£400 annual bonus for Royal Mail CE members

Postal

Hundreds of hard-working Royal Mail call-centre staff will receive an extra boost to their May salaries, with many set to pocket an extra £400 at the end of this month, on top of the £200 Coronavirus recognition payment awarded to all the company’s employees which is being paid in June.

The £400 payment (pro-rata for part-timers), which was agreed between the CWU and the business, covers the six-month period up the end of March 2020 and is calculated in accordance with the agreed performance criteria.

Due to factors beyond anyone’s control, some of the key targets were not hit, but, explains CWU assistant secretary Andy Furey, “we proposed to senior management of Royal Mail’s Customer Experience (CE) division to exclude some of these from the assessment – because penalising members financially would have been unfair in these very specific circumstances.”

Obviously, the proposals included the period during March when the terrible Covid-19 crisis arrived, but also the General Election period towards the end of 2019, which also impacted negatively on the bonus targets.

“And following discussions at the highest levels, we’re really pleased to be able to announce that the company has taken the same view on this occasion,” the CWU assistant secretary adds.

With agreement having been reached, the payouts will be made into the end-of-May payroll and this, together with the £200 special Covid-19 bonus in June, will make for total payments of up to £600 for CE workers.

“They deserve every penny and I’m glad we were able to get this extra money into their pockets,” says Andy.

“Well done to all and thank you for your excellent work.”

Sue Owen, the CWU rep for Plymouth Royal Mail Customer Experience members, says that the bonus agreement is “very good news.

“Whatever happens in operations has a knock on affect on Customer Experience,” she explains, praising frontline colleagues for “battling really hard against all the elements to deliver despite problems with PPE, staff sickness and a huge increase in items to deliver it was like Christmas only worse.”

This of course has generated increased calls from customers, which Customer Experience then has to deal with, creating, Sue continues, “a very trying time for our members who were taking verbal abuse from some customers that was really bad and offensive.

“But, like our operations colleagues, our members kept going and dealt with all this in their stride – so I am pleased that this was recognised by the management team and allowances made for this in as much as the bonus was concerned.

“Great work Andy, and a big thanks from my members for achieving this payment on our behalf.”