working for royal mail - any postmen/women here?

1886

One of my friends works for RM and has done for ten years. He's not a postman but knows alot about their hours. He said they are now part time and do 6x5 hour days.
I think thats quite harsh because although you're part time you're still having to work six days a week. He said a few years ago it was a cushie job, posties would be paid to work longer days but finish the route two or three hours before and get paid for the whole shift hence now the shifts have been shortened. Correct me if I'm wrong, just what he told me

mazza111

1886 wrote: »

One of my friends works for RM and has done for ten years. He's not a postman but knows alot about their hours. He said they are now part time and do 6x5 hour days.
I think thats quite harsh because although you're part time you're still having to work six days a week. He said a few years ago it was a cushie job, posties would be paid to work longer days but finish the route two or three hours before and get paid for the whole shift hence now the shifts have been shortened. Correct me if I'm wrong, just what he told me

It did happen on occasion that some ft posties finished early. But now you've got the other side of the coin, RM profit from giving PT contracts, even if you work overtime every day to make it up, when it comes to holidays/sick it's paid part time, big win for RM.

I was on a 24 hour contract. 5 days a week. Most weeks I could make up extra hours to help me boost my income. As I said, the few weeks in run up to Christmas I was doing 70 + hours.

I think there are a couple of problems in working for RM

1. For a communications company, they are ridiculously inept at communicating.
2. There are people like Abbydog who are giving them an hour every day unpaid for fear of losing their job. Not having a go at Abbydog for this, but it's a sad state of affairs if you're not getting paid for hours worked.
3. Not so much now that van share has come in, but posties using their own cars, shaved time of deliveries and time of the duties, ofc at no cost to RM.
4. It's a computer program stating how fast each delivery route should take. And it usually calculates well under what each delivery takes.
5. Runners. Those who actually jog around their duties. This used to benefit them because they could finish early if they finished their duty early. It now shows that each duty should be done to their speeds, some of us just wouldn't be capable of doing those speeds.

I don't know if any of u remember the panorama programme where they got a very fit soldier of some sort to complete a duty in set time, keeping in mind, he went to every house and delivered one leaflet. Now maybe there are days posties don't go to every house, but would have parcels/mags etc to carry. Even the soldier (sorry, I can't remember if he was a paratrooper or something) just managed to do the duty in the time specified. Then picture a man in his late 50s early 60s trying to do the same.


But, if my legs were any better, it's still a job I enjoyed doing, apart from a couple of managers who needed shooting

k66yla

RM do not offer F/T contracts anymore. All contracts are P/T (normally 30hrs) and are FTC(Fixed Term Contract). The majority of P/T staff at my office don't start work until 9am, so don't expect to start early as starting times are changing for F/T staff.....probably 7am. There are very few offices that use bikes anymore. The job description now states 'Postman with occassional driving' so if you apply you need a full licence.
Good luck to all those that apply.....it will be an eyeopener I can assure you!

Honeydog

want2bmortgage3 wrote: »

I wouldnt recommend it, most of the rounds are too big. they have been made bigger recently due to revisions (van sharing) and an increasing number of "tear-!!!!!!" usually young men who run around deliveries, jumping fences, walking over grass, leaving parcels on doorsteps, not getting signatures, etc etc. This makes the posties who do a proper job look slow, and take an hour or more longer than their duty time. Ok you might think, but getting paid the overtime has become difficult so you are likely to work over your time every day for nothing.

I can second that. Our so-called postie delivered my recorded signed for parcel by lobbing it through an open window! No signature. Didn't even knock at the door. RM don't care.