• NZ Post wants household mail delivered to letterboxes in clusters or to communal “delivery points”
• MBIE’s mail service consultation process is selective and misleading and needs to be suspended

Requiring householders to have their letterboxes in clusters or receiving their mail at counters, community mail boxes or communal “delivery points” for NZ Post mail deliveries, and no longer having NZ Post mail deliveries to letterboxes at their front gates. This is one of the changes NZ Post wants from the current Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment public consultation process about its Deed of Understanding with the Government.

MBIE is also consulting on the reduction of mail deliveries from the minimum of 3 delivery days a week to 2 days a week for urban areas and a minimum of 3 days delivery from 5 days a week for rural areas.

The Union says that the consultation process launched last Tuesday by the MBIE is selective, misleading, complicated and inaccessible to many of those most affected by NZ Post’s proposed changes to the location of household letterboxes. Paper-based options and survey forms through the mail would facilitate the participation of the 10% of households who, from the 2023 Census, do not have internet access.

MBIE’s reference to “delivery points” does not immediately reveal that this jargon includes household letterboxes.

The Union wants MBIE’s consultation process to be suspended, rewritten and then extended to at least three months to better provide for a consultation process with a more well informed and accessible participation by residents.

It is not until page 11 of the MBIE discussion document that NZ Post’s intention to gradually move existing households to letterbox clusters is revealed.

However none of the 16 questions in the MBIE Submission Template seeks the views of the public on the clustering of existing household letterboxes. Question 10 refers only to residents who may be moving to a new residence. NZ Post wants “new addresses”, including new subdivisions, to have only “cluster and commmunity boxes”, without mail delivery to individual households.

NZ Post wants to lay off all 750 mail sector employees including all its posties and have the mail delivered by couriers. The couriers do not want to deliver mail by van with the increased number of stops and dismounts required, including searching for parking spaces. If NZ Post is successful in having the clustering of domestic letterboxes then couriers would be able to deliver to letterbox clusters without having to stop at the front gate letterboxes of individual households.

The Postal Workers Union has a counter-proposal for a slimmed down postie network delivering letters, packets and small parcels to individual households on electric cargo bikes and electric motorcycles instead of the increased number of diesel and petrol powered delivery vans required under NZ Post’s plan to replace all posties with couriers.

The Postal Workers Union says NZ Post is in breach of its Collective Agreement with the Postal Workers Union by not endeavouring to minimise redundancies among its posties. The Employment Relations Authority will be hearing the Union’s case against NZ Post in Auckland from 18 to 20 February.

While the Union’s primary concern is for the future of its members, the Union has often found itself to be a voice for the people as NZ Post runs down its mail delivery business.

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