West London: Unions have warned that the jobs of 500 west London postal workers could be axed as Consignia prepares to cut 30,000 members of staff.

Representatives from the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) have predicted that more than 500 workers from the Post Office, Royal Mail and Parcelforce will be struck by Consignia's announcement on Wednesday last week that it intends to shed 15 per cent of its workforce.

The union's west London branch secretary, James Davies, also warned that there could be more casualties as loss-making Parcelforce prepares to hand the majority of its workload over to other couriers.

Mr Davies said: "Obviously morale and industrial relations are at an all time low. We knew that in the future there would be a new delivery specification which would reduce the service from two deliveries a day to one delivery, resulting in a 35 per cent reduction in staff.

"Parcelforce is a big problem as it's losing a lot of money and there are plans to out-source 80 per cent of the jobs Parcelforce does to other companies. This proposal would result in a national reduction of 14,000 people and would probably hit workers at its big depot on the A40 in Acton.

"The announcement that the company has to reduce its costs by £1.2 billion will have a very real effect on west London with a reduction to its workforce of between 450 to 500 members of staff. The only thing we have been given is that there will be no compulsory redundancies, only voluntary."

A Consignia spokeswoman would not confirm cuts to Parcelforce staff numbers.

However, she said: "We are looking at cutting £1.2 billion costs from the company's budget over the next couple of years and we are hoping much of this will come from voluntary redundancies as Consignia has an annual turnover of 20,000 people leaving the job each year."

December 20, 2001 16:30