Two reporters worked undercover in Royal Mail delivery and sorting offices to make Post Office Undercover for Channel 4 Dispatches.
They recount their experiences of working alongside poorly trained agency casuals as the full-time postmen squared up to their managers in a post-strike battle over hours, the length of delivery walks and the pressure to get vital Christmas mail delivered.
Reporter 1:
On my first day as a postman I walked into the delivery office without being asked for any ID and later, following the most basic of instructions, found myself out on the streets of Brixton delivering your mail. Dispatches' previous programmes on Royal Mail highlighted serious security failures. So I was surprised how easy it was for me to get hold of your Christmas cards, chequebooks and internet orders without the manager of the delivery office ever checking that I was who I said I was.
My first day's training, along with a bunch of other agency workers, was incredibly basic and at one stage I heard a manager explaining to some of my colleagues that the number on the letter had to match the number on the front door before they posted it. I witnessed one agency employee unable to explain where he'd put a customer's packet while the customer waited outside with a 'sorry you were out card'. And another casual worker having to explain that his partner had left a crucial security fob at home, making life very difficult for the fulltime postman who needed it to deliver to the tower blocks on his rounds.
On one occasion I was sent out with another casual and told to follow his lead, as he 'knew the area'. He ended up getting us so lost we failed to deliver a single letter in 40 minutes of trailing around an estate while he asked for directions. It didn't help that a full time postman had given us some incomprehensible handwritten instructions. Six hours later we returned to the office with my colleague still carrying some letters he hadn't even tried to deliver.
Widespread resentment over changes to working hours created a real 'them and us' atmosphere between bosses and frontline staff. This seemed to bring out the worst in everyone, even people who took a real pride in their work. When we had heavy snow I saw people laughing at me behind my back because I was trying to deliver all my mail, and this is supposed to be a 21st century modernised public service.
And if I was surprised by the lack of security at my delivery office, the ease with which I walked into one of London's biggest mail sorting centres for a subsequent night shift was comical. Heading to South London's 'sorting HQ' I was nervous and the security sign on the front entrance did little to calm my nerves: 'No ID. No Entry. No Exceptions'.
The reality was there were exceptions. I was let in with no ID check, no one even asked my name. There was no one on the front reception and I watched, gobsmacked, as a fellow casual employee let another agency worker into the building &nash; so no ID check there either. Minutes later we were all out on the main sorting floor, handling hundreds of parcels for the entire South London area – a thief's dream job. When I made my original application for work I was told Royal Mail would check me for a criminal record. But that would have made little difference, as I could have been anyone on that night.
But if poor training, lax security and conflict between managers and workers weren't bad enough, the attitude of some posties towards the public – their customers – was shocking. One postman told me he'd shouted at a customer at the parcel collection desk for ringing the bell too much. I was told the poor customer was an elderly man who could barely see over the counter. On another occasion while out delivering a lady told me she'd gone a whole week without receiving any mail. I made a point of reporting it to my manager and whether or not the lady was right, I was still gobsmacked by his response: 'Don't believe them,' he said. 'Customers always lie.'
I can't see that catching on as a slogan in the business world, and I think I'll stick to email from now on.
Reporter 2:
A few weeks ago I finished working as a postman and I'll never look at my mail in the same way again – some of those letters have been through hell.
From my first shift I found myself, along with more than a dozen agency workers, thrown in at the deep end. With little training I was sent out delivering mail in freezing conditions for an average of 10 hours a day on the minimum wage while some full time postmen next to me sometimes left early.
For my first round, an agency worker was tasked with teaching me the basics of delivering the mail. Yet at the very first address, I watched him abandon a parcel outside a front door before the customer had a chance to get to the door to pick it up. He went on to leave a trolley full of packets and letters unlocked as we delivered inside a block of flats but I was most taken aback when he left a bag full of packets unattended, hung around the handle bars of our trolley while he took me off to the newsagents and bought some sweets. We returned to find the bag untouched but it gave me an insight as to how easy a thief's job is made by some of the worker's poor practices – and this postman was meant to be training me.
Both management and workers told me that increasing internet shopping has resulted in a massive rise in the amount of parcels Royal Mail handles. Only problem being that customer's aren't always in and so the dreaded 'Sorry You Were Out' cards were ever present. In one delivery office where I worked this meant the collection queue for packets would at times stretch out to a half an hour wait. But some posties did have a way to help you avoid having to queue – by leaving your parcel on your doorstep, in rain and snow. Easy pickings for a thief; just follow a lazy postman.
The trolleys we were given to carry our mail were also an issue. One manager told me how easily they broke as he searched through a pile of duds in the yard. But even when he managed to locate a trolley with four working wheels and serviceable brakes, it came with a padlock that was rusted shut making it impossible for me to secure the mail. 'Just use that one,' he told me which meant I had to leave your letters and parcels unsecured during my walk.
But if agency staff were hampered by poor equipment and a lack of training the full timers were distracted by industrial relations. A truce between the CWU and Royal Mail management was designed to make sure your Christmas mail was delivered. But this truce was not a reality in my delivery office. I witnessed something akin to a cold war between the two parties; managers told me delivery staff were on a go-slow as they weren't happy with their working hours. Workers blamed managers for giving them too much work. If this hostile atmosphere was meant to be a truce, I would hate to be in the delivery centre at a time of all-out war.
