Full text of DOI:10.1111/1467-8543.00163

British Journal of Industrial Relations
38:2 June 2000 0007±1080 pp. 277±298
The Flexible^Rigid Paradox of
Employment Relations at Royal Mail (UK)
Â
Miguel Martõnez Lucio, Mike Noon and
Sarah Jenkins
Abstract
This article examines how flexibility and rigidity equally pose a dilemma for
management and trade unions. It explores the issue by examining a range of
features within the employment relationship at the Royal Mail in the UK. It
seeks to demonstrate how, in practice, both management and trade unions can
require, pursue and argue for different and competing combinations of flexi-
bility and rigidity. It concludes that it is analytically more useful to examine
the content and form of the `flexible±rigid mix' and explore how this is
mediated by political, social and operational/technical processes.
1. Introduction
Two stereotypes pervade media accounts of contemporary employee
relations: (1) managers are always in pursuit of flexibility, while (2) trade
unions are intent on maintaining rigidity. Not only do such stereotypes
conceal the complexity in the notions of flexibility and rigidity, they also
mask a paradox: that flexibility and rigidity equally pose a dilemma for
management and trade unions, because both terms embed policies that are
required by both parties at different times in the ongoing negotiation of the
employment relationship. The flexible±rigid mix pursued will vary over
space and time as different interest groups employ rhetoric and action to
assert influence. While observers often analyse change within organizations
in terms of unions defending rigid, existing employment structures and
managers proposing flexible developments within the employment relation-
ship, our research indicates that during key moments of transformation
Miguel Martõnez Lucio is at the University of Leeds Business School. Mike Noon is at Leicester
Business School, De Montfort University. Sarah Jenkins is at the Cardiff Business School,
University of Wales.
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108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

278 British Journal of Industrial Relations
different calculations are made by actors regarding the combination of
rigidities and flexibilities. This paper explores the issue by examining a range
of features within the employment relationship at the Royal Mail in the UK.
It seeks to demonstrate how, in practice, both management and trade unions
can require, pursue and argue for different and competing combinations of
both flexibility and rigidity.
To develop this argument, the paper is structured as follows. The literature
on flexibility and rigidity is briefly reviewed, then the methods and case
background to this study are outlined. The empirical data is evaluated in
four sections which explore how different arguments for both flexibility and
rigidity were developed by management and the trade union as they sought
competing flexible±rigid mixes. The paper then discusses how the paradox
has been negotiated in the specific case of the Royal Mail before concluding
with more general observations.
2. Flexibility and rigidity in the new workplace
Since the early 1980s there has been considerable debate about the extent
and coherence of flexibility within organizations (in particular Wood 1984;
Atkinson 1984; Pollert 1988; Proctor et al. 1994; Hyman 1988). The propo-
sition was that a new type of organization was emerging: the `flexible firm',
which was characterized by a strategy that established clear divisions and
hierarchies within the work-force to create a core±periphery structure with
the parallel development of functional and numerical flexibility. Conse-
quently, in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a sustained analytical
and empirical critique of the assumptions and assertions underpinning the
flexibility thesis (Pollert 1988). More recently, Proctor et al. (1994) have
argued that, regardless of limitations within the uses of flexibility, many
managers and organizations remain guided by the strategic attraction of
a flexible organization and seem willing to develop related practices regard-
less of the contradictions and limitations noted by critics. This thematic
persistence is evident within the Royal Mail.
A parallel debate has focused on the specific nature of functional flexibility.
In particular, there was a developing management interest in attempting
to replicate what were considered to be the central features of Japanese
employment practice (Garrahan and Stewart 1992; Oliver and Wilkinson
1992). Such mimic management was pursued even though in Japan the
empirical reality of flexibility was fundamentally different because the
institutional and labour market framework of such practices had been
constructed within distinct sets of political exchanges (Nakamura and Nitta
1995).1 This feature of the changing employment relationship is clearly
being viewed as central even within `highly regulated' European contexts:
even the critics of flexibility recognize it as the one area where organizations
are experiencing exhaustive change. According to two leading European
commentators,
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 279
Today, and particularly under Toyotaism, even in their simplest tasks the
operators are constantly mentally engaged, their minds occupied by total quality,
frequent changes of mode, job rotations, continuous improvement (kaizen), total
productive maintenance, and the like. (Boyer and Durand 1997: 144)
Just when the Anglo-Saxon debate on flexibility enters a period of un-
certainty (Legge 1994), some constituencies of academics and practitioners
seem to be restating the centrality of functional flexibility. Yet there is
evidence of disparate developments in questions related to rotation, multi-
skilling and systematic exchange process within team structures (e.g. Elger
1991; Newell 1991; Thompson and Warhurst 1998; Stewart and Martõnez
Lucio 1998). The argument that job enlargement and not job enrichment
has tended to prevail has become common within industrial sociology.
(See Noon and Blyton 1997 for a historical discussion of this.) Moreover,
even when a degree of workplace functional flexibility develops, it raises
challenging organizational problems regarding the issue of skill formation
and how skills are to be structured, developed and rewarded (Clark 1993).
In addition, concerns are raised about how the use of functional flexibility
and `group rotation' imposes new pressures on the employee through
teamworking and peer-based surveillance and control strategies (Delbridge
and Turnbull 1992; Garrahan and Stewart 1992; Parker and Slaughter
1988).
The brief outline above serves to point out how the debate has developed
in a binary manner: types of flexibility have been assessed in terms of
whether or not they have been systematically developed within organiz-
ations, whether or not they constitute new forms of control systems, and
whether or not they qualitatively enhance employee skills. Similarly,
discussions of trade union approaches to flexibility mirror this tracking of
developments by assessing the unions' rejection or acceptance of such
workplace changes. Yet these polarities in the flexibility debate have been
questioned. Geary (1992) noted that the increasing interest in flexible
practices may in fact lead to a less than flexible set of outcomes in the
workplace. He argued that it is too simplistic to characterize previous
employment relations as having been rigid in the past, compared with
contemporary experiences of `flexibility'. The outcome of new employment
measures can lead to the emergence of truncated internal labour markets
(Heyes 1996) and to increasing degrees of monotony and repetitiveness
within work (Elger and Fairbrother 1991). Indeed, to draw such com-
parisons ignores the more complex manifestation of both rigidities and
flexibilities within organizations, let alone their possible combination.
Along with this set of concerns over flexibility in the workplace is the
proposition that new employment practices give rise to new rigidities, and
historically some types of institutional rigidity have played a part in the
development of highly productive, flexible practices. Countries with a strong
tradition of flexibility and multi-skilling, such as Germany, were influenced
by `institutional rigidities' in the form of strong trade unions and external
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280 British Journal of Industrial Relations
legal processes, which limited the choices employers could make over work
organization (Streeck 1991; Jurgens et al. 1992). Highly competitive forms
of flexible specialization actually necessitated rigid regulatory practices;
productivity and flexibility are sustainable through the development of
rigidities within the formal system of regulation (Streeck 1991). Quality-
based production and employment systems in terms of worker utilization
tend therefore to depend on a range of externally derived rigidities at the
level of political regulation, social representation and notions of employee
rights which limit the capacity of employers to develop `flexible' procedures
at work, based on low wages, job intensification and low skill investment.
(For a parallel discussion with regard to the absence of such factors in
the UK, see Nolan 1989.) Hence the relationship between flexibility and
rigidities is of a symbiotic nature, involving distinct levels of employment
regulation and a range of employment practices.
Flexibilities and rigidities interact and are combined in different ways by
management and unions. This necessitates an interpretation of flexibility
that acknowledges how elements in the employment relationship are com-
bined by distinct strategic initiatives and workplace regimes (see Blyton 1992).
Complex combinations of rigidities and flexibilities have to be understood
in relation to each other and not merely as inherently contradictory, stand-
alone concepts. In other words, across a range of areas, unions and man-
agement engage with each other on the basis of distinct combinations and
meanings of flexibility and rigidity. In the Royal Mail, part of the problem
has been this competing conceptualization of employment relations and
their distinct articulation. We will analyse these tensions in terms of the
question of work organization (teamworking), job allocation (fixed duties),
shift rotation (settled attendances) and task allocation (seniority). Two sets
of tensions will be pointed to: the tensions between management and unions
in terms of their combinations of flexibilities and rigidities; and the tensions
within management and unions themselves with regard to these combina-
tions. Before this analysis begins, however, we give a brief explanation of
our methodology and some contextual background information.
3. Methods
The research was undertaken using qualitative methods consistent with
the belief that only by exploring the Royal Mail in depth can meaningful
insight be acquired regarding the complex, problematic and often conflictual
nature of organizational change. As qualitative methodology is very time
consuming, and as the Royal Mail is a massive organization, we focused on
one of the nine geographical divisions and explored six sites where various
change projects had been undertaken. The division was selected in con-
sultation with Royal Mail senior management to ensure that we would
encounter a proper representation of the various initiatives being developed
across the organization nationally. Access had to be negotiated at each
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 281
stage, but, having clarified our objectives and methods, we were allowed to
talk with anyone we wanted. This welcome openness made the Royal Mail
an excellent research environment. In return, we guaranteed full anonymity
to everyone we interviewed, which also meant that we agreed not to identify
the particular sites.
In terms of the specific methods, we relied heavily on face-to-face semi-
structured interviews Ð 191 in total. These were undertaken with all levels
of staff, from managers at national, divisional and local level, through to
front-line staff of different grades. We also ensured that interviews were
undertaken with part-time staff, women employees and people from ethnic
minority backgrounds. Trade union representatives at national, regional and
local level were also interviewed. All interviews lasted between 45 minutes
and two hours. (A few exceptional interviews lasted longer.) Where
appropriate, and when the interviewee gave approval, a tape recorder was
used; otherwise extensive contemporaneous notes were taken. The inter-
views were transcribed and coded into a commercially available computer
program designed for the analysis of qualitative data: NUD*IST (Non-
numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing), pub-
lished by Scolari (Sage). This software allows large amounts of interview
data to be coded (categorized) and retrieved according to key themes and
ideas specified by the researchers. In effect, it is an elaborate data base that
replaces the need for more laborious pencil and paper methods of coding
data. Like all systems, it has its limitations (and its critics), but we found
it particularly useful in helping us to manage a vast amount of text (around
0.75 million words).
In addition to the in-depth interviews, informal individual and group
discussions were held when the opportunity arose, along with periods of
shop-floor observation where the working methods were examined.
Together, these provided important contextual information to help us gain
a better understanding of the workplaces. More formally, we observed some
specific training sessions and attended nationally and regionally organized
events such as the Royal Mail's Teamwork/Good Practice showcase and the
trade union conferences.
4. Organizational background
The Royal Mail is one of the earliest forms of state intervention with a
broad geographical and popular presence (Daunton 1985). From the 1960s
it has been increasingly subjected to a range of pressures for change from
political forums, market contexts and technological developments (Martõnez
Lucio and Noon 1994: 66±70). It is possible to identify five projects of
change through which, since the early 1980s, the organization has passed or
is still passing: modernization, separation, mechanization (later automa-
tion), commercialization and `privatization' (Martõnez Lucio et al. 1997).
These five `projects' illustrate some of the complex environmental factors
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282 British Journal of Industrial Relations
that contribute to the nature of the organization's workplace politics
(Batstone et al. 1984). The first project of modernization was very much
concerned with administrative reorganization; the second was based on
reorganization by separating the distinct areas of the Post Office (resulting
in the Royal Mail becoming a stand-alone business); the third has been
to mechanize and, more recently, automate the Royal Mail, in particular
through the introduction of new machinery, the construction of new sorting
offices (the mechanized letter offices and now the automated processing
centres) and the transformation of working practices. The fourth project has
been the attempt to permeate the Post Office with a commercialist orien-
tation and to prepare it for further marketization. Within this panorama
of change there have been delays, contingencies and diversities within each
phase of `development'. The point is that the process of change has been
complex, involving various reformations of the organization around distinct
long-term projects.
Through the restructuring in the early 1990s, which separated the organiz-
ation into different functions (processing, distribution and delivery), and then
through the desire to locate employees in specific areas at specific times,
management began to establish a more fragmented, yet focused, system of
employment when compared with the past (Jenkins et al. 1995). The objectives
behind such developments were varied: the possibility of breaking up the
Royal Mail into distinct services (distribution, delivery and processing); the
aim of franchising in specific areas such as delivery around certain clusters
of employees and managers; and the objective of creating accountable and
`autonomous' units of employment managed through an increasingly pervasive
(although in practice never coherent) system of performance measurement.
Underpinning all this was a management rhetoric of flexibility that was
linked to business needs; this was consistent with `popular' nostrums that
flexibility is good and rigidity is bad. It is well illustrated by quotes from two
internal documents:
Flexibility is essential for the business survival in the future. All successful companies
require flexibility from their employees and Royal Mail can be no different. It may
mean having to work harder on occasions, but more often flexibility will be about
changing how we work to meet customer needs. (internal document on proposed
changes, 1995)
The cornerstone of the Employee Agenda is the Way of Working Proposals. This
will help managers enormously by removing a number of the ongoing arguments
which we have about people moving from one job to another, grade demarcation,
work allocation, etc. Your team's objectives and tasks will be your objectives.
Your job will be about leading teams and developing them with much less
emphasis on day to day issues. (internal document Ð briefing to Royal Mail front
line managers, 1996)
However, as shall be revealed below, such rhetoric masks elements of
rigidity in management policy Ð in many respects this strategy could be
seen as one of `controlled flexibility'. Moreover, this management strategy
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 283
stimulated debate over the very nature of flexible working within the
organization as the CWU responded with its own discourse of flexibility Ð
defending flexibilities in some areas and opposing it in others.
5. Flexibility through teamworking
Royal Mail management wanted employees to work as teams. The argu-
ment was that `autonomous' groups of employees led by their work area
team leaders (WATLs), who were in fact their supervisors, would provide the
opportunity to develop the interface with the market (the external customer)
and to adopt contractual relations within the workplace (the internal customer).
Management believed this could be elaborated and acted upon by creating
internal peer pressure, continuous improvement (innovations in working
methods) and clear (measurable) objectives. Financial and organizational
controls were seen as being best supported by accountable and `measurable'
units of work. Much of this interest in teamwork was also driven by the fear
that extensive investment in new technology could be undermined without a
controlled, focused and team-based system of workplace organization.
In addition, workers had to be employed in specific areas and during
specified times. From the early 1990s the Royal Mail began to initiate a
series of programmes aimed at creating a more focused work-force. Through
a series of consultations over the reallocation of staff, it aimed to have a
work-force that identified with and was located within specific areas of work
and specific shifts. The extent of these developments varied according to the
offices and their negotiation cultures.
In contrast, the unions argued that people already worked in teams Ð
albeit ones with broader and more flexible boundaries. Many Royal Mail
employees felt they worked within the team of `the Royal Mail', while others
identified a range of local `teams' to which they belonged, for example their
immediate work colleagues, their place of work or the whole sorting office.
Others argued that teamworking was already in place because employees
working together were `settled' in terms of the shift and area of their work.
In other words, teamworking was interpreted as `working together':
working with the same individuals, in the same area and at the same time.
This benign interpretation was considerably removed from the management
definition, which carried with it considerable implications for work reorgan-
ization, competitive peer pressure, extensive performance measurement
and tighter surveillance through mutual dependency. Consequently, some
employees used the term `group' to distinguish their perspective on work
organization from what they felt to be the more restrictive and threatening,
or at least ambivalent, managerial term `team'. This is emerging as quite a
common finding in research in the area of organizational change and
teamwork. Workers frequently have distinct meanings of `teamwork' that
are imbued with more solidaristic elements and relations (Rinehart et al.
1997: 98±107). This social dimension of traditional teams and groupwork
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284 British Journal of Industrial Relations
may extend to the external, social environment as well (see Krahn and Lowe
1993), as will be discussed below.
Among the Communication Workers Union (CWU) rank and file, the
word `team' came to symbolize a threat. Thus, at the 1996 CWU conference
it became a rallying call around which opposition to specific conference
proposals could be constructed Ð sometimes even against the recommenda-
tions of the national executive. Elsewhere we have explored the genealogy of
the concept of teamworking within the CWU and noted the way it became a
symbol of contestation (Martõnez Lucio et al. 2000). The important point
for this discussion is that management's fixation with teamworking helped
focus the union on the need to develop a counter-strategy. This led to an
anxious internal union debate on flexibility and teamwork as management's
obsessions (shrouded in the highly charged discourse of total quality manage-
ment) came to be seen by key constituencies within the union as central to
the broader commercialization of the Royal Mail and a subsequent intensi-
fication of work. In part, this can be explained by the way teamworking was
linked with cultural change and the broader organizational projects of the
Royal Mail, such as functionalization and privatization. More importantly,
teamwork was seen as part of a strategy to undermine the traditional mech-
anisms of union regulation, voice and participation. Activists in the CWU
had local links with their counterparts from unions in the private sector and
began to fear that teamworking could become the first stage of margin-
alizing the CWU.
The pursuit of teamworking by management was therefore greatly
influenced by the commercial imperative. The strategic direction of the
organization was shifting away from the public sector towards a more
commercial orientation Ð a trend that continued even after it became clear
that the organization would not be privatized. The `customer' became a
focal point, and, understandably, concepts from the private sector, such
as teamworking, began to permeate management thinking. Consequently,
the management goal was to steer the organization towards team-based
working and thereby increase functional flexibility in the longer term. In
contrast, the union's response was to maintain the status quo and thereby
consolidate the rigidity of existing job descriptions. However, this predict-
ably traditional approach to the flexible and rigid orientations of manage-
ment and unions respectively is immediately overturned when the issue of
job allocation and shift rotation is explored. We shall explore the details
of this in due course, but first it is important to explain why rigidity also
became inscribed into the change processes at the Royal Mail, thereby
challenging the traditionally more flexible work patterns.
6. The pressures for rigidity
The decision to develop a more task-dedicated work-force was driven in the
early 1990s by a conviction among senior managers that the organization
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 285
would be steadily fragmented into different businesses Ð delivery, distri-
bution and processing Ð each with a range of internal cost centres and
teams. A massive restructuring of the organization along functional lines
was undertaken, which meant a reduction in the traditional flexibility that
allowed employees to transfer across various functions within the Royal
Mail. However, this meant that when the privatization plans were sub-
sequently dropped by the government the organization was left with a new
structure that was essentially geared to a specific and inappropriate strategic
agenda of privatization through fragmentation (Jenkins et al. 1995). In this
manner, the nature of corporate strategy influenced the structure of employ-
ment relations Ð a finding that is in line with Purcell and Ahlstrand's (1994)
theorizing. In addition, the relevance of the political contingency (Batstone
et al. 1984) is apparent, since the agenda set by the government became the
foundation for much of the rationale for greater rigidity. In other words,
the implementation of structural change, in a laudable attempt by senior
managers to be proactive, produced reductions in traditional work flexi-
bility. Therefore, it can be argued that an important source of the new
rigidities proposed by management within the workplace is the political
imperative.
Part of the rationale for greater rigidity also lies with the introduction
of new technology: a technological imperative. The automation policy of
the Royal Mail has resulted in substantial investment in capital equipment
and in a range of change projects associated with the new technology. It is
beyond the remit of this paper to explore the full implication of techno-
logical change, but it is important to recognize that, typically, the technol-
ogy projects required the redesign of work, thus challenging traditional
methods of working. However, emerging from this were competing notions
of work design that emphasized both flexibility and rigidity.
This is well illustrated with the example of two large initiatives imple-
mented in each of the nine regional divisions in Royal Mail: total productive
maintenance (TPM) and technical centres of excellence (TECEX). (For a full
discussion see Noon et al. 2000.) The starting point of both projects is the
efficient use of equipment, but this is achieved through different means. The
TPM project is concerned principally with `people management', because
the sub-optimum performance of the equipment is thought to be due to a
skills gap and the need for an attitudinal (cultural) shift. In contrast, the
TECEX project is concerned with `configuration management', because it
is believed that a lack of benchmarks leads to different processing centres
and to work-groups becoming unaware of how to operate the equipment for
optimum performance. In defining the problems differently, the two projects
consequently arrive at very different solutions as to how to optimize
technology and labour, and ultimately demand different human resource
strategies. TPM suggests the need to develop a large core of functionally
flexible employees who work as teams, are committed to the workplace,
have internalized corporate values, and use their knowledge of the work
process and machines to improve productivity. TECEX requires a large,
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286 British Journal of Industrial Relations
numerically flexible pool of workers from which the requisite skills can be
drawn to meet fluctuation in demand; standardized procedures and a
limited task range would ensure productivity. Yet, although the underlying
management ideologies are fundamentally different, both projects empha-
sized rigidity within job allocations and shifts: in the case of TPM, it was
to consolidate teams around pieces of machinery; in the case of TECEX, to
specify job tasks through more traditionally Tayloristic mechanisms of
control.
Ironically, therefore, at strategic level there was pressure for rigidity
resulting from political and technological imperatives for change, while the
commercial imperative seemed to imply the pursuit of flexibility through
teamwork. However, this disguises the extent to which the successful im-
plementation of teamworking also required the adoption of new rigidities,
thereby steering the organization away from the traditional functional
flexibility within the Royal Mail.
7. The pursuit of new rigidities
An ironic twist in the policy of teamworking was that it required managers
to pursue greater rigidity in the allocation of work and the organization
of shifts. In effect, managers sought to establish `fixed duties', whereby
employees would remain in the same job rather than moving to different
tasks across the workplace, and `settled attendances', whereby employees
sign up to a regular shift, rather than rotating across shifts. The underlying
logic was that, in order to build up team identity and commitment,
employees had to be dedicated to specific work areas and put on regular
shift patterns. Thus, rigidity in the space (location) and time (shift) of
working was the prerequisite for flexibility within that space and time. It was
a tortuous logic, which the CWU were eventually to seize upon and claim
the flexibility initiative back from management.
At strategic levels of management, the whole question of teamwork
became a fixation partly confirming Proctor et al.'s (1994) thesis regard-
ing the ongoing attraction of such approaches to organizational change
within various management circles. At operational level, higher tiers of
management saw it as necessary to facilitate functional flexibility, but the
supervisors were far more despondent about the value of teamworking Ð
not least because of the rigidities that it imposed. In many instances,
supervisors were highly critical of the way they were being forced to work
with settled teams of employees and develop new methods of working. For
example, one supervisor identified the dilemma of fixing people in a team to
get the work done yet requiring them to help other, less efficient, teams.
Do you turn round and say right, we've got this to do, let's get it done, and when
they've done it you then say `You've got to go on the letters now' [another work
area]. They'll say, `That's a different team, that's nothing to do with us'.
(supervisor)
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 287
Various workers articulated this in the same manner, noting how the exist-
ing co-operation between employees in different areas would be under-
mined by the formalized `team' frameworks suggested by management. For
example:
Personally, I think it's daft [teamwork] because we've got it anyhow. We are
working until 9.15pm tonight and then the `Mech. Team' will help the team on the
`Forward Roads', but if people say you are definitely a Mech. team [member] . . .
they will say, `Why should we go and help them? We've done our work.' In that
case we'll slow our work down and finish at 10pm. At the moment they've got
everyone going across helping, [but if] you start putting constraints on it people
will say, `I'm not doing it'. It seems a bit daft really, when they've already got
teamworking here. (supervisor)
This sort of viewpoint not only illustrates the rigidities of management
change initiatives, but also reveals how the concept of `team' is socially
constructed among employees: it is associated more with co-operative and
supportive patterns of work than with formalized arrangements that allow
for performance measurement and competition within, and between, teams.
The increase in rigidities as a consequence of staffing ratios and fixed shift
patterns was also giving supervisors some basic operational concerns:
What Royal Mail is failing to recognize is . . . that we are not a production
industry ... My traffic on my shift can fluctuate by 60% overnight. I need to be
able to deal with that. I need to have contingencies in place to deal with that. And
if I have a rigid situation, with my core staff fixed at my highest level, I'd have too
many staff. That's why I need flexibility: to enable me to be productive and to
meet the cost.
Other supervisors also pointed out the longer-term consequences of these
new rigid practices for skill formation. They argued that fixing employees in
established, set shifts and specific, narrow areas of work within the organ-
ization was unnecessary. For instance, one work area team leader (WATL)
commented:
I don't think that having one person on a machine makes them an expert because
the people I've got here swap around anyway. If they want to swap they can swap
because I feel sorry for them. I find that with the people I get, as long as they have
had the initial training they are fine.
Similarly, another WATL's attitude to settled attendances typified the
dilemma:
Being honest. . . I think all you are doing is you are blinkering yourself to one job
and I think you can get tired of just doing one job. As we are now split into
processing, distribution and delivery [the main three functions in the Royal Mail],
I think [employees] should be allowed to rotate . . . in their own areas . . . because,
as I said, the processing and distribution does cover early, lates and nights [shifts],
and I think that would be the way forward [to work] not just on one job, because
you get a better knowledge of doing more jobs than just sticking to one.
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288 British Journal of Industrial Relations
There was also concern about the impact of fixed duties and settled attend-
ances on staff motivation and morale. It is typified by the following quota-
tions, the first from a supervisor and the second from an engineer:
At the end of the day if somebody is unhappy, then they will go for change, the
only person who is happy working a fixed duty is the person who wants to work
that fixed duty. . . I mean you will get a lot of people who want to do permanent
afternoons, want to do permanent nights and mornings, [but] when you start
enforcing people on those duties . . . they are doing the same job week in week out,
it's got to be monotonous. When I was a PHG [Postal Higher Grade] not so long
ago, I was on the foreign [type of mail], on afternoons, and I used to do a good
job, I did it very well; but, at the end of the day, you just get bored with it, and
from a manager's point of view, I can sympathize now.
I believe that variety is the spice of life. To stay on the same job, day in day out is
morale destroying. . . . Some of the staff who are there have got jobs they really
enjoy and would do it until doomsday and they wouldn't mind, but then you've
got the mundane jobs. For every fixed one on a good job there's got to be someone
on a mundane job that's going to be fixed as well. It's soul destroying. To try and
get them to improve their performance is an impossibility, unless you give an
incentive. . . What they want . . . is to rotate.
The Communication Managers' Association (the trade union representing
the supervisors) originally expressed grave concerns about the inflexible
nature of the new working regimes and the stress levels it gave rise to in
lower and middle management. They sponsored research into the area and
came up with a set of studies highlighting the impact of fixed duties on stress
levels among supervisors.
The important point is that higher tiers of management nationally and
regionally required rigidities which they steadily, although unevenly,
according to our research, began to achieve in the early 1990s. For team-
work to be effective, management needed to develop fixed duties in terms of
job allocation, and settled attendances in terms of shift systems. While this
was negotiated and agreed in different ways throughout delivery and
processing offices in the Royal Mail, it led to a number of disputes in the
1990s, with the union condemning it as a more rigid approach to employ-
ment, thus strategically appropriating the `flexibility' discourse from man-
agement. Trade unionists argued that the right to change shifts and perform
work tasks across the organization was a key feature of the `traditional'
flexibility in the Royal Mail. They emphasized that the traditional Royal
Mail employee was someone who, once trained, could perform a vast range
of tasks throughout the organization and that this functional flexibility
increased with experience and length of service. They criticized management
proposals on teamworking for limiting this flexibility Ð and in particular
pointed out the negative effects on the job content and satisfaction of
established employees.
This was clearly articulated in the 1993 Cardiff dispute, among others,
where the union emphasized in its campaign in the local communities that
the new shift systems would impact on family life. On the awareness-raising
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 289
demonstrations during the Cardiff dispute and on its picket lines, children of
employees held posters proclaiming that with the new working practices
they would see their parents less often. Within the case studies, the fixed
duties and settled attendances created new points of contestation and
problems regarding the relations between work, family, leisure and home.
A frequent theme from supervisors was the tension between the need to gain
expertise on a job that comes through fixed duties and settled attendance
and the motivational problems and social consequences. The dilemma is
illustrated by this quotation from a supervisor:
[Problems arise] when you've got young boys of 18 or 19, who play football,
who've got girlfriends and all their mates go out to soccer matches on a weeknight
and they're stuck in here . . . at times, they're really cheesed off. Well you can't
really motivate them, can you? You can just sympathize with them really... Phil
was put into afternoons, he had no say really in it. He wanted the promotion [and]
that was his job. Now he's got three young children, and he's been on afternoons
now for four years, and his son likes to play soccer, and as I say, his wife Catherine
she's got to do it all... That's the minus side of dedicated duties, but the plus side is
the expertise. . . From an employer's point of view, I can see the benefits, but from
a personal point of view, then . . . you're looking at the personal issues which
you've got to take into consideration.
In another case, a supervisor stated:
I would assume there are people who are happy to do permanent shifts, if it suits
their home life, but I can't see a vast lot of people wanting to do it. Or if they do
want to work permanent shifts then they want the flexibility to change. . . If you
put an argument against fixed duties, people [in support of fixed duties] say, `but
there are people swapping to do permanent shifts'. That's fair enough, but my
point is they always had the choice... I broke up with my girlfriend two years ago
and I know that it was solely because of the hours.
These social issues, in terms of work and non-work activity, were echoed by
employees. Few of those we interviewed said that the changes benefited
them, although most were resigned to its inevitability. In particular, it
was the more experienced workers (the postal higher grades Ð PHGs) who
were most critical. These two quotations are typical of the sentiments
expressed:
The afternoon shift is probably the worst, because a lot of people who are on it,
you have got 90% of people who do afternoons, . . .they are all junior grades. . .
Anybody outside our section, probably the majority of them, are not there by
choice, they are there because they are stuck there. (employee, PHG)
There's never been as much automation as there is now, they are all pretty new
machines. The shift patterns have changed; now we do 6 day and night turns. It's
not for the better. . .we used to have a three man rotation in the old days . . . so it
wasn't too bad. And you were left alone on the shifts. When I did my driving
duties, they never knew where I was. . . Nobody is happy. It was a disaster not to
alternate people. We are not like machines, we need rotation. (employee, PHG)
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290 British Journal of Industrial Relations
In terms of how teamwork and flexibility were historically understood, the
interviews with employees, trade unionists and managers revealed the sheer
variety of jobs that individuals had undertaken during their careers within
the Royal Mail. The remarkable diversity encouraged personal identifi-
cation with the organization's own historical development Ð although this
was clearly beginning to give way to a more instrumental attitude with
regards to recent developments. Older employees had worked in a range of
sections and commented on their experiences in areas of postal delivery,
different areas of processing, code desk operations (where letters not read
by machines were coded), sorting on the Royal Mail trains, driving the vans
and so forth. Such diverse working arrangements would not be readily
available to younger workers.
The traditional approach to workplace flexibility limited the possibility of
control and of developing a more systematic approach to teamwork. Fixed
duties and settled attendances became a necessary break with historically
rooted systems of flexibility Ð an agenda that placed Royal Mail manage-
ment in the somewhat awkward position of arguing for greater rigidity
against the CWU's claims for flexibility. However, Royal Mail management
reclaimed the flexibility initiative with an attack on seniority.
8. Flexibility through the abolition of seniority
The traditional system of work allocation in the Royal Mail was based on
seniority. This meant that preference was given to the allocation of duties,
`acting up' responsibilities, shifts, access to overtime, holidays and so forth
on the basis of the length of full-time service to the organization. In the
situation of `traditional' flexibility, this system provided a transparent and
relatively straightforward mechanism for the rational allocation of work
and promotion opportunities. However, Royal Mail management at the
higher tiers began to question the role of seniority, owing to the way in
which it limited the movement and locating of workers with `necessary
competencies' within specific areas. Management's critique of seniority was
central to its aim to introduce functional flexibility and exercise discretion
and control over the labour process. Royal Mail management wanted to
exercise a greater prerogative over the suitability of worker qualities with
specific fixed duties. In the words of one internal document, in which
management outlined the need for change:
Royal Mail values experience greatly and will regard appropriate experience as
one of the key deciding factors when employees are considered for new jobs. But
experience is not the only factor, and we must consider other issues such as
maintaining a balance of skills in an office, offering opportunities for career
development, and making best use of employees who lose a duty through no fault
of their own. (internal document 1995)
The management argument was that there had to be more flexibility within
the system of work allocation: seniority represented a rigidity that was
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 291
inappropriate to developing and recognizing the competence of individuals.
It was also antithetical to the required functional flexibility within teams.
The CWU's response was to resist any attempt to change the system
of seniority. While accepting that it provided an element of rigidity, the
unions argued that seniority guaranteed the rights of workers within the
employment relationship because it represented a way of preventing arbi-
trary management decisions and unfairness with regard to the allocation of
preferential work. Seniority provided a transparent rule-based approach to
work allocation. The union argued that management's desire to eradicate
seniority was related to management policies of teamworking, and that line
management's selection of teams would lead to favouritism and unfairness.
According to one senior executive member of the CWU's postal section,
seniority represented one of the union's main and final mechanisms for
influencing management decision making in the workplace.
The CWU saw seniority as central to the `just' ordering of flexibility in
terms of job rotation, task allocation and shift systems, even if it was a
rigid element of the employment relationship. However, one of the main
problems with the system of seniority is that it is based on a `male working
paradigm', which tends to privilege those workers with unbroken, full-time
length of service (Jenkins et al. 1997). It has not benefited women workers
with interrupted employment patterns across the life cycle. As a conse-
quence, there is an important gender impact in arguing for its retention, and
interestingly, management has illustrated the unfairness of the system of
seniority as part of the rationale for its eradication. Again it is an argument
for flexibility Ð this time in the gender mix of employees in accordance with
the allocation of work based on skill competencies.
The CWU's response has been to suggest that the real motive behind
the attack on seniority is to casualize the work-force. They point to the
increasing numbers of part-time and temporary staff. Walsh (1997: 15)
noted a dramatic rise in the use of numerical flexibility such that `this
industry experienced the fourth highest proportionate increase in part-time
jobs between 1984 and 1994 in spite of a fall in the level of total employ-
ment'. The fear is that the real flexibility will be in numerical terms, with the
demise of full-time, secure jobs that have characterized the industry. The
notion of a job in the Post Office being a job for life has been challenged in
the 1990s, and the prospect of insecurity through non-standard employment
is perceived by the CWU to be a real threat. It is eloquently summed up by
the interviewee who commented, `If the job goes, then you've gone! That's
the major reason why people don't want the changes.'
The issue of seniority in the Royal Mail is central to its workplace politics.
It has become the focus of a management strategy for greater `functional
flexibility', while the unions have responded through a defence of seniority
which raises a series of issues with respect to worker representation as seen
above. For the CWU, seniority was a rigidity essential for a distinct under-
standing and practice of functional flexibility and rotation within work, one
that management had steadily moved away from since the late 1980s.
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292 British Journal of Industrial Relations
9. The story so far: the flexible-rigid paradox
The above discussion has shown how union and management promoted
different systems of flexibility, distinct conceptualizations of teamwork and
opposing forms of rigidity. Underpinning the general differences within the
Royal Mail have been very distinct combinations and articulations of flexi-
bility and rigidity. The response of the union to the way management has
steadily altered the elements of the workplace and internal labour market
has been based on a defence of an alternative Ð albeit historically tradi-
tional Ð approach to flexibility. The full extent of the difference is under-
standable only when we realize how it was based on these calculations
of interest within the broad format of the workplace and employment:
the differences were substantive not solely in content, but also in form. It
is precisely the flexible±rigid policy mix discussed above that influences
many of the internal differences that exist within management and trade
unions. The CWU and management were proposing different combinations
of flexibilities and rigidities, yet these combinations were also the subject of
internal organizational processes and politics.
10. Negotiating the paradox
Different aspects of flexibility and rigidity have been privileged and
combined at different times, and this serves to mask their interdependency.
Within the labour process and the negotiation of the employment relation-
ship, the paradox surfaces. Industrial relations institutions and actors are
having to cope with transformations which involve a broader set of exchanges
across elements of the employment relation that have not generally been the
subject of systematic negotiation.
The development of the Royal Mail's Employee Agenda policy docu-
ment in the mid-1990s was an attempt to resolve within one framework
the kinds of tension we have identified with regard to issues such as func-
tional flexibility, grading, participation and seniority. The Employee
Agenda sought to construct a new, `coherent' set of terms and condi-
tions of employment, elements of which had already emerged in an ad hoc
manner. However, agreement proved elusive because issues such as
teamwork, grading and payment systems were unacceptable to the CWU,
many of whose rank and file were deeply distrustful of management
motives. The resultant industrial action in 1996 might therefore be inter-
preted as the outcome of an increasing demoralization within the work-force
owing to organizational uncertainty, a complex external political environ-
ment and increasing distrust in the way new managerial projects were
implemented to elicit the support of employees for change. This internal
demoralization was recognized by the Royal Mail from its annual employee
attitude survey. The outcome of the 1996 national dispute Ð a `fudged
compromise' drawn over a long period of time Ð was predictable, given the
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 293
complexities of the changes and exchanges across the flexibilities and
rigidities being proposed.
As the previous section pointed out, the way features of rigidities and
flexibilities were combined within distinct approaches was such that trade-
offs between features were not feasible. Management was constrained by
external politics and the financial restriction requiring surpluses to be
transferred to the Treasury, thereby obliging savings in the workplace to be
made in order to create extra income for investment. This meant that there
was neither the material basis for adequate financial compensation to be
offered by management, nor the consistency across organizational change
programmes for building trust among the work-force and the union. For
two years after the dispute, there remained no agreement on questions
of further workplace reform such as the development of teamwork. The
internal sensitivity on such issues within the union influenced negotiations,
as did ongoing managerial obsessions, even if a broad consensus has begun
to emerge within negotiations Ð albeit one resulting from the changing
external environment rather than from any internal changes within work-
place relations and union±management negotiations.
The new governmental context since May 1997 could contribute to the
way such tensions are resolved. In theory, the increasing amount of political
influence of the union, added to the eventual industrial relations guarantees
in terms of union representation, may allow compromises to be made across
the range of issues outlined above. However, even if a long-term com-
promise does emerge, the case is not that clear, for four reasons. First,
the increasing formalization of industrial relations is not central to the
government's agenda even if this has been a factor that has compounded
the distrust between management and unions. The decision not to reverse
Conservative legislation on industrial action is critical in the case of the
Royal Mail because of the extensive use of legislation and injunctions by
management during various disputes. This has previously contributed to
developments such as teamworking being seen as part of an anti-union
agenda.
The second reason for continued tensions is that the CWU voice that is
heard in government committees and influencing backroom debates comes
from the wing of the union that is convinced of the inevitability of new
management practices Ð in particular teamworking. However, internal
union divisions remain a significant feature of the CWU. Ironically, the
change of government may contribute to the complexity of bargaining and
flexibility outlined above, especially in the light of the informal relations
between elements of the current and previous executive and Royal Mail
management Ð an ongoing factor that derives from earlier periods when
the union was in broad terms aligned to the right wing of the Labour
movement. The question of workplace reform and the adoption of market-
driven views of the Royal Mail is premissed on providing broader
parameters and guarantees in industrial relations terms, which effectively
seal the exchanges regarding flexibility in the workplace. The divisions
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294 British Journal of Industrial Relations
within the union, and within management, with regard to these issues may
however undermine the parameters of any broad national `agreement', or
could even lead to a less open debate within the union.
Third, the continuing interest in some type of privatization and
commercialization, which was successfully delayed by the CWU and anti-
privatization campaigners in 1994, might erode the parameters of macro-
level agreements on the issues discussed above. It is for these reasons that
the desire for bargained exchanges across the range of flexibilities and
rigidities outlined above may continue to prove problematic even in what
presumably is a changing and `supportive' political context Ð political
contingencies remain a significant feature (Batstone et al. 1984). This leads
to the much broader issue of how distinct understandings of the market
continue to be the subject of debate within the Royal Mail. Management
programmes to reform and restructure the organization can be seen as a
response to the recognition of an increasingly fragmented market. The
`inevitable' move to the private sector and the attempt to dis-establish a
public ethos is premissed on the assumptions that the organization must
mirror increasingly diverse postal markets and demands in social, geo-
graphic and economic terms (see Jenkins et al. 1995). These are, ironically,
quite rigid views of how markets are changing. However, counter to this
argument is the support for a `nationally accountable' (if not nationalized),
integrated postal service that is globally orientated and has the resources
and freedom to raise private capital, cross-subsidize its operations and
penetrate new markets. In some instances such a view also calls for the
reassembly of the Post Office, reconstituting the Royal Mail, Post Office
Counters and Parcel Force as one organization with a quasi-public-sector
status. Hence the question of general organizational structure has not been
resolved around any common position on external economic and market
changes, and this is further complicated by the competing visions between
unions and higher management concerning the public-sector position of the
organization.
The fourth issue concerns the feasibility of a stable and real agreement
(as opposed to a nominal agreement). The combinations of flexibilities and
rigidities are such that they are increasingly varied in scope and nature
between different processing and delivery centres within the organization
as unions and managers deal with the problems of change at the local
level. If such diversification is occurring Ð and our research suggests that it
is, even among new wave automated processing centres Ð then to what
extent does it challenge the effectiveness of the national framework of
negotiation? Moreover, to what extent can the national level be seen as
attempting to provide coherency to what is an increasing degree of frag-
mentation in employment and organizational terms as expressed through
local agreements on staffing arrangements and employment policies gener-
ally? In this respect, future research and analysis has to address the question
of fragmentation and decentralization and its complex development in the
Royal Mail.
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The Flexible±Rigid Paradox at the Royal Mail 295
11. Conclusion
This paper has attempted to draw out the complex question of flexibility,
its manifestation at different levels of the employment relationship and
organizational structure, and the political processes that combine these
within different union and management agendas. It suggests that we should
not continue to consider flexibility as a coherent and systematic
phenomenon. Neither can we simply locate `flexibility' within a specific
historical context, typically with rigidity being seen as the precursor.
Through an examination of a range of features within the employment
relationship at the Royal Mail, it can be shown that there is notable
variability Ð some aspects being rigidly structured while others are more
flexible Ð and that such combinations have always been the case (as
Hyman 1987, has theorized). Furthermore, the way in which distinct
features of the employment relationship are combined within political
projects and negotiating agendas must be understood. Thus, traditional
views of flexibility mask the complexity of the particular case of the Royal
Mail and allow for the dogma that managers are always in pursuit of
flexibility while trade unions are intent on maintaining rigidity. Para-
doxically, managers and unions both want flexibility and rigidity. The
problem for the Royal Mail was that there were fundamental differences
over the content and form of the flexible±rigid mix.
The paper argues that the relationship between management and unions
within such a broad context of change can be understood only if we explain
the way in which distinct elements of the employment relationship are com-
bined and articulated in different forms by unions and managers (including
groups internal and external to both). It is this articulatory element within
the employment relationship in terms of flexibilities and rigidities that needs
to be further developed within the debate on flexibility, and which allows
the nature of exchanges and conflict to be appreciated more fully. Different
languages of flexibility are constituted which are influenced by the com-
peting interests and experiences of workers within the structure of the labour
process.
While we emphasize that the emergence of flexible practices in part
depends on the way they are related to rigidities within competing sets of
strategic projects, we also point to the way in which distinct combinations of
flexibility and rigidity become articulated by different categories of workers,
as well as between the unions and management. In the Royal Mail, the
types of functional flexibility proposed by management have been contested
because of the way they undermine previous forms of allocating tasks and
hours through the system of seniority. This traditional system of regulation
has itself been contentious, given the way it privileges some workers over
others Ð an issue that in particular lays it open to the charge that it
disadvantages women employees. Different combinations of rigidities and
flexibilities emerge which reflect both the vested interests and the social
dimension that envelops the operational and political processes of exchange.
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296 British Journal of Industrial Relations
Therefore, this complex process of relating rigidities and flexibilities has to
be understood in terms of these social tensions.
Final version accepted 2 August 1999.
Acknowledgements
The research project, entitled `Organisational Change and the Transfor-
mation of Work at Royal Mail', was funded by the Economic and Social
Research Council (Award no. R000235280).
Note
1. In the case of the UK, Lovering (1990) argued that the move away from
traditional internal labour markets and the emergence of new forms of workplace
flexibility have led to changes in terms of workplace and labour market relations,
but these have not resulted in any enhanced processes of skill formation and job
enrichment.
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