A packed church of mourners has farewelled mailing industry giant John Gillroy, who died earlier this month aged 77.

About 150 people, including about a dozen from the print and mail industries, filled the Allen Drew Chapel in Sydney last Friday for an 80-minute standing-room-only funeral celebrating the life of mail’s greatest advocate.

The Mailing House director Lindsay May knew Gillroy for many years and has written to ProPrint with the following obituary.

John Gillroy was Major Mail Users Australia (MMUA) chief executive from about 1996 until 2012. The association represented the mailing industry, mail generators and machinery suppliers as a lobby group to work with Australia Post, to ensure that changes to the postal system and postage charges were well-considered by all stakeholders, so that any change took into account requirements of systems, machinery, process and cost.

In time, John became an expert on the Australia Post delivery network, postal sortation, magazines, mail processing machinery and mailing houses.

In 1998 Australia Post introduced bar-coded mail and John worked with Australia Post and the industry, running workshops where all parties engaged cooperatively.

From there, John organised the annual MMUA convention at the Randwick race course bringing together hundreds of industry and postal representatives, suppliers and usually the Communications Minister of the day.

He produced a quarterly MMUA journal and coerced many peers to write articles, always thanked with a small, unique and quirky gift sourced from some struggling artisan in his extensive network.

John led many delegations to Australia Post in Melbourne, usually preceded with a dinner at a boutique restaurant tucked away in a side street, where the owner and staff would happily welcome ‘Mester Gillroooyyyyy’.

He lobbied successive Federal Communications Ministers, and the ACCC about postage increases, print post, the demise of advertising mail discounts, and with Australia Post created the Bulk Mail Partner program, an industry quality recognition program.

Amongst many achievements in cooperation with Australia Post he managed the introduction to the industry of: Process Improvement Program PIP, Customer Barcode Quality Approval CBQA, Electronic Lodgement of Mailing Statements eLMS, and Lodgement Quality System LQS, and became the expert in each of these issues, although he had no prior industry experience.

Throughout John’s time as the industry lobbyist, he fought tough battles with some tough words and although some would baulk at his approach – learned in the rough and tumble of local government politics – he never lost the respect of those on both sides.

His mail industry friends farewell John with one of his classic press releases:

Dec 2009: The CEPU-Postal union has decided to ‘strike’ on Friday and Saturday. The union has been treated with the type of disdain dished out by the AP monopoly mentality that MMUA has been subjected to for the past five years… in 2010 we are all looking forward to working through Canberra to get some commercial (and for the union no doubt, some industrial relations) reality into making Australia Post work in a commercially sensitive manner – something it has not been able to do for many years.

The Mathematics – In a vain attempt to brush off the validity of the Australian Electoral Commission ballot, Australia Post disdainfully claimed that the 11,253 union members who voted represent, quote ‘only 25 per cent of AP’s 35,000 staff’.

What a load of codswallop – but then MMUA is used to this obfuscation from AP and now it seems it’s the turn of the CEPU-Postal.

When I went to school – 25 per cent of 35,000 was 8750, and 11,253 of 35,000 was 32 per cent but then we didn’t use Cuisenaire rods.

But in any case, 35,000 staff are not all posties, 60 per cent of the membership voted and the turnaround was one week… non-compulsory voting and they get 60 per cent voting.

It does not matter what AP-Letters says, that is an excellent industrial relations result.

Despite what he may have said or even written to or about them, most Australia Post representatives became friends of John and, that is demonstrated on Friday afternoon with Australia Post represented by a number of executives from Melbourne head office and many more have sent condolence notes acknowledging his fair but forthright approach.

One of many personal anecdotes I’d spoken with John about was an attempted visit to the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Cowes, UK where not being introduced meant entry denied.

John casually checked their website and noted their claim as ‘the oldest continuing yacht club in the world’ but their founding date of 1775 did not agree with their reference to King George III as patron.

John emailed the secretary and protested about the club’s inhospitable treatment of his esteemed friend and questioned their ability to record history.

“Was your patron the short tempered and boorish George II or the demented, deaf, blind and mad George III,” he said.

I note today their website makes no reference to any King George as patron.  

Farewell John, you will be missed but never forgotten.

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