That escalated quickly. A day after Royal Mail workers voted to strike over pay, their employer is threatening to perform the splits unless “significant operational change” happens. The UK postal service would go one way, taking its industrial relations disputes and modernisation challenges with it. GLS, the more profitable parcel operation that is run out of Amsterdam and serves continental Europe and North America, would go the other.
This is a hardball move by chairman Keith Williams, even if the first stage of the operation is only a cosmetic change of name for the holding company from Royal Mail plc to International Distributions Services (an ugly name, but at least it’s not Consignia, the ridiculous moniker briefly adopted a couple of decades ago until the mockery became unbearable).
