Royal Mail lend a helping hand with the teaching of AQA Unit 1 (Employing People)

Royal Mail’s decision to recruit up to 30,000 temporary staff to deal with upcoming strikes by postal workers and the Christmas rush offers plenty of scope for discussion under the heading of Employing People

The main Trade Union within Royal Mail (The Communication Workers Union) has called two nationwide strikes next week over pay, conditions and reform. As a result, Royal Mail has said it would hire twice the usual number of extra pre-Christmas staff to cut the impact of “unjustified and irresponsible” industrial action.

Royal Mail to hire 30,000 temps

Royal Mail believes that the recruitment is in line with employment law. Apparently the recruitment drive is not about bringing in workers to do the work of striking staff, but to ensure there are sufficient staff to clear any backlogs as well as tackle the seasonal increase in mail volume. This will almost certainly be disputed by the Communication Workers Union.

In addition to Royal Mail, almost all of ther major supermarkets have announced plans to recruit signifcant numbers of temporary staff over the Christmas period.

I’ll be using the Royal Mail scenario as a discussion starter to lead into a more comprehensive discussion on current trends in the employment of permanent and temporary staff.

As this is a pressing issue for many organisations, a number of case studies and supporting questions are already on the HR Case Studies website. Try Christmas cheer as Sainsbury’s recruits 20,000? for a starter!