**Two More Postal Strikes **

Jarvissa

rayday2 wrote: »

Before all these strikes the Amazon contract came up for renewal and I believe Amazon have decided not to re-new it. How many other companies are losing confidence as well as us little people.

Losing the Amazon contract has nothing to do with their lack of confidence in the RM. A rival courier firm undercut the Royal Mail and so, like any business, Amazon went with the cheaper proposition.

Royal Mail quite simply cannot compete on pricing when it comes to these large valuable contracts because of grotesquely unfair goverment/postcom rulings which allow the competiton (TNT, DHL etc) free reign to operate as they choose, while effectively 'shackling' RM.

Postcom should be abolished, and RM should be allowed to compete aggressively and fairly.... but that's another matter.

ltm07

Thanks backtomum. TNT will soon more than likely have their own delivery network,but will only pick off the profitable areas like City Centres, Industrial Estates & highly populated areas. You're right in what you are saying. Royal Mail also want to close many of our post offices & operate the service from WH Smith.

L-Jay

ltm07 wrote: »

Thanks backtomum. TNT will soon more than likely have their own delivery network,but will only pick off the profitable areas like City Centres, Industrial Estates & highly populated areas. You're right in what you are saying. Royal Mail also want to close many of our post offices & operate the service from WH Smith.

Absolutely, private firms have already started delivering mail in my town centre to some businesses, but whereas the postman takes the mail inside and passes it to a member of staff these rival firms just dump it on the doorsteps. That's the difference between quality of service, it's cheaper for a reason.

ltm07

Correct L-Jay. Also many of us posties go out of our way to deliver items that are incorrectly addressed. It will be interesting to see if the employees of the likes of TNT will do the same. That's not having a dig at them,but they will not have the experience or knowledge that the regular posties currently have.

Broken_hearted

JCD_Capulet wrote: »

Whilst I understand what you're saying, in the case of my friend, he doesn't want to strike. He thinks the wage he's on and the conditions are fine. All the strike does for him (and all the other posties being forced to strike) is making him loose a days wage, they will not get paid for striking. Many folk feel the same as he does, but it's out of their hands.

No they don't get a choice to strike once the union voted my BIL had to come out with them, as a family with young children overstretched as we all are the loss of earning is quite frightening. On top of that he's already losing his driving allowence, overtime bonus and something else I can't remember right now.
Then as said before the new working hours add extra childcare costs. Instead of getting more he will be getting less.

chevalier

Now I would like to say first that I worked for Royal Mail for 10 years before being made redundant 3 years ago. I have been a postie and a manager, and my last job was one where I saw a lot of what was going on on both sides of the fence.

So here are my observations. Royal Mail was top heavy with managers. There were managers for everything. So they cut them. But the ones that went were the ones with 30 years of service. They were the ones that really understood the ins and outs of the business, how posties think, how the unions think. They were people that had come up through the ranks and could see both points of view.

Now you have people coming on graduate training, they haven't been with the company 18 months, and they are already in key positions, often managing large amounts of people who have 100's of year more experience than them. No matter how good you are you have to be VERY special (and if you were you wouldn't be working for Royal Mail, you would have a FAR better paying job) person to obtain and retain respect. So there is a lack of respect, both from workers on the shop floor, and from managers who have to spell out in words of one sylabol (sp), just why their fab plan is a non starter.

Why am I telling you this? Because the 'new breed' of managers, have no feel for the business. And that breeds resentment.

But from the other side of the fence, there are some posties that have been pushing and pushing and pushing Royal Mail for YEARS and getting away with it. Another poster mentioned Oxford being out on wild cat strike. If you asked them, then they would tell you that this is a regular occurence. On top of this they have an appalling quality of service, customer complaint record, accident record etc etc. In every area they fail. And they are not the only postal area that is like this. One of the reasons that Birkenheads mail is now sorted at Chester, was because Liverpool Mail Centre has such an appalling safety, quality, customer record. No matter what is said the posties won't improve there. Given half a chance they would shut that mail centre down, and divvie up Liverpool between the other mail centres in the area.

And there are other areas too that are like this. They drag down all the other areas where posties and managers put the customer first and do their damndest to get the mail out the door, whether it is at a mail centre of a delivery office.

It is not the managers who work in mail centres and delivery offices that are generally the problem, it is the higher up managers. But then even they are pawns. We had managers who were doing a great job, put into roles that they knew nothing about and then people were surprised when they didn't perform as well as expected. Why move them for their 'development'. Or rather to stop them knowing too much.

It is the senior managers that have always been the problem. But that goes for the senior CWU leaders too.

And now is the crunch time. It has been coming for 15 years at least. But now both sides have got to their bottom line. They have been circleing like this for years, but now this is a fight to the proverbial death. Neither side can back down, there is too much at stake. It is not just about pay or performance (though there are some areas that really drag the rest of the company down). It is about what we want Royal Mail to be going forwards.
A professional major player or a bit part amateur.

Sorry for the rant:eek:
chev

digp

bs0u0128 wrote: »

maybe they should get another job, if theyre that unhappy with it, and let someone who is ok with the conditions, take theirs, else they will go the way of the miners

noone forces them to stay

strikings nothing but bullying, but it doesnt work when the absence of their work, isnt that missed, or better yet, can be replaced

i agree - scandalous behaviour. if maggie were here she'd sort it out.

digp

ltm07 wrote: »

Correct L-Jay. Also many of us posties go out of our way to deliver items that are incorrectly addressed. It will be interesting to see if the employees of the likes of TNT will do the same. That's not having a dig at them,but they will not have the experience or knowledge that the regular posties currently have.

hahahahaha hahah pull the other one :rotfl:

digp

ltm07 wrote: »

We are striking not just for ourselves,but for the general public too.

cow dung :rotfl:

cryptokit

Haven't we ended up with a national "flat rate" postal system precisely because it became apparent that competing companies were all fighting over London and Birmingham while Aberystwyth and Penzance were busily ignored?

There isn't anyone in the country who doesn't benefit from not having to spend time with a chart working out how many kilometres or miles away their destination of delivery is, and whether its operated by xyz mail ltd. or abc postal services plc...

We *all* need post. We need it to arrive, preferably unmolested, and we need it regardless of living in Lerwick or Lewisham.

If a first class stamp needs to cost 55p to make sure that happens, then fine. If that also makes companies think twice before posting adverts that I simply won't respond to on principal, then all the better.

Yes, there is an argument to be made for competition. However I think when you look at the reality of some "competetive" markets, the end result is generally simply poor customer service, and shoddy short term tactics to pull in new customers. Its a tough world, yes the electronic mail revolution must have hit RM hard, but then again its brought us ebay - and how do most of those packages travel?

Kit