3.8bn in 2019, with 160 boxes shipped every second - or 14m each day. It meant Royal Mail made most of its money from dispatching packages rather than letters for the first time in history. Although demand has cooled off with customers returning to physical chains in recent months, domestic parcel volumes are still up more than 30pc compared to pre-pandemic levels, the company claims.
The superhubs are part of a wider revamp after years of underinvestment since Royal Mail was privatised in 2013. It formally split from the Post Office a decade ago, although the pair still work closely together.
A second depot, in Northampton, is due to be launched by summer 2023, with a third possibly in the pipeline.
In Warrington, a truckload of Boohoo orders makes its way on to an intelligent system of conveyor belts and scanning technology.
A few metres away, packages from Boots, Asos and Myprotein in large, red containers are picked up and placed by tall robotic arms onto the conveyor belts. They then reach hundreds of ‘slides’ that determine which postcode they are destined for, before being loaded onto vans on the other side of the building.

Oli, JB
Seems we are in the lap of the Gods currently. Anyone that believes they know 100% what the near future holds is delusional.
Current debates could go either way and personally I would prefer to take the pain of an inmediate confrontation instigated by the Board than the constant manipulations which are so easily constructed when there is a predictable period of unrest with threats of IA etc.
This once great Company deserves better than to have its name besmirched. The British public deserve better also.
I believe our OAP's got around 2% rise didn't they. No opportunity of overtime or free shares either.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/big-wage-increases-are-too-risky-treasury-chief-warns-bosses-lftr39c3f?amp

RG "What I found interesting about his pay is that his basic has gone up by 3.6%. Now, if that was RM's offer to CWU grades it would be more justified"
Sounds reasonable, Goose / Gander etc. Why not suggest a counter offer 3.6% instead of 2%

Price target decreased to UK£4.83
Down from UK£5.24, the current price target is an average from 11 analysts. New target price is 79% above last closing price of UK£2.70.
Stock is down 54% over the past year.
The company is forecast to post earnings per share of UK£0.32 for next year compared to UK£0.62 last year.

Commonsense, as requested.
"Please could anyone kindly remind me of voting day for unions ?"
Industrial Action
Notice served to RMG on 21st June
Ballot papers dispatched on 28th June
Ballot closes 19th July.

JB. Pleased to hear, we are fortunate to enjoy family and friends during these troubled times. Not surprised to hear we are again in synch with our investment plans. Best wishes.

Hi, JB
I hope whatever diverted your attention from here these past days was pleasurable. I have gained respect for a number of people here over the years and your measured response is exactly what I have grown to expect.
Moving on, yes indeed history repeating which we have been anticipating. Which of course should mean period of fluctuation followed by a steady climb.
Personally I am pleased to see the CEO standing firm. Just my opinion of course.