Postal Strike
Posted by: Analogue on 21 October 2009
48hr postal strike starts mid-night, tonight.
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by JWM
That's going to achieve a lot...
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by Analogue
....."Just a little, not a lot"..........
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by Peter Dinh
Postal workers can only harm themselves if they go on strike.
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by scottyhammer
all i know is i aint gonna get any mail for 2 days at least!!
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by Exiled Highlander
Stu
What would be going on that we don't know about?
Cheers
Jim
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by Steve2701
quote:
There are a hell of lot OF POSTAL WORKERS that dont want this strike.
Apparently 20% of them?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
So,so many other ways to get stuff through, as well as other companies chomping at the bit to be allowed to deliver 'the final mile' mail.
Why am I so reminded of 'red robbo' and others when I watch the news.
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by JamieWednesday
Royal Mail desperately needs to increase automation and cut costs to be competitive. If they keep going without achieving this, none of them will have jobs. RM themselves stated they are 40% less efficient than competitors, that was in their own accounts! Hooper's report last year said RM have got to modernise to survive and they haven't been able to do it. Labour cost account for 66% of the revenue (only Spain is higher in Europe). They had turnover last year of £6.7bn, profit was only £58m. Costs include stupidly over-generous O/T, work hours schemes and the unions don't want to let go of their 'perks' which they see as a divine right in being a postal worker. Labout Govt. is too scared of upsetting the unions but unless RM gets its act togetehr and Govt. steps in without screwing the taxpayer, RM is fckd.
Posted on: 21 October 2009 by Exiled Highlander
Power to them, they are obviously underpaid and overworked and they deserve everything they are fighting for. After all, they are workers of the state and they shouldn't have to compete with the open market.
Jim
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Steve2701
Hmmm Lets see just how much more damage we can do to the British economy now that is is showing signs of a very fragile recovery. How many other businesses can we send to the wall.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by naim_nymph
There is a lot a confusion with what people believe is the reason for this Postal Strike.
So I will just try to convey a few pointers…
It’s not about a pay rise!
So please let’s just leave that to the Tory Tripe Press 'n' Media!
It’s about the grim Victorian standards of working practise that a bonus obsessed management is imposing upon the Postman and woman.
They call it ‘Modernisation’ but most Delivery Offices and Mail Centres have seen nothing of the new machinery promised. Just bullying arrogant managers putting an ever increasing workload on a already hard pressed workforce. Line and Shift Managers have been paid bonuses of 4k - 10k this year for reaching very disputable trumped up productivity targets (in other words they’ve done nothing productive) while the real workers have had a pay freeze.
RM has shed over 40.000 jobs over the past few years so working practises are far more efficient than a decade ago, but this is no where near good enough for this ‘Modernisation’.
It would appear that perhaps they want to make life hell at work in order to force the full time staff into taking early retirement, or accepting redundancy in exchange for new part time staff who will have a crap minimum basis wage contract.
(Not many can afford to go, so they remain to get bullied instead).
It has been reported in some Delivery Offices that part time staff are forced to do more hours of work without payment (or they can quit) and because of the desperation caused by this recession they choose to stay anyway... this means they receive less than the minimum basis wage. RM managers encourage this!
It is true that Mandleson seeks revenge for the Privatisation failure...
This leads to additional concerns that the real issues are not only based around the CWU and RM but the City is salivating at the prospect of making huge money from a sell off.
This also points to the fact that RM is making far more money than they let know about, and RM could make a lot more too, many City investors are well aware of this and have been for some time. This may come as a surprise, but the propaganda of 10% fall in letters leading to lost profits etc is mainly caused by these weird parasite companies (TNT DHL ect) being allowed to take the post payment but needing RM to re-process the mail at Delivery Offices and deliver them, so in other words - they take the money, we do the work!
Also, the fact remains that texting and email use generally replaces the telephone use, not letter, so that is just more propaganda.
Also, the internet has caused an enormous increase of shopping on line resulting in increased packet and parcel traffic and this brings in a lot of revenue that RM bosses seem to keep very quiet about.
The new Managing Director Mark Higson is a millionaire capitalist who, together with another millianaire capitalist Adam Crosier, are now crusading to reduce the staff wage roll dramatically in readiness for privatisation, and of course making them huge bumper bonuses for themselves in the process. They certainly do not care a jot for small businesses or the general pubic!
So, if this privatisation ever happens, do not expect a better service.
The RM business plan for the next five years is very secret, the CWU has repetitively asked to know what it is but Tolhurst, Higson, Crosier, Mandleson et al will not say.
But it is very clear that they have no interest in providing a public service that will remain anywhere near as good as now, so if they get their way the prices will go up and service go down.
I am very sorry if any of you people are inconvenienced due to the strike, but we do have the right, and very good cause to strike at this moment in time.
Please remember we are fighting to keep Royal Mail as a Public Service that is dependable at affordable cost, but the Management are trying to change it into a make easy money service for wealthy shareholders and big bumper bonus trough. SO BEWARE!!
The CWU are fighting this, not only for ourselves working within Royal Mail but for the benefit of the 61 million population of the UK who we really want to serve.
Up the Workers! : )
Debs
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by BigH47
Well done Debs. A fellow CWU member (retired branch).
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by scottyhammer
Thanks Debs for your informative insight and i for one hope that this dispute can be resolved very quickly as i have used RM all my life and think that we get a very good service even though mail is delivered later than it once was i STILL think we will be better off sticking with RM than using others......better the devil you know and all that.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Mike-B
I have normally avoided union/worker rights stuff, but I feel it is needed to put another aspect to this very well scripted post (no pun intended) from Debs
I live in the area served by the old Oxford (Cowley) sorting office. Due to almost monthly wildcat strikes and continuous ongoing industrial action of some sort it was closed and amalgamated with Swindon. People who either run or work at my village PO or worked at or with the sorting office have said to rid themselves of the local sorting office's union mafia was like a breath of spring air; work avoidance, objections to anything & everything, forever demanding impossible to achieve concessions, etc.. I am tempted to link them - and some individuals are - with the previous union regime at the nearby defunct BMC/Leyland car plant - It was sold to BMW who installed a modern (BMW insisted) union/management structure and is now the super productive Mini factory. This has to be a lesson for unions to think about as it seems to me that business can actually thrive with cooperative unions.
Post delivery people - the postman - has had imposed a reduction of hours (delivery rounds) whilst maintaining & improving on delivery targets. I have to say this is the way of modern industry, we have all gone thru it, targets, objectives, all performance related, generally resulting in less people doing more work faster and more efficiently. But watching our postman pushing his overloaded bike up the hill make me wonder were the efficiency is actuality applied. What has been done is his 2 rounds - early and midday - are amalgamated into 1 round. And looking at the bike load and how it has to be pushed in the road (no pavement) seems to me a wonderland for a zealous EHS specialist. It would never ever be allowed in a caring industry.
Re the bullying arrogant managers .... managers paid bonuses of 4k - 10k .... for reaching disputable trumped up productivity targets .... workers had a pay freeze .... that sounds just like the old Oxford sorting office.
Fire the lot - management included - kick out the union and start again is easy to say.
But in reality that is probably the best way out of this mess.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Bruce Woodhouse
Simplification is not always the best thing I know, however would it be fair to say this is really about wether we maintain a state run and subsidised PO or have a commercially run service with the drastic economies that entails?
I think the public would support the CWU action more if they felt that was the essential issue rather than 'pay and conditions'
Lastly a comment on the CWU leadership. I heard the press conference live on radio yesterday afternoon when they announced the strike. They sounded like inarticulate simpletons! Sorry, but that really made me think they were utterly unreconstructed dinosaurs. The union really needs to present a more media schooled face to the world as these impressions count.
Bruce
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Steve2701
quote:
I am very sorry if any of you people are inconvenienced due to the strike, but we do have the right, and very good cause to strike at this moment in time.
That has been quoted umpteen times on air.
Just how hollow is that going to sound to the person sitting opposite their bank manager who is telling them he wants their house off them due to the fact thier business has gone bust?
Neither side is blameless in this - and the above will happen.
Perhaps the pension funds of both sides should be held responsible and asked to pay back these folks - would that finally get everyone actually talking face to face instead of talking about having talks?
Money to resurect the industry will inevitably have to come from the private sector - lets face it, the public purse is empty, completley empty, and for the forseeable future as well.
How many private sector funds will be willing to pour money into this lot as it stands at present? Perhaps the top folk need removing - not for me to say, but this strike will do way more damage than it will do good.
If Amazon (the PO's apparently largest customer) can find a way round the strike - plenty more will to. Ask yourself - are they likely to return?
As for usage being taken up by telephone and email - post is still post.
I wonder just how many companies now realise that they can convert invoices / statements / delivery notes to PDF so easily and send them electronically virtually for free? Are these ever going to return? This is fact - not propoganda. I have been forced to do it - and every other business on our industrial estate has done exactly the same. Are we ever going to return to post? Why would we? I could easily work out just how much that will cost the the postal service in lost revenue from here alone - but it is just not worth the hassle.
As for the increase in parcel busines.. Commercial business carriers have now totally caught up with this - anything over a kilo or so in weight is easier and nearly always cheaper via one of those - and thay are collected daily, for delivery the following day. How long before they are allowed to catch up with the other lower weight stuff.
If the PO is not modernised it will face complete bankrupcy - and everything that would entail along with it - pensions included.
The only thing that the PO do now so well is deliver paper mail and anything up to about 1.5kilos. How can a company that size with that many employees exist on just this?
In the end strike action costs everyone in this country - it has lead to the demise of a great many companies (some very large ones) and when a new one picks itself up from the ashes it will as per Mikes post (BMW for one) be far more efficiently run and without the baggage / debt of the former comapny run as a company should.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Polarbear
quote:
Originally posted by naim_nymph:
There is a lot a confusion with what people believe is the reason for this Postal Strike.
So I will just try to convey a few pointers…
It’s not about a pay rise!
So please let’s just leave that to the Tory Tripe Press 'n' Media!
It’s about the grim Victorian standards of working practise that a bonus obsessed management is imposing upon the Postman and woman.
They call it ‘Modernisation’ but most Delivery Offices and Mail Centres have seen nothing of the new machinery promised. Just bullying arrogant managers putting an ever increasing workload on a already hard pressed workforce. Line and Shift Managers have been paid bonuses of 4k - 10k this year for reaching very disputable trumped up productivity targets (in other words they’ve done nothing productive) while the real workers have had a pay freeze.
RM has shed over 40.000 jobs over the past few years so working practises are far more efficient than a decade ago, but this is no where near good enough for this ‘Modernisation’.
It would appear that perhaps they want to make life hell at work in order to force the full time staff into taking early retirement, or accepting redundancy in exchange for new part time staff who will have a crap minimum basis wage contract.
(Not many can afford to go, so they remain to get bullied instead).
It has been reported in some Delivery Offices that part time staff are forced to do more hours of work without payment (or they can quit) and because of the desperation caused by this recession they choose to stay anyway... this means they receive less than the minimum basis wage. RM managers encourage this!
It is true that Mandleson seeks revenge for the Privatisation failure...
This leads to additional concerns that the real issues are not only based around the CWU and RM but the City is salivating at the prospect of making huge money from a sell off.
This also points to the fact that RM is making far more money than they let know about, and RM could make a lot more too, many City investors are well aware of this and have been for some time. This may come as a surprise, but the propaganda of 10% fall in letters leading to lost profits etc is mainly caused by these weird parasite companies (TNT DHL ect) being allowed to take the post payment but needing RM to re-process the mail at Delivery Offices and deliver them, so in other words - they take the money, we do the work!
Also, the fact remains that texting and email use generally replaces the telephone use, not letter, so that is just more propaganda.
Also, the internet has caused an enormous increase of shopping on line resulting in increased packet and parcel traffic and this brings in a lot of revenue that RM bosses seem to keep very quiet about.
The new Managing Director Mark Higson is a millionaire capitalist who, together with another millianaire capitalist Adam Crosier, are now crusading to reduce the staff wage roll dramatically in readiness for privatisation, and of course making them huge bumper bonuses for themselves in the process. They certainly do not care a jot for small businesses or the general pubic!
So, if this privatisation ever happens, do not expect a better service.
The RM business plan for the next five years is very secret, the CWU has repetitively asked to know what it is but Tolhurst, Higson, Crosier, Mandleson et al will not say.
But it is very clear that they have no interest in providing a public service that will remain anywhere near as good as now, so if they get their way the prices will go up and service go down.
I am very sorry if any of you people are inconvenienced due to the strike, but we do have the right, and very good cause to strike at this moment in time.
Please remember we are fighting to keep Royal Mail as a Public Service that is dependable at affordable cost, but the Management are trying to change it into a make easy money service for wealthy shareholders and big bumper bonus trough. SO BEWARE!!
The CWU are fighting this, not only for ourselves working within Royal Mail but for the benefit of the 61 million population of the UK who we really want to serve.
Up the Workers! : )
Debs
Nah!
I heard it was because you all wanted Jaffa cakes with your coffee, not chocolate biscuits!
A valid reason to strike IMO
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Andy1912
Well my feeling is that what has happened to the Royal Mail over the years has been awful. Essentially, it has been left with the areas of work which are very hard to make profitable whilst TNT and others make hay in the potentially lucrative areas. There was nothing in particular wrong with the Royal Mail before all this s*ite - you posted a letter somewhere in the UK and within a couple of days it arrived. That was true whether you were ICI or Granny Smith, and true if you were posting to someone in your own town or posting a letter from Devon to Shetland. Do you think TNT or other private companies will ever sign-up to delivering post to people and businesses in a rural setting? All over rural communities post offices have been shutting at astonishing rates and if lucky you end-up with Post Office desk in the corner of a chemist but just as likely with nothing. Some areas of business can potentially work better in a competitive environment - arguable BT for example, but not public services which I strongly believe historically the Post Office has been. One of the sad things for me is that in the UK over the years people have increasingly stopped looking at things in the round. May be you don't like paying higher rates of tax - fine - but then don't complain about public services being crap. May be you believe in free enterprise - fine - but then don't complain about the size of your fuel bills / water bills. And so on.
Whether it is actually wise of the post office workers to strike is debatable, but in my opinion every decision involving postal services for years in UK has been in the words of Paul Calf "A bag o' sh*te". So, as you might be able to guess, I use the Post Office for every letter and every parcel I ever post and I'll continue to do that. So there.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Howlinhounddog
quote:
It has been reported in some Delivery Offices that part time staff are forced to do more hours of work without payment (or they can quit) and because of the desperation caused by this recession they choose to stay anyway... this means they receive less than the minimum basis wage. RM managers encourage this!
I have been trolling the web for this directive, I know it exists as I have seen it with my own eyes!
quote:
Fire the lot - management included - kick out the union and start again is easy to say.
But in reality that is probably the best way out of this mess.
Mike, check out Stu's redundancy hits home thread and tell me he has had better options by not having Union representation. It appears that it is dereguerre to bash unions in all media but here we see another example of where trade union membership would have made management think twice about their employement practices.
It is worth while remembering how the anti union laws of Thatcher still not repealed time line this dispute and show up the arrogance of RM management.
CWU open to going to ACAS with no preconditions, management refuse. CWU ballot membership for the RIGHT to hold a ballot for strike action (at least two full weeks) Managemant refuse to go to Acas during this period, presumable waiting to see if the CWU can get a mandate from their members to HOLD a ballot for strike action. Mandate received by secret ballot of members to BALLOT for strike action. Ballot for strike action goes ahead (at least another two weeks) Mangement still refuse to go to Acas and discuss arbitration. Two weeks later the CWU membership give a mandate for a strike and the first strike date given (at least two weeks after the vote for action). Management STILL refuse to go to arbitration at Acas.
TWO days before the first strike, management say they are willing to go to Acas and blame the thoroughly scurrilous union of dispicable practices and an unwillingness to talk.
For at least 6 WEEKS during the required period leading up to the strike the CWU have been asking for arbitration and management have refused to go without preconditions being set. A cynical person may believe that they have been playing a game of poker. Waiting to see if the CWU membership would say no to a ballot or no to taking strike action and then waiting for them to walk meekly back into work to be imposed with any nonsense management wished to do.
Perhaps a cynical person may also assume that since the decision of Acas would be binding to both sides, it may not be in the P.O. managements best interests to have any experts in employment law look too closely at just what is going on at the PO.
A little numbercrunching courtesy of Private Eye;
£346/week- av. postal workers wage
£321 million- RM profit last year
£3 million - Adam Crozier's salary last year !
And this is not about wages! It should be, Crozier is paid £3m and has done nothing to avert this strike until TWO days before the action takes place. No, this is not about wages, this is about another piece of the family silver being polished up to sell off to the highest bidders, and as history has so far shown, usually for considerably less than it's actual worth.
The CWU may come over as crass, but then again they do not have the benefit of Croziers upbringing at Saachi and Saachi!
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Steve2701
quote:
They had turnover last year of £6.7bn, profit was only £58m.
As posted on page one by JW
quote:
A little numbercrunching courtesy of Private Eye;
£346/week- av. postal workers wage
£321 million- RM profit last year
£3 million - Adam Crozier's salary last year !
A slight discrepancy there I think.
From google search:-
8 May 2008 11:42am. Add comments. The Royal Mail's profits have fallen by almost a third to £162 million, the lowest figure for five years. ...
23 Oct 2008 ... Royal Mail doubled its operating profits to £177m in the first half of 2008/09 from a year ago, helped by cost cuts and greater efficiency. ...
23 Oct 2008 ... Royal Mail doubled its operating profits to £177m in the first half of 2008/09 from a year ago, helped by cost cuts and greater efficiency. ...
14 May 2009 ... Royal Mail [GBPO.UL], which runs mail, parcel delivery and logistics businesses, reported a 2008-09 operating profit of 321 million pounds ...
Is one correct?
Who knows - it's just a complete shambles.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Svetty
Working Practices blah blah blah
Union dinosaurs wanting to maintain status quo in a changing world....
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by BigH47
Management dinosaurs are fine eh?
They just want to keep their noses in the trough.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by scottyhammer
I can see this dispute ending in the same way as the....Dockers / Miners / Car workers etc - IN TEARS AND DISASTER.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by scottyhammer
Unless someone sees sense - which i doubt very much.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by Steeve
For what it's worth, the postal workers have my full support.
Posted on: 22 October 2009 by naim_nymph
Just a bit of information:
Today is the start of strike action that is 24 hour for each shift. The shifts are around the clock so the rolling action of Strikes spans a 2 day period.
However, if the Delivery Office is located in the actual Mail Centre it means no post today, but you will have post tomorrow.
You should only miss one post delivery, so if you have not received post today (Thursday), you should receive it tomorrow (Friday).
If your Delivery Office is separate from the Mail Centre like most are, then you will receive post today but not tomorrow.
So if you see your Posty today, it means he or she is due 'out' tomorrow or visa versa.
Debs
