Twenty four hour strikes by Royal Mail Staff will begin on 22nd October when mail centre drivers and staff will strike. On 23rd October, delivery and collection staff will strike.
A document leaked to BBC Newsnight said that Royal Mail will deliver the changes it considers necessary "with or without union engagement".
What are these strikes about? The CWU represents 121,000 postal workers and says the dispute is over pay and work schedules at Royal Mail. The CWU wants to see the Royal Mail business plan for the whole planned transformation programme. They want Royal Mail to agree that "change will be introduced by agreement". They want new job security arrangements, a rewards package for delivering success. They want Royal Mail to agree with the union on what constitutes a fair day's work. They are claiming bullying and harassment of postal workers and a resolution to pension issues.
The damage to on line businesses will be immeasurable. This is the run up to Christmas. It should be the businest time of the year for thousands of businesses selling on line. Many businesses are struggling, anyway , because of the recession and this will be the last straw. Larger businesses such as Amazon or Argos have been able to put together contingency plans but small businesses do not have that option.
Charities fear they will lose millions of pounds as a result of the strike as it will hit fundraising and Christmas Card sales.
A postman writing on an on-line forum gave his point of view. He said that older people do not have the option of email and still write letters. Peter Mandelson went on TV in May to press for part privatisation saying that, because of email and technology fewer people were sending letters.
The postman on the forum says he objects to having to work longer hours without extra pay because "figures are down" and that this phrase has become a joke. Workers are only supposed to carry 16 kilos maximum in each of their bags but he overloads the bags rather than carrying up to 10 bags of mail a day.
He says he is paid 1.67 pence for each item of unaddressed mail over and above his wages and he objects to the fact that he can't claim overtime if, because of such items, he works longer than his usual hours. He objects to the fact he cannot refuse to deliver them and he objects to what he sees as his "personal contributuion to global warming" even though he admits this advertisng material is very profitable for Royal Mail.
He maintains that people have never really sent many letters apart from greetings cards and that bills and bank staements and such like are sill sent by post. In addition there are packages from the likes of Ebay and Amazon and the small firms which in his words "clutter up the internet".
Royal Mail's figures show that mail volume went down by 5.5% last year and is predicted to fall by 10% this year because of the growth of electronic communication and the recession. He believes these figures to be false because his round now takes over 4 hours and sometimes he works for 5 hours with no tea break. He wonders why he has a bad back (something to do with overloading his bags, maybe?)
He points out that private mail companies may bid for Royal Mail contracts and that companies such as UK Mail, TNT or City Post undercut Royal Mail in city to city trade. They pick up the mail, sort it, transport it to mail centres and sort it again and then Royal Mail delivers it. In his view Royal Mail does the work but these companies take the profit. They are not obliged, like Royal Mail, to deliver to every house in the land.
In his view volume of mail has risen, even if figures have not. Staff levels, he says, are down by 30%. There are now workers who work six hour shifts and those who work for four hours. The former prepare their own frame of streets and numbers after the mail has already been sorted. They also prepare the post for the 4 hour shift workers. He says only the full-time staff have old fashioned contracts with pension rights whilst the part-timers do not. There is a pension deficit.
The strike in 2007 led to a national agreement of pay and modernisation but he maintains that more and more pressure has been put on full-timers including the sharing of rounds during quiet periods or when volumes fall. He believes this to be provocation and resents the fact that Royal Mail is trying to become a profit making business rather than a public service.
I would be very interested to see what you think of his arguments.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
17 comments:
I am unmoved.
Too many postman think they know how to run the operation. If they were that clever they would not be manual labourers. I have worked with millitant manual labourers before in my life and they are awful.
I dont think that every postman is a militant. But I think that the militant element within hampers alot of progress and causes much trouble.
With the advent of digital communications, all types of services have had to revise their working practices - mostly without major incident. But the ones still under union influence are hindered by union threats.
If it were up to me, I would sack them and make them reapply for their jobs. Imagine running a company where the lowest manual worker sees fit to write an 'essay' on the state of the management.
When I resided in Liverpool, the main post office was out on strike more often than not - it ended up hardly worth reporting. Management would only have to make a comment to a worker and they would all be out on strike.
I dont know if things have changed there as I left around the time that Royal Mail wanted to close the main Liverpool sorting office and move sorting to Warrington (?) That caused more strikes (not sure if it happened) - but it was very strange how the militants could not see that it was their destruction of the service which made Royal Mail want to shut the whole thing down.
Often, when I see union workers spout off on the TV about their working practises - it is a Liverpool postman who is doing the talking and I instantly disregard whatever they are saying as rubbish.
The postal worker in this article is living in a dream world and just doesn't get it!. He shows this by his attitude to the likes of the small businesses who sell on line.
quote:
"the countless online stores which clutter the internet, "
I strongly object to his attitude. We are his bread and butter and yet he is disparaging about us. He cannot get it through his head that, yes, it is about money. It HAS to be about money and it is the likes of the businesses he is so disparaging about who enable a service to be provided to the likes of old ladies and to places like the Shetland Islands.
Also, I did not know that they are actually paid extra over and above their wages for each item of unstamped mail they deliver -This is surely a very nice little earner! yet he still wants overtime as well if the round takes too long!
He complains about heavy sacks whilst admitting he is breaking the rules by carrying overweight sacks because otherwise his round will take him longer.
I think it is incredible. All over the country there are people working their guts out to try and help the firms they work for keep afloat and keep their jobs. These guys even object to time and motion people checking up that what the mail workers are being asked to do is feasible!
They sound totally impossible to work with let alone negotiate with.
My main concern is that if that mail becomes even more privatised where will that leave people in remote area's. We know if we send a letter or parcel, the cost is the same whether it be delivered next town or the outer islands of Scotland or Norther Ireland. This subsidised service is a MUST.
At one time a postman had to be vetted before being allowed to deliver the mail. How many have been caught hidding, or getting rid of mail?
My son signed on to an employment agency one holiday and was sent to a sorting office for a day's work. The story he had to tell on his return home would make you cringe!
It used to be Royal Mail, something to be proud of - now it's just a mail service.
I do not think every postman is a militant, more a 50/50 fault. Management/Unions with the government in the background whipping the rug from under their feet.
there was a page in the Telegraph about the CWU and it's leader Billy Hayes. He spent 18 years as a Liverpool postie, and climbed the Union ranks to his 100k salary, plus the union helped buy his house in London. He's not losing any pay, while Grand old Duke of Yorking the 16k basic salary posties to strike and lose their pay.
I do agree, any who voted in favour of a strike should be sacked, and made to reapply for their jobs. There's a postman here who finishes his round every day at 12pm. Granted, they have early starts, however most are not clocking in an 8 or 9 hour day which the majority of UK workers have to do. I would say 5 or 6 hours average per day. Many shift workers in other industries manage 8 or 9 hours per shift, so why should postal delivery people be any different. Lazyness is the problem with a lot of the inner city ones.
Royal Mail is so obviously being used as a political football at our expense. It's still a state run industry but the state doesn't seem to want to admit it.
The top man at Royal Mail is the top paid civil servant in the UK and has overseen a very obvious deterioration in the levels of service provided as well as staff/management relationships.
sacking the ones who voted for a strike and making them reapply for their jobs would help in the longterm. Early 2006, I was held to ransom for 4 weeks by militant striking Belfast sorting office workers. No RM post came in or out of N.Ireland for 4 WEEKS. Sack them, make them reapply for their jobs, and don't re-employ the troublemakers
The rogue postal workers say that they are only looking after everyone else's interests, and pointing out the standard letter cost - as mentioned above.
Other industries which have been sold off the state have a minimum level of conduct to adhere to
- eg : water supplies are very very rarely switched off through non-payment (so much so, I have never heard of it - so saying rare just in case I am brought to account..)
Does anyone not remember the screaming people saying that all of the poor people will be without water when the state run business was sold ? It did not happen.
It is the same here, the scaremongering approach regarding ' people wont get their post' is just that. Utter nonsense.
Sacking the strikers would be illegal. I think it's also worth making the point that a sizeable proportion of the staff voted for the strike action in a secret ballot (not just a small clique).
If the mail is going to be privatized so be it (then the tax payer can bail them out a couple of years down the line) but I don't imagine that that would put an end to the strikes (look at the trains).
I would obviously rather that Royal Mail did not strike but I think we shouldn't be placing all the blame on the postman.
my personal opinion on all this, is basically they should be lucky they got a job in this day and age, companies have to change and Royal Mail is no exception. The union bloke said the other day on the news companies who modernise do not need to streamline staff, course they do, when they brought in computers and machines doing certain jobs in factories people lost their jobs to that, peoples needs have changed, companies adapt to that change. There is no point in modernising if it does not save you money.
Don't get me wrong I do feel sorry for the postmen who don't want to strike, but god knows what I'm going to do yet, I think you can ride out a day strike, keep hold of the post and then send, but not sure if it goes on long term.
I've been there with companies who have streamlined, big insurance companies merged job cuts were inevitable, Hubby went thru it last year with his company, slowly going thru it again this year. Companies stratgeies change in order for them to survive same as Royal Mail.
The post lady that collects my mail believes that if the strike goes ahead it will be the end of Royal Mail as there are plenty of companies just waiting to step in & take the reins, she therefore is against the strike.
She also believes that the amount of mail is not down, she struggled to get everything into her van on Monday by the end of her round. Her work load is increasing, because as people leave RM their round is split between existing workers & she never manages to leave the office now until well after six.
Thats just her take on the situation
don't think they should be sacked . That would be worrying if they have followed correct procedure re the strike and would be a huge step backward for the trade union movement, but I do feel they are being very obtuse and stupid over this and feel very angry that so many other people will suffer.
I have just read that Royal Mail are tkaing on 30,00 temporary staff, double their usual Christmas number, to cope with the backlogs. 85,000 people applied - a sign of the times!
What do you think this will mean for small, on line retailers, for instance?
We will end up losing another great british asset, Royal Mail will end up closing down and then where will we be.
As the owner of a small mail order business which has little practical alternative (due to small size of packages) but to use Royal Mail, I am sorely tempted to apply for one of the temporary jobs myself.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of these continuing strikes (local strikes have been going on since July), they are causing considerable financial hardship to small businesses, at a time when many are already struggling to survive through recession. I emailed the CWU directly about this a couple of months ago - they can't even be bothered with the courtesy of a response.
As the strikes continue, more and more larger customers will move away from Royal Mail to alternatives where they are available, some small businesses will have their livelihoods destroyed as a direct result of the strikes. Quite apart from the human costs involved, how will this continuing loss of business help the job security of the striking posties?
It shows how old fasioned some of these unions are. Real Ludites
Interesting tatics, keeping the public informed, and certainly shows the frustration of the Royal Mail.
Surely this Government can not afford to let this stike succeed. It would put the power back to the Unions and plunge us back to the pre "Maggie" days. Do you remember the tree day weeks?
Unfortunately both parties are in the wrong here: Royal Mail for cow-towing to the union for far too long AND not being tougher, a damn site earlier with modernisation. And the CWU for mistakenly believing that the same network and systems that was created donkey's years ago can still be the relevant way to run a business when the sand has shifted somewhat.
Royal Mail are trying to take the company forward, the CWU simply will not let them.
One other point about the postie who doesn't want the company to make profit for a public service. How the heck can he expect a business to survive on a hand-to-mouth basis? Here is a person totally blind to making a business fit into the changing needs of it's customers so that the business can be sustainable and keep him employed for many years to come. Let's do the timewarp again!
Post a Comment