Australia Post is en route to slash nearly 2000 jobs as it prepares to deliver its first full-year loss for the whole group in more than 30 years. The national mail carrier says losses in mail delivery are set to be $500m this financial year as decline in letter volumes exceeded its expectations, taking the cumulative losses in the mail business to more than $1.5b in the last five years.
Ahmed Fahour: boss ready to cut jobs
The company says it saw the largest annual decline ever recorded in ordinary mail volume in the 2015 financial year, and expects it to plunge further by more than 10 per cent. Ahmed Fahour, Australia Post chief executive, says: “We have reached the tipping point that we have been warning about where, without reform, the business becomes unsustainable. “We welcomed the Federal Government’s decision to support reform so we can manage the mail service losses, meet the changing needs of our customers and continue to invest in growing parts of our business such as parcels and trusted services.” While announcing the new austerity measures Fahour did say that there would be no charge to postal deliveries five days a week, however earlier this year he flagged the possibility of a two-speed postage service for its loss making letter deliveries. As for the job losses, the mail carrier has established a fund to assist with employee retraining and redeployment, and which would also include a $190m provision for voluntary redundancy as a safety net for impacted mail service staff over the next three years. AusPost is not confirming the number of potential redundancies, but a spokeswoman says reports that more than 1900 jobs could go would be a fair assessment based on modelling. “The majority of the voluntary redundancies will be in metropolitan areas,” the company says. Australia Post says it is committed to retraining and redeploying its staff to growth parts of the organisation, and protecting its national network of more than 4000 post offices. “There will be no forced redundancy of employees directly affected by reform of the letters service and who actively seek a new role,” Post says.
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