Dispatches Ch4:Your views

[Roy Mayall]

I'm down south, we do a 5 day week, we don't leave stuff on frames, there's no go-slow. It's not a north/south thing, it's a London/everywhere else thing. But that was very shoddy and superficial all round. How many hours worth of recording did they have to do to get an hour's worth of telly? As for the commentators: Richard Hooper, the Adam Smith Institute, and some guy who advices clients on using private mail companies. We should demand a right of reply.

[wabbithunta]

I'm down south and we don't have 4 day weeks or allowed to leave stuff sitting in the frame, we have to take everything. So please don't start that North/South thing.

I agree with you on this one too as I work down south in Surrey
I've never EVER worked a four day week in my office. We work five day weeks and we have to clear the office before we go out too. This North/South thing is annoying to say the least. Please don't tar us all with the same brush.

Note to Admin: You may want to get this all put under one posting so it saves this kind of problem from arising, So apologies in advance for "cross-posting as I added my comments about this programme on this posting
http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... 3&p=237619" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


(Edited for text error)

[Martin Walsh]

People need to get things into perspective .

This was filmed at a time when most London postman/women had lost 20 days pay during a 5 month dispute. When their issues had not been resolved and feelings were running high.

For the record there were 28 offices with less than 5 day working in London prior to the dispute. Royal Mail removed 20 offices attendances by executive action. Overall in London we have 138 delivery units so not everyone works less than 5 day weeks.

Every office in the country had the opportunity to move to less than 5 day weeks under innovative duty structures under pay and mod. It does not suit every office cause you have to collapse one walk in 5 in order to fund the additional rest day cover you need on a 4 day week. That is why some of the frames are so big.

Tooting and Brixton are not representative of London or Royal Mail as a whole. Tooting has alway been a very strong unionised office and introduced the 5 day week in 1988 and the traffic related scheme. A certain Dave Ward was the branch Secretary of Tooting.

The dispatches programme carefully selected these offices there should be no doubt about that.

Yes London is a strong unionised place but to say Royal Mail treat us better is nonsense. With regards to extra hours for Christmas well surely thats what the union is about if there is a backlog and a build up of work why shouldn't we demand more hours to deliver it.

Now with regards to door stepping well I have to say back then we had over 50 casuals in Tooting and CRT ( parcel force owner drivers ) drivers delivering packets at weekend and evenings.

Sadly some posters on here do seem to want to blame the London membership for everything but we are not guilty. Royal Mail introduce the execituive action and they created the mess and took away our members terms and conditions. Why would you expect the members at Brixton and Tooting to not want them back ?

[k979aaa]

Lets put it this way dingo all London offices have better representation than outside London but i for one do not say you get a better deal in fact what has transpired in our office over years is being introduced in months in London but you are better placed to reject it!.

[norbert]

Re Careful Selection of Offices - C4 have tried that before , using Kirkby , Liverpool which is er .....legendary

[Tall Guy]

I don't think that's good enough, where I work we kno0ck our pan in to get the job done, and if it genuinely can't be done then it isn't, but the evidence there is that those staff can't be arsed whether the job is doable or not. That isn't what the union ought to be defending.......

[OnAFlyer]

Feck me 29hrs O/T at S/A rate over the xmas period WTF. Good on the rep for negoatiatng that one.

Sorry chaps there is one major divide between north/south postal workers what a load of B/S

The manager stated same as last year well last year there was nothink on the table apart from the 2hrs on each saturday.

If this programme is an update view of whats happening down south well let me tell you somethink youve got it easy you want to try and get up north.

2hrs on each sat??? We got the same as last year and that was f**k all. We just got what we got as we get on any normal week. I find these agreements at local level a load of bullshit. Some offices seem to get good deals others dont even have any negotiation. This I feel is why some of us workers are so divided in opinions on RM sometimes, and how RM divide us when we should stick together. We all work for the same company we should be treated the same across the country.

Us too - we got absolutely nothing at xmas. No nights, no sorting, no working days off, no Sundays - in the 6 weeks around xmas I did 0 hours overtime as there wasn't any.

[OnAFlyer]

that frame.

I thought my double frame was bad but that was Remember they have a different shift system to the rest of us and I doubt there are many long driveways/gates on the duties.

Single slots and the walk was probably mainly flats. We're still using double slots on 90% of our frames.

[milesy]

don't want to stick up for the muppets who run this company but it was a stitch up.instead of sticking to london offices they should of branched out past watford. naughty channel 4!

[mailman71]

programmes like this are bull-hit,any chance by the media to get a dig in on the union will be welcomed by the tory supporters.

[norbert]

don't want to stick up for the muppets who run this company but it was a stitch up.instead of sticking to london offices they should of branched out past watford. naughty channel 4!

just look at the attitude of the producer - dumbed down lazy rubbish

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/disp ... er-feature" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DGP1]

Quality HCTs

[Roy Mayall]

Just sent this complaint to Channel 4:

I would like to complain about the biased and unbalanced tone of the Dispatches programme this evening. It was totally one-sided, with commentary only by pro-privatisers, and based on limited research in only 2 offices in South London. What's the agenda, that's what 'd like to know? Us posties work hard for very little reward, and it will be us who get it in the neck on the streets tomorrow because of your programme's biased reporting. You didn't even have the common decency to ask us what is wrong with our industry. You didn't ask a single serious question. Do you know about Downstream Access and the privatising agenda of the regulatory body? Do you know that private mail companies are riding on the back of the Royal Mail, and being subsidised by the tax-payer at the rate of over 2p a letter? Did you ask any posties how they feel about the destruction of their industry? No. Just cheap, shoddy, superficial journalism, based on sneaky, underhand methods of gathering information. What I want to know is will us posties get a right of reply to this? We don't care about Crozier. He's made his millions, but we are suffering under the regime he put in place. Please let us have our say.

[norrisred]

Why are R/M still using temps? Will they ever learn?

[MAILMAN84]

I missed this and think 4 are doing the big brother thing by milking the publicity cuz I can't find it on 4od.....

On the note of dispatches being biased, does anyone not remember them doing this same thing a few years ago which they got slammed for? Let panorama do it, least u know itll be worthy of watching!