COURIER company DHL’s senior manager “should be ashamed” of himself for mistreating staff who have delivered huge profits for the company, GMB said yesterday.

The firm’s 2017 annual report showed its earnings before interest and taxes were up 7.2 per cent to over €3.7 billion (£3.3bn) while chairman Frank Appel’s basic annual salary went up to just shy of £2 million.

Mr Appel also stands to trouser more than £5m over the next four years in “performance-related remuneration.”

But the report also revealed an increase in the accident rate in 2017, with 4.4 workplace accidents per 200,000 hours worked, up from four in 2016.

It follows threats of industrial action by staff earlier this year after DHL/UK Mail sacked 20 drivers who had refused to accept a £2,000 pay cut.

Their union GMB said drivers at depots across Britain were “frogmarched” into offices and told to sign a contract incorporating the pay cut or their services would no longer be required.

GMB national officer Mick Rix said: “Whilst DHL pat themselves on the back, wallow in the their huge profits and senior execs hose themselves down in cash, let’s remember much of what they’ve achieved has been on the back of exploiting employees.

“Nowhere is this more true than DHL/UKMail, where couriers have had pay cut after pay cut forced on them, and continue to suffer unexplained and unauthorised deductions in their pay packets week in and week out.

“DHL is a cash rich global company that claims it signs up to the UN global compact agreement.

“Yet in DHL/UKMail, they act like any other spiv company in the parcel sector — with no moral compass whatsoever.”