Andy Furey, CWU Assistant Secretary has written to all Postal Branches to advise of the latest in the national talks on pay 2016:

The CWU submitted a pay claim on 6th January for a one-year unconditional pay increase for Crown members of at least 1.9%, to achieve parity with year three of the three year pay agreement reached in December 2014 for members working in Admin & Supply Chain.

The first meeting to discuss Crown Office pay was eventually held on Friday 6th May, some four months after our pay claim letter was sent to Paula Vennells, Chief Executive.  During the meeting, the following pay offer was tabled by Roger Gale, Crown General Manager, on behalf of the Post Office:

• a pay rise of 1% from 1st April 2016

• a further pay rise of 0.9% payable from 1st April next year but backdated to 1st April 2016 on the conditionality the Crown sales targets are met.  Presumably if the targets were missed, even by just a £1, then the 0.9% wouldn’t be paid.  The Post Office estimates that the 0.9% pay increase would cost them £575k in their pay bill including pension and national insurance.

Three conditions were placed on the financial offer above and these are as follows:

• resolve the Christmas Eve Opening Hours dispute with the union accepting the position of the Post Office (this would mean a 16:00 closure on Christmas Eve going forward). 

• the Statutory Redundancy notice from April 2017 is reduced from the current 90 days to just 45 days.  This would help the Post Office to fast track redundancies.

• ‎the second instalment of the pay rise of 0.9% is fully conditional on the Crown Network achieving its sales targets for the current financial year (this is despite the current franchising programme that will take sales away from the Crown Network).

The offer was immediately rejected by our negotiating team as it is unacceptable to have to wait a further year for the 0.9% and there is no guarantee this would be honoured anyway due to the associated conditionality. The Postal Executive endorsed this position, and a formal letter has been sent to the Post Office explaining the reasons for the rejection of the pay offer.

On a positive note, a further pay meeting is due to take place on Friday 27th May when hopefully progress can be made. 

Source: CWU