City Link strike possible

Graham_Devon

Matt1977 wrote: »

I worked for DHL in the 2000s as an courier. I was one of the last employed couriers to be hired. After that, you either had to be self employed or and agency worker to do the job.

I remember one of the self employed drivers discouraging me from going self employed if I ever considered doing so. The charges per drop remained the same but fuel always increased (they had to pay for their own fuel, iirc). Pretty much a 10 - 12 hour job for some of them and can be as much as 80 - 90 drops per day. I just don't know how they do it, especially when these drivers' routes started 30 miles away from the depot.

The next time you are driving and you see a parcel delivery van right on your back bumper, it will be because the driver is running on pure adrenylin to try and clear a heavy workload.

I didn't know DHL had gone down the same route in all honesty. I thought DHL and UPS were a couple of the last remaining decent companies. Infact, I feel a bit of a mug now, as I've paid more for DHL in the past for this very reason.

I do feel extremely sorry for Yodel and HDNL couriers. Firstly due to the fact I can't support them by posting goods with them (not that my contribution makes any difference) but secondly because it appears to be falling apart. You just cannot rely on those companies.

When we get a delivery from Yodel now a guy in his own car appears with the parcel. I'm assuming he's on some sort of zero hour contract doing his best to earn a living.

chewmylegoff

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Buy your own van, pay your own insurance (or guess what, you can hire a van from the company, gee, thats generous), you'll get some fuel costs (gee, ta)

well, every cloud has a silver lining. when city link goes bust and shuts down in a couple of months, the couriers will be well placed to get work from citylink's competitors.

hillcats

Best of luck to them I say - if they can better their T&C's then its worth a pop...
being a long standing RMT member I would say that !

Graham_Devon

chewmylegoff wrote: »

well, every cloud has a silver lining. when city link goes bust and shuts down in a couple of months, the couriers will be well placed to get work from citylink's competitors.

Yer, and worse terms yet again most likely.

Whether that's a silver cloud or not, is personal opinion. Personally, I don't think losing your job and then being well placed to get a possibly worse one is something to celebrate, but each to their own.

I feel strongly about this one as a member of the family is a courier, and seriously, he has a very very hard time of it. A couple of years ago he used to go and sit in a portacabin at the weekend and get paid a retainer. Now, he has the choice of sitting in that portacabin without a retainer and maybe getting a job. If he get's the job he can be out all night (one day stuff). However, he only get's paid for the amount of travelling time. So if it's 600 round miles at 60mph he gets paid 10.5 hours. (half an hour "grace" for drop off).

However, no payment is made for overnight sleeping. No payment is made should he find himself stuck in traffic jams etc.

Somewhat worse, he gets a fuel allowance based on an arbitrary MPG calculation. Should he have to take a diversion, sit in a traffic jam etc, HE has to pay for the extra fuel.

Many a time the job isn't courier work. It's goign to collect a van or car for a hire firm and driving it to it's required location. That can sometimes be worse, as no fuel is put in the vehicle, meaning he has to shell out and then go through claiming it back. He doesn't know if the vehicle will have fuel or not, but put simply, no one cares. The contract is the contract. It can take a good couple of months to claim that money back. If he does a job like that and lucks out, he's worked for a loss until the money is claimed back. Difficult when you don't have much spare capacity financially. As you can imagine, there can be lots of arguing over how much fuel was needed, whether fuel was in the vehicle etc, so soemtimes he loses out as he put £40 in, but it's calculated he only needed £30. It's a nightmare.

Now, it's not really worth it, in the end it can end up well below minimum wage. BUT, he needs the money. What's a guy to do? Earn nothing at all, or earn something, even if it's just £40 after all that?

If you are suggesting he should be happy as he's in a good place to find more work of the same, he'd soon tell you to do one.

Matt1977

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I didn't know DHL had gone down the same route in all honesty. I thought DHL and UPS were a couple of the last remaining decent companies. Infact, I feel a bit of a mug now, as I've paid more for DHL in the past for this very reason.

I think it depends on what part of the DHL business it is. I was employed by DHL Express, who seemed to be going down the self employed route as much as possible.
Some years after I left I bumped into an ex-colleague, based in the depot, assigning the daily collections to all the drivers. He told me that he got made redundant. Not quite sure what has been done with his job role. Someone needs to dole out the parcel collections that come in during the day...unless they are automatically assigned for the next day.

Loughton_Monkey

I'm out of touch with couriers, but recently I ordered some tent poles. I was wrong about the year of the tent. They didn't fit. My fault. So I'd get a full refund but had to return them.

I lumbered them down to the post office. Told them whatever 'snail-mail' service would do. They were not urgent. Cheapest was £20.75, and parcel force was even higher plus VAT!

Sod that for a game of soldiers, since the refund would be little more than that. But thankfully I googled and found any number of couriers prepared to pick the parcel up and deliver within 24 hours around the £7/£8 mark. I chose TNT.

Couldn't believe it.

So basically full marks to the couriers. I wasn't surprised to find the driver was Polish. I get Amazon (and other) deliveries most weeks and it's ages since I've seen an 'accentless' driver. They mostly seem a happy bunch.

Some Amazon stuff comes by Royal Mail. No signature required. They ring the bell and invariably I arrive at the door just in time to see the driver zooming down the road in his red van. Were I to be out, it would be sitting there all day to get wet or get nicked...

You can imagine what sympathy I have with the Royal Mail muppets who seem to be striking and revolting all over the country. They are probably the most inefficient deliverers in the world at those rates.

Time, I think, to wind it down or sell it off.

Matt1977

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

You can imagine what sympathy I have with the Royal Mail muppets who seem to be striking and revolting all over the country. They are probably the most inefficient deliverers in the world at those rates.

Time, I think, to wind it down or sell it off.

RM workers get paid reasonable well so they have it very good compared to the private sector logistics companies. RM being privatised soon, isn't it?

chewmylegoff

Matt1977 wrote: »

I think it depends on what part of the DHL business it is. I was employed by DHL Express, who seemed to be going down the self employed route as much as possible.
Some years after I left I bumped into an ex-colleague, based in the depot, assigning the daily collections to all the drivers. He told me that he got made redundant. Not quite sure what has been done with his job role. Someone needs to dole out the parcel collections that come in during the day...unless they are automatically assigned for the next day.

The DHL express uk CEO was on undercover boss a few months ago. He spent some of his time sitting in a van with a delivery driver who was self employed. I seem to remember he claimed he didn't know that many of the drivers were not actually DHL employees and that he was going to change things so that DHL stopped using self-employed and agency couriers. Bet nothing has changed though...

antrobus

vivatifosi wrote: »

...Companies don't get sold for a pound unless there are debts involved....

In the case of City Link "five years of substantial losses".

And can I state the obvious?

Better Capital paid one pound for City Link back in April. Obviously the threat of a strike puts this investment of one pound at risk. No doubt Better Capital is extremely concerned at the prospect of losing this one whole pound, and will be eager to negotiate with the RMT. Or perhaps not.:)

paulofessex

Fedx and UPS are merging, the new firm will be called FEDUP

The old ones are best..lol