Royal Mail boss slammed for receiving huge £140k bonus - as union threatens six more months of strike action

The CEO of Royal Mail has been slammed after his half-a-million-pound salary and £140,000 bonus was revealed. It comes as postal workers threaten to take further strike action for six more months in a dispute over pay and working conditions.

Simon Thompson was grilled by MPs - spearheaded by Labour MP Darren Jones - over his pay during a hearing with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee. His £540,000 salary is more than 23 times higher than that of the average Royal Mail worker (£25,700).

During the event it was also revealed Chief Executive of Royal Mail, Nick Read, has a yearly salary of £415,000. In the 2021/2022 financial year, Mr Read also received a bonus of £400,000.

Around the time Royal Mail were reporting daily losses of £1 million and with thousands more redundancies planned to cut costs, Mr Thompson was asked by MPs to justify the bonus. Labour MP Ian Lavery asked the CEO: “Are you really worth that amount of money, Mr Thompson?”

Mr Thompson argued that “last year is different to this year” before adding, “this year we are losing £1 million a day, the situation is a very serious situation”. He also received scrutiny for his plans to slash sick pay for Royal Mail workers.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) responded to the news and confirmed the long-running dispute is not close to being resolved and is clearly “not an issue of affordability”.  Members have threatened further industrial action could take place across the next six months.