Royal Mail national strike looms for Christmas

Really2

Davesnave wrote: »

And he still can't afford two pairs of specs!:rotfl:

No Specsavers in Greendale.:rotfl:

dopester

nearlynew wrote: »

Good luck to the strikers.

I hope they bring the country to its knees.

How nice of you.

Any other causes you want to champion, hoping the dispute will cause everyone else in the UK to suffer? There are loads of causes that are going to have their funding cut and go under. You might be torn apart with your anger.

The reason unions are weaker in today's workplace is because they have lost quite a lot of their ability to blackmail their employers with union demands.

Pssst

torontoboy45 wrote: »

and it doesn't stop with BA/RM. there seems to be plenty of medium/large size co.s using the recession as an excuse to squeeze their staff, even where the co.s remain largely unaffected.

I started work in the rail industry when it was a state industry and a national laughing stock. FF to today and it's an even bigger joke - the laugh being confined largely to staff and industry observers.

it has become a chaotic, fragmented, inefficient and expensive mess under privatisation, largely run by floundering, incompetent bully-boys whose antics have got many of the passengers wishing for the bad old days of british rail.

the train operating co.s offer an inferior service to the public but gladly help themselves to 'profits' whilst the poor bloody taxpayer continues to stump up subsidies ( 3x more in real terms, if you believe the NAO figures,
than br rec'd in its last yr of operating).

make your minds up: do you want the RM or not? if you don't: scrap it and watch the 'free' market offer 'choice' much in the same way as the utility businesses.

if it's the irrelevance that bendix et al keep banging on about why don't we all just disappear down to the pub and talk about something else (e.g. we all work so bloody hard in the private sector yet - somehow - we still find time to post here, even in the middle of the day!!).

Indeed..and its not only loss making companies who are quite happy to eject workers on a whim.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1219059/National-Grid-shed-300-jobs-bid-cut-costs.html

http://www.nationalgreed.co.uk

A company that made nearly £3 billion pounds in operating profit seeks to export British jobs to India...

Cleaver

nearlynew wrote: »

Good luck to the strikers.

I hope they bring the country to its knees.

I think with e-mail, individual companies being able to use various other parcel carriers and the fact that 80% of people's mail tends to be junk nowadays, 'bringing the country to its knees' might be a bit far off the mark.

I think the danger with these strikes is that the vast majority of people don't really notice. I tend to send around five letters a year and our post already comes in fits and spurts, sometimes we don't get any for three or four days then get a deluge of junk in one big delivery. My wife orders stuff from eBay, but we can only pick these up between the hours of 9-11.30am on Saturday anyway. Useless.

Pssst

custardy wrote: »

the number of managers has doubled (and some weeks more) since i started in RM in my own office
while staffing levels go down year on year

there have been some manager cuts(not many) as RM recently had a regional shake increasing the size of the regions to cut down managers.
shame one of them is on suspension for cooking the books on quality of service figures...........

Indeed...and i expect that one of the major sources of real anguish and worry is the security of the post office pension scheme which has a huge deficit of around £6 Bn.

Workers are seeing pensions which they have contributed to,evaporating from under their noses and face real danger of being robbed and left in poverty in their old age. Its not only the post office. Faced with that,wouldnt you want to strike and bring this thing to a head??

The post office apparently took themselves a 13 year pension "holiday" in which they paid nothing into the pot. That money went straight to central Government as the effective owners of the PO. They took money which should have gone in the pension pot. Now they should give it back. Does the government have £6Bn in its pocket at present? Maybe..but they have other uses for it.

See
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmtrdind/570/57006.htm

http://libcom.org/news/royal-mail-secret-pensions-robbery-plan-24072007

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article392727.ece

Now then,faced with that situation and all the other stuff thats going on...i challenge those who slag off the posties and say they should be sacked.....wouldnt YOU be more than worried about your future???

I can see the issues and i have no connection with the industry.

Bring the REAL villans of this piece to justice...HM Government and the incompetent PO management.

mystic_trev

I remember the big Postal strike of 1971 which went on for over six weeks. They lost that one as well, and no email in those days!

British postal workers have gone back to work today after seven weeks on strike.


The 200,000 postmen and women voted by 14-1 yesterday in favour of a deal hammered out after more than 13 hours of talks at the Department of Employment on Friday.

They had been demanding a 13% pay rise - but they have settled for a complex package which will award them wage increases after an inquiry into the efficiency of Post Office staff and management.

Strikers are disappointed because they are being asked to return to work without even the 8% rise offered when the walk-out began on 20 January.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/8/newsid_2516000/2516343.stm

SingleSue

custardy wrote: »

you see the 'old' system in RM was if you got done early then you were done.
this was brought in by RM when they brought in one delivery
so workers were coming in early,not taking breaks,using their own cars for delivery
the job got done and everyone was relativly happy.
RM now say when you are done we want you to do X extra or whatever
so why would you go in early?
why wouldnt you take your break?
why would you use your own car?

so now RM are reaping the results of a change in policy(by them) and a slow change in mindset by posties


as for your link to uk mail,i dont see your point?

why not ask all 30 http://www.psc.gov.uk/licensed-postal-operators.html

when did your UK mail postie deliver today?

I would have thought it is common sense (and financial sense to the employer!) that once you have finished your own work but your contracted hours have not yet finished, to do extra duties until your contracted hours have been reached.

That was how it worked for me and most others in the several offices I have worked in! Team work, helping out others who may (for whatever reason) not have finished their allotted work.

Mind you, I also gave extra time for free to get a job finished rather than having it laying over to the next day.

SingleSue

new_home_owner wrote: »

What a load of !!!!!!, there are plenty of peole who want jobs out there, but with wage cuts and the new terms and conditions companies are putting on employees using the excuse of the recession, Royal mail are as busy as ever especially with everyone buying stuff online, these companies just use it as a excuse to treat the worker like !!!!!!.

There are plenty of people who want to do a days graft but you can only go so far, it gets to the stage that they might aswell sit on their !!!!!! at home and get jobseekers allowance than go to to work for a extra 80 pound a week and have !!!!!! terms.

would you do it??

If it fitted into the care needs of my boys....yes.

Anything to get away from the stigma thankyou very much.

Lotus-eater

SingleSue wrote: »

I would have thought it is common sense (and financial sense to the employer!) that once you have finished your own work but your contracted hours have not yet finished, to do extra duties until your contracted hours have been reached.

That was how it worked for me and most others in the several offices I have worked in! Team work, helping out others who may (for whatever reason) not have finished their allotted work.

Mind you, I also gave extra time for free to get a job finished rather than having it laying over to the next day.

This is the problem, you give your staff virtual flexi hours, or they can work really hard then "job and knock" as we call it, but nothing is written down.
Come the time when you need it to change, you have mass unhappiness.

I don't understand what the postie on here was saying, if it's true that the PO only give you whatever hours they want during any week, how on earth can you live?
You won't have a clue what you will earn the next week. And by the sound of it, you never earn enough to create a buffer amount of money.

Neither side seems to be telling the whole truth here.

inspector_monkfish

its kicking off in Greendale ....

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/pat-and-jess-trade-insults-over-strike-action-200910082119/