Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson is expected to fall on his sword in the coming weeks - Jeff Gilbert
The threat of administration at Royal Mail appears to have passed, at least for the time being, after a deal with the trade unions brought a desperately needed end to one of the most protracted and bitter pay disputes of our times.
That is to be warmly welcomed. One can understand why the company felt compelled to consider extreme measures to break the deadlock but subjecting an institution of such rich heritage to the upheaval and uncertainty of insolvency would have been tantamount to vandalism.
Perhaps it’s naïve to think that the threat of bankruptcy was ever a realistic prospect. It may only have been a negotiation tactic – an attempt to focus minds as the talks repeatedly hit a brick wall. Nevertheless, for thousands of posties no doubt exhausted by the saga, it must be a huge relief to no longer have such speculation hanging over them.
Still, any hope there might have been that the company was poised to sail serenely through calmer waters will have been dashed by the news that chief executive Simon Thompson is expected to fall on his sword in the coming weeks.
It risks creating more instability at the Royal Mail, at a time when the exact opposite is needed. Worse, it risks handing the Communication Workers Union (CWU) a spectacular public relations coup in its fraught battle with the board.
Thompson’s premature exit risks giving bullying union bosses the last laugh - JULIAN SIMMONDS
It sends the wrong message and risks emboldening union bosses in future disputes if they think they hold the power to unseat senior executives. Thompson had only been in the job for two years – a desperately short time even by the somewhat flighty standards of UK plc.
There is no doubt that he has proven to be a divisive figure, and at times Thompson didn’t help himself with his robotic style. The moment that he was caught reading from an autocue on breakfast TV when talks were at a delicate stage will go down as one of the PR gaffes of the decade.
But then at times the impression was that the CWU was so dead-set on a fight that even the Dalai Lama would have struggled to negotiate a peace settlement.
Thompson’s appearance at a select committee of senior MPs appears to have sealed his fate, which is unfortunate. The episode had all the look of a man who had been thrown to the wolves by colleagues only too glad for the spotlight to be on someone else.
Thompson has to accept some responsibility for arriving unprepared for the showdown. Ditto for sounding so uncooperative at times during the proceedings.
But surely there is an army of advisers whose job it is to ensure that management is briefed to within an inch of their life before such high profile events, especially when this particular one had all the look of a giant stitch-up in the hands of chairman Darren Jones.
The Labour MP has built up something of a following on the Left for his perceived skewering of company bosses during his time overseeing the business select committee, but the impression was that he had already made up his mind about the Royal Mail chief.
This was reinforced by the relatively easy ride that was given to CWU general secretary Dave Ward, who comes across as a man who would fight his own reflection. Once the committee had decided to recall Thompson for a second hearing, with chairman Keith Williams in tow this time, on the basis that he may have provided “inaccurate information” to parliament, there was almost certainly no going back.
Yet Royal Mail should have stood by him. Very few people would have emerged from an ordeal as bruising as this with their reputations enhanced. Indeed, he deserves credit for coming away with any resolution at all. It was the mother of all hospital passes, and if Thompson at times lacked warmth, is it any wonder?
The CWU and some of its members were about as hostile as it is possible to be from the very start. They set the tone for talks, and not once did the union soften its stance, leaving the company little choice but to meet them head on.
Nor was there ever any acknowledgement that modernisation was needed at an organisation where many of the working practices are from a bygone era. Thompson was right: without change, Royal Mail would soon be rendered an irrelevant dinosaur in an industry being turned upside down by Amazon and others.
Can you imagine a more thankless task than trying to drag a company, where the union gets to choose which posties get the coveted flat routes, into the 21st century? But in trying to speed up change, Thompson was wrongly attacked as an enemy of the honest working man, rather than a harbinger of much-needed reform that would ironically help secure the future of the Royal Mail.
The postal service was taken to the brink by the dispute. In the end, in the face of such fierce resistance, and with Royal Mail losing millions of pounds a day, the board was forced to water down many of its proposals, and the union was able to declare victory despite the fact it accepted a below-inflation pay deal.
Industrial action has brought the country to a standstill over the last year, at a cost to the economy of billions of pounds, and to the repeated detriment to the lives of the working people that the trade union movement claims to represent.
Thompson’s premature exit risks giving bullying union bosses the last laugh.
