Parcelforce to cut 1,500 jobs
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by Karen Miles • Parcelforce is to cut its workforce by 12% as the parcels division of the Post Office attempts to reorganise its way back into profit.
A strike ballot was avoided after the company agreed not to impose compulsory redundancies as it cuts around 1,500 posts. Depot staff, as well as senior management, all face reorganisation.
Parcelforce hopes staff will be redeployed in the rest of the Post Office. it currently employs around 12,000 staff with a fleet of 8,000 vehicles based at 100 UK depots.
More than 1,000 jobs— some estimates suggest 2,000—are set to go within 18 months with the closure of Parcelforce's eight nextday and two-day parcels delivery hubs. Its express regional hubs in Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Peterborough, east London, Reading and Bristol will all close.
To replace them a £100m express hub at Coventry is due to open early in 1999.
All these moves are designed to improve Parcelforce's poor financial record.
For the year ending March 1997 it plunged back into crisis, losing £21m on a turnover of over £457m, after managing to break even for just one year.
Parcelforce says: "Like many organisations we are going through a period of great change and the restructuring will be managed over three and four years. No-one has ever been made redundant by Parcelforce."