LPOG Media Release- Supporting Temporary Regulatory Relief.pdf

Message from Nicole - We need your support.pdf

LPOGroup recommends Licensees contact their local Federal Member to add your voice to support the move to improve the utilisation of the Postal Delivery arm of Australia Post. To allow Australia Post to move forward and remain viable for the future.

Continuing to pay the same pay to employees that do not have the same amount of work to do, yet refusing to find other ways for those employees to be productive in other ways, is not the way to ensure a robust and economically sound business moving forward. As investors in this business this must be called out for what it is, an absolute waste of our resources.

There is little doubt most LPOs have experienced change over the past decade, but the last 3 months has seen rapid change piling in on top of us, in the form of more and more parcels all over Australia. Most Licensees have had to work out very quickly how we adjust to these changes on the fly, because the parcels just kept coming in over the counters and the flow did not diminish to what we had previously expected. We are once again facing an increased need to adjust because Christmas is not so far away, and that is our next expected peak period.

With that in mind Australia Post management has taken the very necessary steps to address the underutilised Posties service delivering letters to our residential addresses in metro areas, in an effort to get ahead of the next peak, and the future growth areas for the business.

Licensees have invested billions of dollars of our personal funds into this business, and we have every right to expect the management of Australia Post to best utilised the resources of the business, to provide the best outcomes for all the stakeholders in this business, not just the employee arm of this business. Licensees have long called for a retainer payment to compensate for when we experience downtimes, when our door are required to remain wide open as per our agreement, our overheads continue to accrue and that does not change, but our foot traffic is no where to be seen and our revenue diminishes as we wait at the counter for a customer to appear. There has been no appetite from any sector of the business, nor any Government of the day for such compensation payments, most especially the Unions. The cry is always - there is no money!

If this waste of resources is going on all over the employed arm of the business, there is little wonder there is no money!

The previous CEO tried to improve the under utilisation by pushing a lot of small parcels into Postie's bags and having them do a bit of both. Licensees often see these small parcels carded back to a PO when the addressee is not at home, and many of them are not so small. There is only so much you can carry on a Postie bike, and shoe boxes and wine deliveries do not suit. 

Australia Post has the same amount of Posties on the road now, that they had 10 years ago, only now most households get less than 1/2 a letter per day. It makes sense to restructure the delivery to street letter boxes to make that service more productive, where the Postie will be delivering an actual letter to a letter box, rather than just riding by.

So why then is there such a collosal fuss to protect under utilised Posties from moving into a more productive space, to help deliver the massive influx of parcels that we have been seeing over the recent months, instead of riding around on an empty bike in the rain and the sunshine, just waving at most of the letter boxes on their runs as they ride by?

Why would anybody not see that adapting to the changing needs of our communities to improve the sustainability of the Postal Service not be in everyone's best interests?

A dose of reality 

Postie's Conditions.docx