Urgent Inquiry into Royal Mail Management

That the Parliament notes that Royal Mail staff’s planned Christmas strike action going ahead after the company reportedly ignored what it considers a peace offer from workers’ representatives to get Christmas back on track and tackle the postal backlog; considers that the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) made a clear offer which, it understands, would give staff a back-dated pay deal of 9% over 18 months, a long-term job security commitment from Royal Mail bosses, a pause on what it sees as the ongoing attacks on union representatives and members, and a period of calm for negotiations on the future direction of the company; believes that the CWU has raised concerns of gross mismanagement by the company for over 18 months; is concerned that a business which, it understands, made record profits of £758 million announced in May 2022 would be losing allegedly more than £1 million per day just a few months later; remembers that postal workers were, in its view, rightly praised as key workers that kept the country and the company going, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and rejects what it sees as Royal Mail’s tactics of proposing to force through mass job losses, including compulsory redundancies, as part of an asset-stripping business plan to justify turning it into just another gig-economy employer; considers that customers and businesses in Scotland, particularly in rural communities, rely heavily on the Universal Service Obligation (USO); calls on the UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to urgently deliver an inquiry into what it sees as the mismanagement at Royal Mail, with consideration to how any changes to the USO or the service itself would affect communities in Scotland, and hopes that a united Scotland-wide response rejects and resists any proposals to reduce services and the legal obligations to provide the USO.