A second-class service?

Postman Eric Lawday: "It used to be more fun"

The Royal Mail is fast becoming the "sick man" of British industry. Job losses and a big shake-up loom. How is the average postman coping with this unhappy turn of events?

These are deeply uncertain times for the country's 130,000 postmen and women, but you wouldn't think so judging by the atmosphere in the West One delivery room.

At 6.30 on Tuesday morning the room, which is tucked behind London's Oxford Street and is almost the size of a football pitch, is a hive of activity as letters, parcels and countless Christmas cards are sorted and bound into bunches, ready for the day's delivery rounds.

The government is running down the Post Office to prove it doesn't work

Eric Lawday

To a soundtrack of festive tunes that ring out from a tinny stereo, staff apply themselves at a determined pace, breaking their concentration now and again to share a joke or anecdote.

"It used to be more fun. You could have a laugh and a joke with the guvnors," says Eric Lawday, who has delivered in the West One precinct for 27 years.

But while the mood has hardened over the years, the work itself has changed little. Sorting is a labour intensive task that relies heavily on a postman's intimate local knowledge.

Knowing your round

Eric, who has been on the same round for four years, knows all the businesses he delivers to; which floor of which building they occupy; the various names or "guises" one company may go under; the firms which have recently moved and where to.

Sorting mail at the "frame"

Standing in front of the sorting "frame", his hand darts around as he intuitively places letters in their correct pigeonholes.

At 63, Eric says he can afford to be sanguine about the management shake-up that looms ever closer, because he is due to retire in little over a year.

After many years of profits, Consignia - the funky new name for the Royal Mail and Post Office's parent company - made an operating loss of £3m last year.

Redundancies

Last week, chief executive John Roberts predicted a staggering 30,000 jobs would have to go to get the operation back on course.

Bundling the post, ready for delivery

But if the mass voluntary redundancy plan is rolled out, many of his younger colleagues would jump at the offer, Eric says.

"I don't think they would have any trouble getting 30,000. The young lads would take the money. I think they've all had enough.

"The government are running down the Post Office to prove it doesn't work. They want to privatise it and by running it down they can sell it off cheap."

Strike action

Morale is flagging in the face of so much criticism from the media and many postman will not miss the pay and conditions, says Eric.

The W1 room handles about 500,000 letters a day

The average postal worker takes home £250 for a 41.5 hour, six-day week. Add to that the early morning starts and the fact that overtime is increasingly hard to come by and, says Eric, "you're almost better off staying at home".

Such sentiments could explain the festering industrial relations of recent years. Last year alone, the company lost 62,000 working days to industrial action, mainly through unofficial strikes.

At the same time the Royal Mail, once a venerable national institution, has fallen from grace in the eyes of its increasingly frustrated customers.

The competition

According to those at the sorting office, working practices have changed little in recent years, while those in the outside world have moved on.

Eric on his round in Margaret St

And even the very nature of a national postal system has been called into question.

E-mail and text messaging have eaten into the traditional mail market. Courier companies have also taken a slice and, in March, the Post Office's monopoly on postal services came to an end.

Any efficiency drive would be impossible to implement across the board, Eric says.

"You can't say 'you've got this many places to deliver to, so it should take this long. Every day is different."

Personal touch

But pressure for better performance will inevitably mean postal workers will have to sacrifice the "personal touch".

"I deliver floor to floor, which the competition don't have time. They just leave it inside the front door."

It's this level of service that has always given Eric pride in what he does.

"I'm proud to be a postman. I still think it's a bloody good service we offer for the price of a stamp."