Postal strike
Posted by: Rasher on 29 June 2007
We seem to have another gulf between the workers who want a pay rise, and the businessmen who want to make the postal service competitive and modern. The money on offer is for modernisation but the strikers refuse to listen to the argument and just keep asking for pay increases. I've been hearing phrases from the 1970's on the radio all day from union reps who continue to say things like; "..bring to the negotiating table”, “offer on the table” and “…investing in the workforce”.
I think if there is to be a union dispute about modernisation, the unions should at least make the gesture of updating their ridiculous clichéd phrases.
The postal service is appalling and I get my post at work at 3.00pm. It needs to be updated and modernised. I have no sympathy with this strike at all.
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by u5227470736789439
Something for Mr Brown to Privatise, perhaps. The time is probably rip, as the post offices all over the land are under threat in any case so why not just let it go and be subject it to competition and division within a regulated frame work.
I have never seen the compelling need for daily deliveries, any more than the need for daily milk or bakery deliveries. This could be paid for additionally by the recipient [with special help for the elderly or disabled], if it helped balance the books, or otherwise do what is perfectly normal in other countirews and use post boxes in the main local post office. We are incrreasingly living in an electronic communications age, and nothing is going to reverse that trend...
All ideas - I am not expressing a view as to what I would like to see.
To be honest it is symptomatic of how little has really changed since the '70s. We could be back there in a trice regarding industrial relations, and that will be tough on Mr Brown who may well be left as undiserving as Jim Callaganwas of the misfortune in the matter.
ATB from Fredrik
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Guido Fawkes
True Rasher, but then so should our outdated management get real - think of the silly expressions we hear
- Drive for Results
- Global Economy
- Digital Economy
- Globalisation
- Asseriveness
- Bottom Line
- Performance Related Pay
- Proactive
- 24 x 7
- Outsource
- Downsize
- Off-shore
- Run this by you
- Straw Man
- Death by PowerPoint
... and when did people become resources ... I mean where do these guys come from? Retarded? (Sorry Frank Zappa quote)
Perhaps management needs to step in to the real world where people listen to Kate Rusby and don't really care about EBITDA (I thought they were a heavy metal group, but apparently it is a finance term zzzzzzzzzzzzzz).
Business is boring.
ATB Rotf
BTW I didn't get any letters to-day - so I've gone quite mad
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
I have never seen the compelling need for .... daily milk .....
ATB from Fredrik
Dear Fredrik
That sounds a bit too Thatcher like for me.
I like my daily post, milk and bakery deliveries.
Does it not say in the Lord's Prayer -
Give us this day our daily bread?
All the best and still dreaming of Utopia
Rotf
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by u5227470736789439
Dear ROTF!
I have never met a baker who would give anything away! That would be a miracle indeed!
Seriously, if it is viable to make home deliveries for the mail then why not give private enterprise the chance to do it? There will be problems at the start, but it is not exactly as if the Royal Mail is so very fine in the first place...
ATB from Fredrik
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Rasher
All my cheques come in by post and all my work goes out the same way. I couldn't survive by queuing up at the post office every day behind a long line of people collecting their benefits to get to a little old lady in a kiosk shuffling forms and stamps. It’s like something from the 1950’s. I just couldn’t survive working like that.
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Guido Fawkes
Dear Fredrik
I'm not such a fan of big business and I think somethings should remain a public service - having lived in Sweden and Iceland I think they do a lot of things better there, but not everything - perhaps a society somewhere between the two systems would be good.
However, our postman is great guy and I don't think he gets paid too well and I want to see him keep his job. I really would like to see everybody able to get work and decent pay for it. There is a danger that some people see driving down costs as a goal in life, whereas I think we should enjoy good services and be happy - too much money goes to too few.
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Andrew Randle
From what I hear, the Postal Strike could be the tip of the iceberg.
All driven by the changing goalposts of inflation, and Gordon Brown handing our country's control over interest rates to the very people you don't want to control interest rates - i.e. the Banks.
Nevermind, the Pound will start devaluing and we'll all jump and impale ourselves on the Euro...
Andrew
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by u5227470736789439
quote:
Originally posted by ROTF:
Dear Fredrik
I'm not such a fan of big business and I think somethings should remain a public service - having lived in Sweden and Iceland I think they do a lot of things better there, but not everything - perhaps a society somewhere between the two systems would be good.
Somewhere like Norway perhaps? I would say that wouldn't I? [Smiley]. My mother was Norwegian, and my father was British...
quote:
However, our postman is great guy and I don't think he gets paid too well and I want to see him keep his job. I really would like to see everybody able to get work and decent pay for it. There is a danger that some people see driving down costs as a goal in life, whereas I think we should enjoy good services and be happy - too much money goes to too few.
ATB Rotf
I agree about business and remunerating people decently, but to be honest in our Anglo-Saxon style [shared with the US] capitalist economy there are a great many worse off than Posties. I don't have a special sympathy for them. Some are sterling and some are most definatley not. You know what I think about leaving the dear old country, and I would in a trice if I could. Britain never really has been designed for the termite! It is designed for the chief! Nothing is going to alter that, especially in light of the way the gap between rich and poor in UK has widened under the Labour Party. That might have been expected under the Tories, but under Labour...?
In many ways Napoleon would have been wrong characterising us a nation of shop keepers if he were speaking nowadays. He would have thought of us as cost accountantants, and profiteers, now, I think!
ATB from Fredrik
Posted on: 29 June 2007 by Svetty
quote:
Originally posted by ROTF:
quote:
Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
I have never seen the compelling need for .... daily milk .....
ATB from Fredrik
Dear Fredrik
That sounds a bit too Thatcher like for me.
I like my daily post, milk and bakery deliveries.
Does it not say in the Lord's Prayer -
Give us this day our daily bread?
All the best and still dreaming of Utopia
Rotf
Way to Go Maggie - shame she isn't still in her prime to give Brown's butt a good kicking!
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Rasher
Here we go again:
quote:
CWU General Secretary Billy Hayes told the BBC he wanted sensible negotiations with the Royal Mail, but said he felt that was not on offer and signalled further strikes could be on the cards.
"Royal Mail aren't treating these strikes seriously," he said.
Mr Hayes added the union was unhappy that Mr Leighton had not sat down face to face with them in 11th-hour talks earlier in the week, but instead discussed the dispute in a "squeezed" 40-minute conference call.
The union has refused to grasp or understand the harsh commercial reality of the market in which Royal Mail now operates
The government could now get involved in bringing the two sides to the negotiating table, with about 60 MPs adding their names to an early day motion tabled by Labour MP for Morecambe & Lunesdale, Geraldine Smith, calling for an end to the deadlock.
Union officials have argued that workers' pay should rise in line with inflation, which Royal Mail insists it cannot afford.
Royal Mail's modernisation plans are also a bone of contention, as the CWU says these will lead to the loss of 40,000 jobs.
But the company says that changes are essential in order to compete with rival mail firms.
It also says a £1.2bn loan from the government needs to be spent on new technology to transform its operations, not on higher wages.
"Yet again the union has refused to grasp or understand the harsh commercial reality of the market in which Royal Mail now operates and the consequences for all of us if we don't modernise - and do it quickly," said Mr Leighton in a statement released hours before the strike began.
He added: "Their decision to call another strike changes nothing."
Since Royal Mail lost its monopoly status on post deliveries from 1 January 2006, 17 operators have entered the UK mail market, creating fierce competition for the post office group - particularly in the more profitable business post sector.
UK MAIL MARKET
The UK mail market is shrinking by 2.5% per year
Royal Mail has lost 40% of corporate business
Royal Mail rivals will handle one in five of all letters posted in the UK
Source: Royal Mail
Royal Mail says it has already lost about 40% of its bulk mail business to rival postal operators.
Most recently, an £8m contract with Amazon and a £12m contract with the Department for Work and Pensions have fallen to private firm UK mail, owner of Business Post.
I don't understand why the unions can't grasp that the market has changed. Are they really so small-minded that they don't see what is happening in the world around them?
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Guido Fawkes
The Royal Mail management has lost 40% of its business because basically they are useless and yet they get paid big bonuses for being totally and completely useless. If there is a bigger waste of space than Crozier in the known universe then lets hope we never meet them. Crozier was the idiot who hired Sven-Goran Eriksson. His background is nothing to be proud of - a former head of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi. If we don't get any post then it is his fault so lets blame the culprit. To blame a pension fund for problems is ludicrous - if a company offers a pension to its staff then it is obliged to honour it - why not have no pay for Royal Mail executives until they realise a profit and clear the pension deficit - if they all go who cares, we can off-shore executive management: it'll be no worse and certainly cheaper.
Rant over - queue
Strawbs songPosted on: 13 July 2007 by BigH47
It's not all about money per se. Management want leave and sick guys rounds covered for no extra pay.
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Chris Kelly
Union vs management - how very 20th Century.
Our postie is a very nice guy. Does his rounds on a bike so very carbon friendly. Brings my far-too frequent packages from Amazon without a moan, and is also expected to lug loads of junk mail around to everyone. Admittedly the mail always arrives long after we have gone to work but as I don't rely on it for cash-flow that's no big deal. In any case, banks and retailers seem determined to stamp out the use of cheques.
If this gets privatised it will become all about efficiency and to hell with the service.
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Nigel Cavendish
Rasher said:
"All my cheques come in by post and all my work goes out the same way. .." and;
"I don't understand why the unions can't grasp that the market has changed. Are they really so small-minded that they don't see what is happening in the world around them?"
Cheques? How very 21st century.
Unions are not there to pander to the whims of management, they are their to protect their members and are mandated by their members to do so. No employee benefits, or legal protections, were ever given by benevolent bosses they were all fought for by the TU movement.
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
Our postie is a very nice guy.
Mine too - deserves more than £16.5 k a year (IMHO).
quote:
If this gets privatised it will become all about efficiency and to hell with the service.
Agree 100%
To me it's the management to blame - the guys doing the work are good, if it is not a cost-effective service then the problem lies elsewhere, not with the guys delivering my letters.
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Allan Probin
quote:
Brings my far-too frequent packages from Amazon without a moan, and is also expected to lug loads of junk mail around to everyone
Err, isn't that his job?
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Svetty
quote:
Originally posted by ROTF:
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
Our postie is a very nice guy.
Mine too - deserves more than £16.5 k a year (IMHO).
quote:
If this gets privatised it will become all about efficiency and to hell with the service.
Agree 100%
To me it's the management to blame - the guys doing the work are good, if it is not a cost-effective service then the problem lies elsewhere, not with the guys delivering my letters.
I bet 'The Red Flag' is music to your ears on your system
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
Originally posted by Svetty:
I bet 'The Red Flag' is music to your ears on your system
Jim Connell was born in Kilskyre, County Meath, in 1852. At 18 he moved to Dublin, where he worked as a casual docker, but was blacklisted for his attempts to unionise the docks. Failing to find other work, he left for London in 1875, where he spent the rest of his life. He was a staff journalist on Keir Hardie's newspaper
The Labour Leader and secretary of the Workingmen's Legal Aid Society.
He wrote the lyrics to
The Red Flag in 1889 on the train from Charing Cross to New Cross inspired by the London dock strike of time. He set his lyrics to the tune of
The White Cockade, but it is now sung to the tune of
Tannenbaum. Jim died in 1929 and at his funeral, in Golders Green, both versions of
The Red Flag were sung.
The first link is to the original
White Cockade version, whereas the second link is to the better known version, but I much prefer the the original.
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by steved
Nigel Cavendish said "No employee benefits, or legal protections, were ever given by benevolent bosses they were all fought for by the TU movement".
I work for a company that has no unions, has been in business for nearly 150 years, and definitely does look after all its employees extremely well.
It is so disappointing that people cannot see past the old stereotype that all management is bad, all workers are downtrodden, and unions are necessary to bridge between the two.
I've worked in several industries during the past 34 years, and have seen good and bad managers, and good and bad workers. No doubt this is true in the Post Office also, whose main problem is the disappearance of much of their traditional revenue base. Unless both sides work together to resolve this, their future is very bleak.
Steve D
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
Originally posted by steved:
I work for a company that has no unions, has been in business for nearly 150 years, and definitely does look after all its employees extremely well.
Sounds really good - I wish all companies did. I'm not treated too badly either, but the job is not what is it was and I don't really enjoy it as I once did, but that's not the fault of the union or my management. In fact, my company phased out most of the management as it saw it as an overhead that didn't bring in much money (not sure about that philosophy) but that's the brave new environment.
quote:
It is so disappointing that people cannot see past the old stereotype that all management is bad, all workers are downtrodden, and unions are necessary to bridge between the two.
Not all management is bad (far from it) - not all executives are bad (far from it) - the managers in the Royal Mail are not bad (most and I've worked with quite a few are very good) - it is the executives in the Royal Mail leave a lot to be desired.
I'd like to see everybody doing a job that gave them job satisfaction and getting a decent wage - if you've found that then that's excellent.
ATB Rotf
