Union wins May bonus boost for Crown Office workers

Postal, Post Office (PO) May 12 2020

Around 1,000 hard-working Post Office counter staff will receive a fair reward for their endeavours at the end of this month, now that the CWU has achieved key improvements to the calculation used in working out payments for the Crown Office Incentive Scheme.

Assistant secretary Andy Furey says: “We were determined that nobody should lose out as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic – especially in light of the extra efforts that have been made by our members to maintain their excellent service to the public during this extremely difficult period.

“And so it was a matter of some urgency that we needed to seek and secure alterations to the scheme and how it’s worked out.”

As a consequence of our members being key workers during lockdown, customer activity has become increasingly more difficult, especially with the unprecedented level of parcels and packets over the past six weeks. Therefore, with the decline of certain transactions such as bureau de change and travel insurance, the bonus payments would not have fully reflected the performance and efforts of the previous 10 months under its pre-existing calculation system, Andy explains.

But, following discussions with the Post Office, a system is now in place which maximises each Crown branch’s ‘score’ – because it now takes into account the performance from higher ‘scoring’ periods for bonus application.

Giving an example of this, Andy continues: “Essentially, the new method now examines the results at either ‘Week 52’ – the end of March – or as at ‘Week 48’ – the end of February – and calculates bonus payments on the better of the two.

“And this achieves the key objective we set, which was to ensure that our members have the fairest possible opportunity to maximise their incentive payouts during this crisis.

“It’s great that our members will be getting this extra cash in their pockets in their May wage packets – something they all fully deserve for their hard work and dedication to first-class customer service.”

·         For further details, please see LTB 247/20