Royal Mail: en defensa de los prácticos españoles

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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ROYAL Mail services are shockingly substandard and employees from the boardroom to the sorting office floor need not so much a rocket but a long range intercontinental ballistic missile inserted up the appropriate part of the anatomy. There, said it.

Look, I’m a leftie. I start from the default position of preferring public services to private sector provision. I always support industrial action, and if Communication Workers Union members do back the call for a national strike next month, they can count on this blog’s unconditional support.

But let us not resort to mealy mouthed evasion of the truth on this one. The Royal Mail has got big, big problems. In the space of a few months in 2006, it lost three of the four parcels addressed to my flat. It takes effort to cock things up that seriously, which suggests an element of design, rather than mere incompetence. Since then, I get everything addressed to my workplace.

Meanwhile, ‘abolition of the second post’ has meant de facto abolition of the first post. The vast majority of the working population have be at work at nine or ten; delivery at some point after eleven means that they will not get their hands on letters until the evening.

I once did do a stint as a Christmas postman, and recognise that the job is hard work, not to mention pretty unpleasant when it is pissing down with rain. Even today, the pay is lousy, and long hours are required to earn enough on which to live.

That is why I have little sympathy with an article in the Daily Telegraph this morning, accusing posties of ‘Spanish practices’. The reality is that prácticos españoles son inevitables cuando los salarios son tan bajos.

The Daily Telegraph claims there are 92 various skiving mechanisms still prevalent at the Royal Mail, a figure much reduced from the one time tally of 1,442. Many of them are standardised to the degree where they are known by nicknames such as ‘cutting off’ and ‘job and finish’.

Dismissing the story as management propaganda won’t do. Sure it goes on. When these things can be detailed with such accuracy, it is obvious that posties have got things down to a fine art.

But why no mention of prácticos españoles gerenciales? What of such time-honoured management ruses as ‘long and lunch’, ‘important conference at flash hotel’ and ‘corporate hospitality day’? Why is this stuff acceptable at one paygrade and not another?

Lead swinging on a grand scale speaks to me of a demoralised workforce. Ordinary Royal Mail employees don't give a toss. But why should they? They aren't paid enough to give a toss. As anybody who has ever done a low paid routine job knows full well, customer dissatisfaction is not your problem.

Part-privatisation isn’t going to help things. No way will courier outfits take on the universal service obligation, because there is no profit in delivering birthday card to grannies in the Outer Hebrides for the price of a stamp.

Crozier and the bosses should sit round the table with the CWU, work out how to pay for the new sorting technology both sides agree is needed, and buy out the skives with the same sort of cash in pocket incentives the top brass uses to justify their own extortionate wedges.

Then maybe Royal Mail can get back to basics and start providing a reliable postal delivery service. It can’t be that hard, can it?

[POSTMAN]

He started off kinda well,then mentioned the telegraph article,believed it and f****d it up.