Royal Mail national strike looms for Christmas

custardy

olly300 wrote: »

Some of the jobs I've done the management worked hard at incentiving people to work hard by giving vouchers etc. Lots of people think this is a waste of time, especially those who think that having a job is enough. I agree to a certain extent that having vouchers etc didn't work as an incentive to me as the jobs I've worked hardest in where the jobs where I saw the management help out by doing the lowest job when there was a deadline or clearly a lot of work on, say "thank you" to people and acknowledge staff at all levels as human beings.

you see i raised this in RM regarding sickness
as it is as long as you stay with the basic sick day rules you can have an extra 2 weeks off a year with no penalty. so why wouldnt you?
what i proposed was a system from another job i had.
you et an xmas bonus (in my place it was 1 weeks pay for each year worked upto 4 weeks) however fro every sick day you lost 5%
20 days off and no bonus.usually those taking sickies only had to do 1 xmas to see everyone with their bonus to buck up their ideas for next year.

so far ive had no response from top management and no interest from office managers

a11waysindebt

olly300 wrote: »

Part of the issue with this example is you are assuming like RM is that all streets and properties are equal in one area.

Having delivered newspapers as a teenage I know that you can deliver say to 10 properties in less than 10 minutes but it can take you 10 minutes to deliver to 5 properties due to the fact people can have long drives, horrid letterboxes that bite your fingers or are at ground level, dogs, blocks of flats with individual front doors, houses divided into flats with their own frontdoors in strange places, etc.
QUOTE]

What I'm getting at is if it takes you 20 minutes say to do this round that 20 minutes is covered. Its not going to get any longer.

The trouble being the guy who delivered them before you took 40 minutes.

custardy

a11waysindebt wrote: »

olly300 wrote: »

Part of the issue with this example is you are assuming like RM is that all streets and properties are equal in one area.

Having delivered newspapers as a teenage I know that you can deliver say to 10 properties in less than 10 minutes but it can take you 10 minutes to deliver to 5 properties due to the fact people can have long drives, horrid letterboxes that bite your fingers or are at ground level, dogs, blocks of flats with individual front doors, houses divided into flats with their own frontdoors in strange places, etc.
QUOTE]

What I'm getting at is if it takes you 20 minutes say to do this round that 20 minutes is covered. Its not going to get any longer.

The trouble being the guy who delivered them before you took 40 minutes.

yes but it can vary
say on the 20 minutes you get loads of packets and signature items on a heavy day.it can easily double the time.
same goes if the guy doing it in 20 minutes is leaving mail hanging out of letterboxes,gates open,jumping over walls,running etc does that make the guy taking 20 minutes better?

a11waysindebt

custardy wrote: »

a11waysindebt wrote: »

yes but it can vary
say on the 20 minutes you get loads of packets and signature items on a heavy day.it can easily double the time.
same goes if the guy doing it in 20 minutes is leaving mail hanging out of letterboxes,gates open,jumping over walls,running etc does that make the guy taking 20 minutes better?

Lets put it another way. Every house needs a signture they have a gate and hard at hearing and you have to knock twice and I stop to do my shoe laces up.

This takes me being the programme manager of the software an hour But it takes a postie an hour and 15 minutes. Whats gone wrong.

custardy

a11waysindebt wrote: »

custardy wrote: »

Lets put it another way. Every house needs a signture they have a gate and hard at hearing and you have to knock twice and I stop to do my shoe laces up.

This takes me being the programme manager of the software an hour But it takes a postie an hour and 15 minutes. Whats gone wrong.

thats where we are now

SingleSue

That reminds me of a care home I once worked.....they broke it down into how many seconds you should take undressing the residents, how long to wash them, how long to get them into bed and allowed no extra time for if the resident had something they wanted to get off their chest or was just having a wobbly day.

I hated treated a fellow human in such a way, with no compassion and argued that people are not computers and no matter how much a programme says it should take, reality and human feelings have to be taken into account (especially as what got me the job was my view of treating the residents like individuals, to be there to listen if they had a problem etc).

I couldn't see why the rush, after the residents went to bed, all we did, apart from take out the rubbish, was sit around until our shifts ended, so why not spend a few minutes talking if a resident needed it and it made them happier (I don't mean the stand around gabbing sort of talking, most of it was done when the getting into bed process was being undertaken).

Prudent

bendix wrote: »

I literally can't remember the last time I posted anything. And apart from bank statements (who needs them anymore too, with online banking), I'm struggling to remember the last thing that fell on my doormat that wasn't some crappy unsolicited advertising.

Start comping and then some very nice things will land on your doormat

want2bmortgage3

I work at RM and custardy is correct. A colleague was sacked for refusing to take out extra delivery (on top of his own delivery job). He did his job properly, didnt leave items on doorsteps, didn't walk across gardens and his customers loved him. He was determined he'd done nothing wrong and that he had no spare time to do any extra work. He was in the union and with their help he was eventually reinstated in a neighboring delivery office, and compensated for his lost wages!

If every postie was like him then the managers would not have got their own way. It is ridiculous having up to 6 whole delivery jobs not covered, then each divided into 8 sections as extra for everybody on top of their own jobs. This means you will get 8 vans driving to the same area of a town to do their little bit extra. At the same time there is a sticker on every RM van fuel flap saying 'do your bit, save a litre of fuel every day'.

As custardy also mentioned, where I work there are a few 'muppets' who either come in early (430 instead of 6am so that they can get a head start), or those who are very athletic and run around non-stop, jumping fences, etc. The managers see that these people can do the job quicker than most, or that those coming in early can do their bit of extra, and expect every one else to do it as well.

I'm remember more things that have happened in my delivery office as I'm writing this! Several posties who had been on their own delivery rounds for years have been taken off them and their jobs have been put up as 'absorption' jobs (this means they are divided up and given to 8 seperate people to do). These staff now are now spares and could be put on a different round every day, which is hard as you have to learn new jobs and it takes longer. Plus you have to keep moving all your belongings around the office!

Also, a female postie has been in tears on a couple of occasions as she has come in in the morning and been put on one job, but then after putting most of her letters in , she has been told to move onto another job, which has not had any letters thrown in and expected to still complete the round by her finish time.

Overtime no longer exists, if you do go over your time you are told you have to write the time down on a seperate (unofficial) sheet where you are supposed to get the time back another day. This rarely happens though and when it comes to disputing it, often the managers will deny they owed any time. Same with breaks you are meant to have half your break before you leave the office but I would say about 90% of people dont do this.

The managers claim the yes vote for a strike will be detrimental to customers, yet they are the ones who have made deliveries so late which is one of the main complaints we get now out on delivery. I am not surprised at the high yes vote, it is to be expected with the way staff are being treated.

The way it is I cant see much of a future at RM, the bosses seem determined on ruining everything for its staff and customers in order to save as much money as they can.

torontoboy45

don't want to get too embroiled in this, but: having a dabble custardy's and want2' s discussion it's becoming clear why the cwu have called this strike and why it's being supported.

I wonder what bendix/generali make of this.

the ultimate response would surely be: work 90hrs p/week and make a go of RM.
you're only a bunch of unskilled after all, working in the lazy public sector. be grateful. sink or swim y'shysters.

but then I'm talking about a couple of unreconstructed thatcherites, who view people as economic units; the human dimension doesn't get a look in!

torontoboy45

just to add: I've just finished work in the once-public-sector-now-private-sector. I hope all you 'hardworking' people who hate the public sector are sound asleep and looking forward to a relaxed sunday.

I'm back at work. think of me over yr bacon n' eggs.