RURAL Delivery posties are unhappy with their employer.
REVELATIONS about NZ Post rural delivery contractors being underpaid, and having freight allegedly taken off rural delivery runs and given to CourierPost as part of a new, unconsulted-about business model, have emerged out of an ongoing investigation into Te Kūiti’s missing mail in the early part of 2021. King Country News has been told six rural delivery contractors in Taranaki have issued a cessation of services notice this week because of remuneration issues, while in the Waikato, rural mail contractors are finding they are not alone in having the same problem – but allege NZ Post is taking mail off their runs and allocating it to courier drivers. One Rural Delivery (RD) driver had a heated argument this week with a courier driver who was delivering parcels on their run, ProDrive advocate Peter Gallagher said. “We had an incident last week where a contractor in the Waikato [with a] long standing RD run in the Waikato was delivering material, and a CourierPost van pulled in front of her and delivered parcels into the next letter box. “The RD contractor challenged the CourierPost driver, saying it was their run. The Courier Post driver replied that he has been given the run three months prior.” MARKETING PUSH The date coincided with a marketing push and sale of CourierPost businesses on Trade Me, he said. The mystery of Te Kūiti’s missing mail was never resolved. King Country News broke the story on July 22 last year about Te Kūiti residents missing mail for two months. There were enough complaints for it to become a police investigation – which was never able to be satisfactorily resolved. There were many residents who contacted King Country News after the story broke. They contacted by email, by phone and by dropping into the Te Kūiti office to say they hadn’t been getting any mail — some for up to two months — with most saying they thought they were the only ones affected. There appeared to be no pattern with people across the township finding their mailboxes empty. Contacting NZ Post was difficult. The local mail liaison officer when contacted by phone said: “You’ll have to speak to our media team.” When told there was no number for a media communications team for New Zealand Post, and did he have one, the answer was he did not know either. Upon finding one through a media contact, phone calls were not answered and emails not answered. Rumour later placed the blame on an NZ Post contractor whom it is alleged had rapidly left the country. Before that was known, King Country News was put in touch with other parties concerned about issues NZ Post had with its rural delivery contractors. Peter Gallagher has been involved in discussion with the Taranaki drivers since July, and more recently, Waikato drivers. Having run the course of attempting good faith resolutions with NZ Post, the drivers in the former region finally agreed to suspend services, and ProDrive was able to go public about the dispute this week. HOLDING PATTERN There were Waikato rural delivery contractors that were also in a holding pattern awaiting NZ Post to undertake and complete financial review of their business. The Waikato contractors’ complaint was they invested a significant amount into their businesses, usually hundreds of thousands of dollars, while behind the scenes NZ Post orchestrated the redirection and reallocation of that freight to others to their detriment and undermining their equity and investment, Peter said. What has emerged is what he says appears to be a national strategy by NZ Post to insert CourierPost runs into the urban fringes, at the expense of freight formerly delivered by their rural delivery contractors. The underlying drive for this appears to be the belated understanding that online shopping has become one of the biggest upwards trends of the new century and that profit was going to the contractors, rather than to NZ Post, he said. “That’s the first point,” Peter said. “But where you have got those territories, it won’t just be the Waikato. “They targeted six other areas round the country where they are introducing structural and strategic change by introducing multi courier businesses into and impinging upon traditional rural delivery routes. “So then you have the double sided problem where you already have lack of remuneration by those contractors, compounded by the fact they are introducing these other alternate multi-run opportunities for couriers. “That effectively then has the potential to completely dissolve all equity and investment that the rural delivery contractors have put into these businesses.” The Waikato and Taranaki disputes were two sides of the same coin, he said. ‘INNOCENT VICTIMS’ The Waikato contractors were the innocent victims of a behind-the-scenes developed marketing strategy which was entirely for the benefit of NZ Post and its culmination was in the dismembering of urban fringe rural delivery routes. “Have we got absolute concrete proof that is going on all round the country? No, but we have evidence. We’ve got enough evidence to pose that as a serious question. “What is NZPost doing, where it has advertised multi courier runs around six regions of New Zealand?” The runs were advertised on Trade Me, and had been there for a couple of months, he said. The overall picture that had emerged was NZPost had a problem, it had declining mail NZ wide. “Declining mail equals declining mail revenue. They have on the other hand increasing parcel freight volume,” Peter said. “That was exponential growth during Covid, it has somewhat calmed down now but none the less it has been the growth area for them. And of course they recognise that is where their future profit lies. Not in mail, and they want that profit. “In order to get that profit they have introduced this structure of introducing multi couriers runs on the urban fringes of developing regions around New Zealand so that they can capture that parcel freight. “But of course they can’t do that on the fringes without directly ending up into the RD routes.” There were two ways for NZPost to go about it, he said. They could be honest about it and offer to compensate the rural delivery contractors for their losses. “In fact it appears, and questions need to be asked, why is NZPost going ahead with its restructure strategy without informing the rural deliveries what they are up to?” HOLLOW RESPONSE When NZ Post was presented with evidence of how the Waikato contractors had steadily lost freight the reply was NZ Post was able to act because the issues were long standing or historic. “It’s a hollow response but they say they were entitled to make changes to meet service requirements of customers,” Peter said. “What gives substance to the lie is the fact as a direct consequence of advertising multi courier runs, there is now a courier showing up on a rural delivery run, arguing about whose run it is.” Peter, who has been successful in dealings against other corporates on behalf of contractors in the past 14 years, said what has been distressing is the amount of RD contractors who have believed they have been alone in going through this. “They are not,” he said. “To that end, ProDrive happy to chat from any RD contractor who has concerns about their runs, or their remuneration. They can contact me on 0800776374.”
There are 750,000 rural delivery customers
WAIKATO rural delivery contractors say what has happened to them includes contractual breaches, a breach of the Fair Trading Act, deceptive and misleading conduct and a breach of contractual law. The allegations are that customers are being restricted from getting access to overnight services by NZ Post bringing in intermediaries to deliver freight that was until recently a routine part of a rural delivery run. Up until about a year ago, rural delivery drivers could deliver 120 boxes to a single client as part of a single delivery, but, they say, that was stopped. The allegation is NZ Post refused to accept bulk into the rural network anymore. There was formerly no issue with an RD contractor using a couple of vanloads to deliver to a client. They say NZ Post then decided it was not what Rural Delivery was set up to do. One contractor, whom King Country News declines to name, said NZ Post changed the contractual terms through farming out freight that was formerly part of the Rural Delivery to intermediaries – freight and courier companies. They gave an example of a long-standing customer’s regular freight being rejected for delivery by NZ Post and was eventually delivered by a trucking company. It meant instead of the client’s former overnight delivery, would now take two weeks to a month. The contractor found out because they were delivering next door and saw the StraitNZ truck deliver two little boxes on a pallet. SERVICES BLOCKED “They are harming our rural clients by preventing them accessing services they have always been allowed to access because NZ Post has now determined, ‘Oh no, not allowed that service anymore because that’s not what rural was set up to do’,” the contractor said. “Four years go there was a major shift in their management. They used to have managers who knew the rural lifestyle or rural runs quite well, so they would be always making sure we would be looked after and explaining why. “Over the years all of those guys have gone and it’s all courier-based management who don’t understand the rural; that we deliver mail, junk mail, newspapers, parcels, and anything else. “Couriers deliver parcels, postie delivers mail. No one delivers junk because that’s done by an external provider. “The papers are delivered by an external provider. But in the rural delivery we do all that as part and parcel of our contract – and that’s what they don’t understand.” On the Hamilton rural fringe, a lot of small business owners had moved to rural addresses to save money and set up their business in the garage. One particular import business was having previous RD-delivered freight rejected because of size. The package was 1.49m, and Rural Delivery was allowed to take packages up to 2m in length and 30kg in weight. Both the freight forwarder and NZ Post refused to deliver it, forcing the client to drive from a rural address to town and pick it up themselves. Despite what the contractor says is evidence to back up theirs and others’ claims, they say NZ Post has spent months “simply ignoring it.”
