posties

[Dr The Singh]

As far as I'm aware, the Royal Mail, which has lost money 19 years out of the last 20, wants to bring in a machine that will speed things along and make things far more efficient. They're striking because the machine will cost jobs.

I sympathise for the individuals involved but this is a process that's been happening since Ned fooking Ludd, I think it's frankly selfish and outdated that unions should try to dictate who companies should and shouldn't employ.

So it's been costing the tax payer money to run and inefficient service for many years, yet some changes to try to make it more efficient are being protested by the posties???

I would love to hear a strong arguement from the posties to balance this opinion!!

[Zingari]

So it's been costing the tax payer money to run and inefficient service for many years, yet some changes to try to make it more efficient are being protested by the posties???

I would love to hear a strong arguement from the posties to balance this opinion!!

from the socialist worker

1 Defending public services

Royal Mail bosses are determined to run down the postal service, making it slower, more expensive and less reliable.

They hope that if it gets bad enough the public will support another effort to privatise the company.

Many post workers have been in the job all their adult lives. We are committed to delivering a service based on need. The bosses and the government are in this for the short-term, and are only interested in profits.

2 Fighting to keep full time jobs

Royal Mail is slashing thousands of full-time jobs. More than 50,000 posts have been cut since 2002 and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, they want to replace almost all full-time jobs with workers on part-time or temporary contracts.

But part-time work means part-time pay, part-time pensions, part-time sick pay – and part-time rights.

3 A battle for decent pay

Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier is Britain’s highest paid public servant. Since arriving at the company in 2003 he’s pocketed £6 million in pay and bonuses.

Post workers, on the other hand, are among the poorest in Britain. We earn around £100 less a week than the average skilled worker and many of us can only survive on overtime.

Now Royal Mail is telling us we have to accept a pay freeze – and that at least part of our overtime should be compulsory and free.

4 Stopping the union-busters

Our CWU union is the biggest barrier to those who want to cut jobs, services and pay in the post – and that’s why the company and the government are trying to drive us out of the industry.

To get their way they are bullying and intimidating our members, and using managers and non-unionised casual staff in an effort to break our regional strikes.

Bosses everywhere are watching what happens in this dispute. If Royal Mail can drive the union out of the postal service, others will try to do the same.

5 If the postal workers win, every worker wins

Our battle is one of the first in what will be a wider war. All political parties are preparing massive cuts in public spending and if the Tories win the next election, they will be absolutely ruthless.

The post workers’ strike is about drawing a line in the sand and telling any future government that we will not accept the smashing of our services.

If we are beaten, bosses everywhere will say: if we can take on the CWU and win, we can break you too. We must not allow them to do that.

[Dr The Singh]

from the socialist worker

1 Defending public services

Royal Mail bosses are determined to run down the postal service, making it slower, more expensive and less reliable.

They hope that if it gets bad enough the public will support another effort to privatise the company.

Many post workers have been in the job all their adult lives. We are committed to delivering a service based on need. The bosses and the government are in this for the short-term, and are only interested in profits.

2 Fighting to keep full time jobs

Royal Mail is slashing thousands of full-time jobs. More than 50,000 posts have been cut since 2002 and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, they want to replace almost all full-time jobs with workers on part-time or temporary contracts.

But part-time work means part-time pay, part-time pensions, part-time sick pay – and part-time rights.

3 A battle for decent pay

Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier is Britain’s highest paid public servant. Since arriving at the company in 2003 he’s pocketed £6 million in pay and bonuses.

Post workers, on the other hand, are among the poorest in Britain. We earn around £100 less a week than the average skilled worker and many of us can only survive on overtime.

Now Royal Mail is telling us we have to accept a pay freeze – and that at least part of our overtime should be compulsory and free.

4 Stopping the union-busters

Our CWU union is the biggest barrier to those who want to cut jobs, services and pay in the post – and that’s why the company and the government are trying to drive us out of the industry.

To get their way they are bullying and intimidating our members, and using managers and non-unionised casual staff in an effort to break our regional strikes.

Bosses everywhere are watching what happens in this dispute. If Royal Mail can drive the union out of the postal service, others will try to do the same.

5 If the postal workers win, every worker wins

Our battle is one of the first in what will be a wider war. All political parties are preparing massive cuts in public spending and if the Tories win the next election, they will be absolutely ruthless.

The post workers’ strike is about drawing a line in the sand and telling any future government that we will not accept the smashing of our services.

If we are beaten, bosses everywhere will say: if we can take on the CWU and win, we can break you too. We must not allow them to do that.

I wish they would go into more detail and show some evidence, because some of the statements are very odd, like point 1! I disagree with Crozier getting so much cash for an ieefective and costly service, if true!!

[breadandcheese]

from the socialist worker

1 Defending public services

Royal Mail bosses are determined to run down the postal service, making it slower, more expensive and less reliable.

They hope that if it gets bad enough the public will support another effort to privatise the company.

Many post workers have been in the job all their adult lives. We are committed to delivering a service based on need. The bosses and the government are in this for the short-term, and are only interested in profits.

2 Fighting to keep full time jobs

Royal Mail is slashing thousands of full-time jobs. More than 50,000 posts have been cut since 2002 and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, they want to replace almost all full-time jobs with workers on part-time or temporary contracts.

But part-time work means part-time pay, part-time pensions, part-time sick pay – and part-time rights.

3 A battle for decent pay

Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier is Britain’s highest paid public servant. Since arriving at the company in 2003 he’s pocketed £6 million in pay and bonuses.

Post workers, on the other hand, are among the poorest in Britain. We earn around £100 less a week than the average skilled worker and many of us can only survive on overtime.

Now Royal Mail is telling us we have to accept a pay freeze – and that at least part of our overtime should be compulsory and free.

4 Stopping the union-busters

Our CWU union is the biggest barrier to those who want to cut jobs, services and pay in the post – and that’s why the company and the government are trying to drive us out of the industry.

To get their way they are bullying and intimidating our members, and using managers and non-unionised casual staff in an effort to break our regional strikes.

Bosses everywhere are watching what happens in this dispute. If Royal Mail can drive the union out of the postal service, others will try to do the same.

5 If the postal workers win, every worker wins

Our battle is one of the first in what will be a wider war. All political parties are preparing massive cuts in public spending and if the Tories win the next election, they will be absolutely ruthless.

The post workers’ strike is about drawing a line in the sand and telling any future government that we will not accept the smashing of our services.

If we are beaten, bosses everywhere will say: if we can take on the CWU and win, we can break you too. We must not allow them to do that.

If this is the case, and this is what the union is arguing, then they're a bunch of d*ckwads, holding the country to ransom for unrealisable dreams. They're trying to dictate how the company should be run, in effect, trying to get the tail to wag the dog.

I've often thought that unions should put their money where their mouths are. The government tried to sell off part of the Royal Mail. Why don't the union form a consortium and buy it? Then they could have the utopian ideal of workplace levels that they dream of.

[BoneDog]

From what I can gather the Royal Mail is not a private company? If that is the case then why the hell is Crozier getting bonuses of £2 million? Why the f should he have this job anyway?! Just another case of someone in 'the club' being given a cushy job where he helps nothing to improve for the grafters, but him and that tiny minority right at the top with him get rich for doing fook all.

When I think about it that way I can understand why a postman might not be satisfied with his role.

[davieG]

As a taxpayer and indirectly the employer of Crozier and those running Royal Mail I'd like to know who and how they were awarded these outrageous bonuses for running a failing business?

[Tilley]

I take it all back, they've just delivered four of my parcels.

[hairy]

Please dont take the Socialist Worker too seriously. The article is either writtent to provoke outrage or is written by a moran who does not know what they are talking about:-

Part time workers have the same rights as everyelse employed over a year.

Agency works will soon have the same rights as those employed over a year.

Is it unreasonable to give the posties a pay freeze at this time?

[Ilkeston_Fox]

Right i've had enough of this. I am a postie and i am on strike!

Forgive me but you (the public) only hear a small portion of what is going on i.e. the pay and modernisation. Well there are other things that we are walking out over. The likes of Stoke Mail Centre + Delivery Offices have had a very rough time, thanks to RM top dogs. They have decided to close said MC and DO's and shift the worker to Wolverhampton 80 miles away. No questions, they have been told not to turn up at Stoke (or they will be charged with tresspass) they have a job waiting for them at Wolvehampton or they have no job at all! Forgive me but would you accept that? This is happening all over the country. What about the people who don't drive? Who can't make the trip for whatever reason? They have to leave or face tresspass charges if THEY TURN UP FOR WORK AT THEIR OFFICE.

This is just 1 way in which RM bosses are trying to get rid of my colleagues in line with their 'modernisation', all they are trying to do is cull the amount of workers as cheaply as possible. It's not right, would you stand for it? I for one am backing the strike as i know most of my colleagues will do too. We are being treated like cattle, shoved around from one place to the next without any consultation to our contracts. Our workplace works on a seniority basis i.e. the longer you have been there the more chance of you picking a job more suited to you. Thats been scrapped - wrongly in my opinion as now people who have been at the business 5 mins are being put in charge of 'certain areas' that they should have no control over whatsoever! This not only affects us, but it certainly affects you the customer, you are suffereing because RM want quantity not quality, they want as much mail as possible to process regardless of the shoddy nature in which it would be sorted if RM was privatised.

There were 80,800 people polled for the strike, 61,200 odd voted for it. RM are backing out on our pay and modernisation agreement made in 2007. All they want to do is line their pockets before they jump ship into another 800,000 a year job. The workers of RM made a profit of over £300m last year what did we get? Nothing. OK fine we get nothing, i can live with that, it's my job. But why oh why should the bosses of RM get a bonus of £2.5m?? What did they do to earn that? Simple answer, sod all.

Think of me what you will, it will not change my reasons for standing on the picket line! I just hope this has given a little more of an insight as to how we are being treated and why we are walking out. There will be loads of other things that i know nothing about or very little, which is why i've not commented on them.

[Tilley]

All I care about is the fact my stuff came.

[Trav Le Bleu]

IT'S NOT ABOUT PAY!!

Lazy journalists keep using clichéd comments like "pay and conditions" when it's about "conditions and modernisation".

RMs ideas of modernisation are to cut jobs before they've got the machines in. They also want posties to work 8-4 (which is fine by me, I'd prefer the later start!) when one of the chief complaints about the postal service is that it arrives too late. In doing that too, they still want to keep the Special Delivary service at 1pm, even though most walk sorting will start 2-3 hours later (at the moment it is 2 hrs later than it used to be in years gone by) They want to make walks bigger (no machines to help there) and, I've heard, get rid of bikes (again, something that doesn't affect me).

I notice Davie G complaining about DHL earlier... well that's the kind of service you will get if RM get's privatised, since one would assume it would be one of these firms that take over. RM is obliged to take your mail anywhere in the country, be it Lerwick, Stornoway, Tresco, or heaven forfend, Mowacre Hill, for a flat fee. See if DHL, TNT, Deutsche Post or the like will take granny's birthday card to the Outer Hebrides for 39p!

The reason the RM is dying is cos years ago the government opened the market up to competition. However, cherry picking the lucrative inner-city business and mass-mailing contracts which used to subsidise granny's birthday card is NOT competition, it's nothing short of robbery! If the other courier companies had the same obligations of national mail at a flat fee, then they would have to charge more for their bulk, inner-city services, allowing RM to compete on a level playing field.

Naturally, eventually it will pretty much die out as technology takes hold (though I ask myslef, as technology increasingly takes more and more jobs, who will be doing the jobs to pay for the technology?), but at the moment there are still many, many people who are reliant on a nationalised mail service. which doesn't seem to have got through to the people in power right now.

Lastly, I'd like to say that the CWU offered the RM negiotiators a 3 month moratorium (ie, there would be none) on strikes in return for further talks, which they accepted, but then the RM head honcho refused! So, who is it that cares about getting the post through for the public and business? This would have made sure the Christmas post was undisrupted for the simple sake of sitting round a table and talking.

As I've said, all I want to do is do my job. I don't even mind doing a bit more for no extra pay, I know times are hard. The whole situation beggars belief.

[Dr The Singh]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8260701.stm

FROM THE BBC

At the heart of the latest dispute is the deal that the two sides signed to end the last national strike, the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement.

The CWU says that Royal Mail has carried out three of the four planned phases of that agreement with full and frank dialogue. It claims the company is refusing to talk to it about the final phase, how the roll-out of its modernisation plans would affect job security.

One aspect of this modernisation involves the walk sequencing machine, a device which organises letters into the order the postmen and women will deliver them the next morning. The CWU fears the national roll-out of this machine will mean thousands of full-time jobs will go and that there will be a massive increase in the number of part-time workers.

The CWU argues that even though it agreed in 2007 that jobs would need to be lost as part of the plan, specific details about the actual nature of the modernisations were unknown at that time. It claims that when Royal Mail stopped talking to staff or the unions about the long-term effects on job security, it had no choice but to threaten a strike in order to get discussions moving again.

Royal Mail argues that it did not stop talking to the union about the future strategy of the business and says it will continue to involve the CWU in developing plans.

It insists that where local staffing level changes are concerned, it has agreed that proposals should be transparent and that it has been discussing with the union how it can give people more confidence in this area.

Why is Royal Mail making the changes?

Royal Mail says the number of letters and parcels its core business delivers are falling by 10% each year, losing it £170m a year.

To respond to this decline in business, it says staffing cuts are inevitable.

In 2008, the Royal Mail Group went into the black for the first time in 20 years and profit at the main letters and packages unit was £58m from a turnover of £6.7bn.

Royal Mail says this margin is very small considering the size of the turnover. The group also has a £6.8bn pensions deficit.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

IT'S NOT ABOUT PAY!!

Lazy journalists keep using clichéd comments like "pay and conditions" when it's about "conditions and modernisation".

This is an issue that needs to be taken up with the union, if the mass media are not representing the Union's views properly. One of the key things for a Union to do in any type of industrial action is to win general public support and get their arguement across.

The Union hasn't won public support in my opinion, far from it, and it is struggling in its battle due to timing. Had they have gained significant public support in their action the Labour party would be wading in trying to get a solution for the public in order to win votes ahead of an important period for them.

The union needs to get its voice on prime time telly, get the true facts of their arguement across (some of the problems with arguments i have seen is its over planned changes which seem to be in keeping with the general state of the country and jobs nationwide)

One thing i did find shocking - I saw something that suggested last year Royal Mail Turnover £600-£900 Billion, but was only able to turn that into £300 million in profit - thats not a good business plan, and as it is, the Royal Mail should still be able to make a profit.

[Guest]

As far as I'm aware, the Royal Mail, which has lost money 19 years out of the last 20, wants to bring in a machine that will speed things along and make things far more efficient. They're striking because the machine will cost jobs.

Which has been happening in the private sector for years, especially in manufacturing.

Right i've had enough of this. I am a postie and i am on strike!

Forgive me but you (the public) only hear a small portion of what is going on i.e. the pay and modernisation. Well there are other things that we are walking out over. The likes of Stoke Mail Centre + Delivery Offices have had a very rough time, thanks to RM top dogs. They have decided to close said MC and DO's and shift the worker to Wolverhampton 80 miles away. No questions, they have been told not to turn up at Stoke (or they will be charged with tresspass) they have a job waiting for them at Wolvehampton or they have no job at all! Forgive me but would you accept that? This is happening all over the country. What about the people who don't drive? Who can't make the trip for whatever reason? They have to leave or face tresspass charges if THEY TURN UP FOR WORK AT THEIR OFFICE.

Welcome to the real world. How would you feel if your employers moved your office to the other end of the country, or even to another country altogether? I have friends and family who have been made redundant for these reasons. Funnily enough, they are all in employment elsewhere. The days with a "job for life" are long gone.

[Daggers]

One thing i did find shocking - I saw something that suggested last year Royal Mail Turnover £600-£900 Billion, but was only able to turn that into £300 million in profit - thats not a good business plan, and as it is, the Royal Mail should still be able to make a profit.

...and what do the other Dragons think?

[Joe.]

So just to confirm, most stuff sent will arrive reasonably on time at the moment still? Just checking because I might need something sent to me for Thusday...

[Flynny]

So just to confirm, most stuff sent will arrive reasonably on time at the moment still? Just checking because I might need something sent to me for Thusday...

I'm expecting a motherboard, a computer case, some t-shirts, some books and some jeans within the next week.

[Shrenchel]

Plenty of scabs out in force anyway, got post delivered on both days.

[Daggers]