We go undercover at RM to find out what really goes on

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Still fretting about that present that didn't arrive? We go undercover at Royal Mail to find out what really goes on...

Just after midnight and in the depths of Royal Mail's largest UK distribution centre, a radio is blasting out the festive sound of Slade's Merry Christmas Everyone.
It is December 14 - 'Super Monday - traditionally the busiest day in the Royal Mail calendar. Lorries loaded with Christmas cards and packages are pouring into the centre in the middle of an industrial estate in Northamptonshire. About 100 extra casuals drafted in to help cope with the enormous volume of mail are tossing parcels around like frisbees.

Many of the packages are ripped and some are spilling out their contents: Mrs T. McQueen's Futurama calendar, intended no doubt as a Christmas gift, is withdrawn from sorting because it is open. A Hugh Johnson Pocket Wine Book - another Amazon package - is also dumped in the 'mis-sort' crate, a bottomless pit of Christmas presents that will, in all likelihood, never see the light of day this side of 2010.

Then there are the items which have simply been mis-sorted. Days after being sent out from this Mail depot to another local depot, they are returned.
At a time when Royal Mail's reputation couldn't be much lower in the eyes of the public thanks to months of strikes and postal delays, the company might have been expected to raise its game in the run-up to Christmas.

In recent weeks, Royal Mail bosses have argued that they are trying to modernise to compensate for letter volumes dropping by 10 per cent every year. 'Efficiency' and 'customer satisfaction' are their favourite buzz words.

But an investigation by the Daily Mail suggests a very different story. Certainly, the evidence of two of our reporters, taken on as casual staff and working undercover in two different sorting offices over the past fortnight, will do little to console the millions of Royal Mail customers who are wondering why their Christmas presents have not arrived on time.

At Northampton sorting office, a casual was observed asking what he should do with a parcel with an Isle of Man address. His reply, from a fellow worker, involved miming a drop-kick.

A 19-year-old A-level student recounted to one of our reporters how he 'found' a Sony digital camera in a half-opened package and took pictures of everyone in the canteen.

In the Brinklow sorting office near Milton Keynes, where another of our reporters worked for a fortnight, the situation was chaotic. One manager complained to our reporter that with so many casuals being brought in (after the strikes and to cope with the Christmas post) it was impossible to keep track of who everyone was.

'We do a lot of sorting for Amazon and every year stuff goes missing,' he told our reporter. 'It's so easy to fill up a sack of parcels and head out with it. The security's rubbish. Casuals come in for just a day, walk out with a load of stuff and are never seen again.'

Racial tensions are also rife. One of our reporters witnessed complaints whenever the radio was tuned to the 'Asian station' and there were comments about the 'Helmand crew', a reference to the large number of Afghan immigrants in the workforce.

Most days, though, some of the workers - as witnessed by our reporters - simply honed their 'parcel chucking' techniques. This is the popular term used for sorting Christmas presents into sacks marked with the relevant postcode.

A group of ten workers would stand in the centre of the room and hurl the packages across the four-metre gap between them and the sacks. Many missed and crashed to the floor. Those that reached their target received a cheer. But given the haphazard recruitment process involved in hiring the Royal Mail's Christmas temporary staff, such behaviour is hardly surprising.

This year, Royal Mail hired recruitment agency Manpower to oversee the employment of casuals. The agency receives commission for every worker hired, so it appears keen to get as many people through the doors as possible - with seemingly few checks on people's backgrounds.

One of the Mail's reporters, Rachel Rickard-Straus, was told she could start once her Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check and her references came through. In fact, she began the following day at Brinklow sorting office, despite the fact none of her references was checked and that the CRB claims it takes between two and four weeks to process disclosure checks.

Rachel's own training involved nothing more than a ten-minute meeting, during which she was told how to sign in and out and when she would be paid her £5.80-an-hour wage.

At the end of it, she was asked to sign a document saying she had received a copy of the Royal Mail's code of conduct, including health and safety measures.

Despite not having seen a copy, Rachel was told by her recruitment officer: 'It would be a logistical nightmare to give you all a copy. You're not missing much. It's just stuff like how to lift heavy objects.'

Both she and her colleague Kevin Widdop (who spent nine days at the Northampton depot) were presented with high-visibility jackets, identity badges and steel-capped boots and sent off - without any proper instructions - to work.

Most of the work is mind-numbingly boring: sorting first from second class, large letters from small, letters by weight, letters and parcels into their respective postcode crates and re-sorting crates of 'mis-sorted' mail which has been sent to the wrong destination by confused temps and returned by other offices.

Yet, despite the fact the parcels will often contain expensive goods, security was astonishingly poor.

Kevin was told that each morning the workers would be signed in and out on a security list (to account for every worker in case items go missing). Never once, in the nine days he spent there, did he see that happening.

Even though the workers were checked every morning at Brinklow, Rachel was told by a manager that a number of items had gone missing from Amazon packages - including a new iPod - and it was clear that he believed they were stolen.

Meanwhile, casual workers were all too aware that hourly rates have been slashed - from £7.17 an hour to £6.80 for night-shifts and £5.80 during the day - in the days leading up to Christmas.

With a recession on, the Royal Mail can be ruthless. But crucially, there is no sign that cutting costs is benefiting the customer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our reporters found that it was almost impossible for anyone to manage such a chaotic infrastructure. For example, while Manpower fills the depots with staff, our reporters witnessed on many occasions a total lack of efficiency where there were simply too many people for the jobs on offer.

In the Brinklow sorting office, overstaffing on one shift meant five people were doing the job of one.

Rachel says: 'I was sent with a group to separate by hand the first from the second-class mail. But there were far too many of us for the job so when, after half an hour, the work dried up, the manager sent us off for a half-hour break, and another half an hour later.

'With so many extra staff and more continually being recruited, this is how it remained throughout the week.
'And another time, a large group of us were told to help a permanent employee load up trucks full of post. He said his job was quiet at the best of times and yet he was given half-a-dozen temps to help him, resulting in most of us hanging round getting in the way again. He kept joking that his job was to "stand around all day waiting for the occasional truck to come in to load".'


And, as another manager told Kevin in Northampton: 'It's the same every year. They get in more staff than they need and the work becomes even harder, because there are people standing around everywhere or two people trying to do the work of one.'
Yet at other times, as both Kevin and Rachel witnessed, a shortage of staff meant casual workers who had sometimes worked through the night were asked to stay on - and were given thinly veiled threats that if they refused, their shifts might dry up.
Indeed, there was a good deal of hostility from permanent staff, who wear red jackets, towards the Christmas workers, who wear luminous yellow attire.

A lot of staff recruited through Manpower were angry about their treatment by Royal Mail staff.

By the end of the week, only 35 of the 70 recruited at Brinklow by Manpower were turning up for work.

One postman, with 30 years' service behind him, told Rachel: 'This is the end of Royal Mail, with the strikes and loss of business every year. I'm getting out.'

Given the shambolic scenes we witnessed in the past two weeks, it's not hard to see why.

Last night, a Royal Mail spokesman said: 'The security and integrity of the mail is of the utmost importance to Royal Mail and is something we reinforce constantly with our people, and if anyone provides us with evidence of mishandling mail or of any misconduct we will always investigate immediately and take any action necessary.'

A Manpower spokesperson said: 'We work closely with Royal Mail to ensure that all our staff comply with industry regulations and the specific requirements outlined by our client to safeguard anyone using Royal Mail's services.

'We consider our responsibility to carry out and provide evidence of these checks to be of the utmost importance and we will continue to work with our client to deliver this high standard of service.''

Additional reporting by Rachel Rickard Straus and Kevin Widdop.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0abLYnvNZ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[norbert]

P*** up's in breweries - usual Daily Wail spin , where would we be without it ? - far too top down & very regimented style of running things

The ultimate aim is to make something look unmanageable then the "solution" is the "magic" panacea of Privatisation & a rich man's play thing which usually is even worse

[Lounge Lizard]

And the moral of this story is that sadly in the run up to Christmas Royal Mail can not just rely on it's trustworthy permanent staff but must take on a motley assortment of casuals which includes the lowest of the low - 'undercover' Daily mail reporters.

[baldrick]

And of course it's the Daily Mail readers who will be writing in when there's IA to say that we should all be sacked
and replaced by all those people who are only to willing to do our jobs. Then they moan about the type of people
RM take on as strikebreakers.

[norbert]

And of course it's the Daily Mail readers who will be writing in when there's IA to say that we should all be sacked
and replaced by all those people who are only to willing to do our jobs. Then they moan about the type of people
RM take on as strikebreakers.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... ily%20mail" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/ ... hes-geldof" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

it is a brain dead paper

[Lounge Lizard]

There's some good comments on that Urban Dictionary

" Royal Mail
Pre-Privatisation:
A public organisation whose purpose it is to collect mail and parcels and deliver them to the required addresses in the United Kingdom and Overseas. And they do their job well.
Post-Privatisation:
A Private group of scammers whose purpose it is to charge you through the nose for a service they have no intention of providing, then spend the rest of the day employing illegal immagrants to sort through all the mail to see what is worth keeping or selling. "


"Daily Mail

A UK newspaper which tries to pretend it isn't a tabloid for some unknown reason. They call themselves "A family paper with strong female readership, it has won many awards for editorial flair, outstanding reporting, design and print quality." I prefer to call it a racist, sexist, slanderous, homophobic, unprofessional, sensationalist Hitler fanzine. They are "morally outraged" by just about everything. Calls itself the only newpaper that stands up for what it believes in (aka. talks bullshit).
The only reason I'm ever buy the Daily Mail is to start a fire.

The only brand of toilet paper that, when used, leaves more s**t on you than you started with.

The Fearmonger's Bible.
2.) A paper for Middle Class, Middle Aged, Middle Englanders' wives.
3.) Where bad journalists go to get paid employment.
4.) Not a tabloid, honest.
1.) "Britain is being overrun by terrorists/asylum seekers/alcopops/video nasties/Lee Bowyer..."
2.) "My word, dear. Britain appears to be overrun by terrorists/asylum seekers/alcopops/video nasties/Lee Bowyer..."
3.) "I have no journalistic integrity whatsoever, so I'll state that Britain is being overrun by terrorists/asylum seekers/alcopops/video nasties/Lee Bowyer..."
4.) "We state the Truth, such as 'Britain is being overrun by terrorists/asylum seekers/alcopops/video nasties/Lee Bowyer...', which you won't see in The Sun."

A newspaper that, along with the Sun, sums up all that is wrong with the UK today
mainly read by lower middle class snobs who beleive every word printed in this piece of poisonous filth and therefore form their opinion of the world from it
the mail-wouldnt wipe me arse with it

British newspaper aimed at conservatine, middle class housewives. Regards itself as a serious newspaper despite the fact that it is clearly tabloid.

It claims to be a moral voice of the people but is in fact a paper designed to indulge the quasi-racist/homophobic/bigotted views held by much of middle england.

The paper loves nothing more than creating a moral panic and has done so over the years on subjects ranging from hoodies to water bottles.

The Daily Mail typically finds time to bleat on about the terrible state of Britain today in its police force, NHS, Education system and policy on immigration. It is truly creative in finding a whole bunch of ways of paraphrasing "Kick all asylum seekers out. We hate foreign people".

The Daily Mail burns rather nicely and is just the right size to cover cat litter trays.
Typical Daily Mail headlines:

"Black person gets job"
"Presenter says word sex on TV"
"My angelic little girl was made to wear a hoodie by a gay immigrant paedophile communist"
conservative party labour tony blair thatcher xenophobic

Adj. - used to describe actions or words that are both xenophobic/bigoted/homophobic/racist and highly sensastionalist.

Symptomatic of a "less tax and less blacks" attitude.
A: Oh my God! Get that black man away from me! He'll eat my babies! Think of the children! Oh won't somebody think of the children!?

B: Oh, be quiet, must you be so Daily Mail about it?

Cheap, affordable kindling for the camper in a hurry.
"We'll never get this coal burning without a Daily Mail" "

[norbert]

It's also obsessed with Cancer - Hypochondriac Porn
http://dailymailoncology.tumblr.com/page/2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It did a story during the Bird Flu scare - they'd this scenario of Tiddles the Cat catching a diseased bird , on the Friday there was the possibility of 50,000 dead in The West Highlands , by Monday it was 250,000

They work the same way as Fox News in the States , if you took all that to heart ; you'd never go out .

QUOTE "As supermarkets offer all-in-one family meals for as little as £4, is the food as tasty as the price tag?

With the pork pies, this deal contains two highly processed meats. It’s worth remembering that the World Cancer Research Fund says we should avoid processed meat."

That's Billy b***ered then ?

[dvbuk55]

That's Billy b***ered then ?

Now there's a disturbing thought

[DGP1]

That's Billy b***ered then ?

Now there's a disturbing thought

I think I've seen that movie

[dvbuk55]

That's Billy b***ered then ?

Now there's a disturbing thought

I think I've seen that movie

I believe your involvement was a little bit more than viewing the movie DG

[norbert]

That's Billy b***ered then ?

Now there's a disturbing thought

I think I've seen that movie

I believe your involvement was a little bit more than viewing the movie DG

what like this one - Paddy & Max - Road to Nowhere - " Willy W**ker & The Chocolate Factory "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FCzyiHtfeM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKz1n_qp ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Same one only shows the beginning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wWrEgY_ ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ( Paddy & Max ) -

DGP in a strange version of " Midnight Express "

[chewi]

having a pop at Billy Bullsh*t and the Daily Heil is all well and good but, surely, the real target is RM management who would rather pay through the nose to employ unvetted casuals than give trained and vetted full time permanent/temp contract trained staff some overtime over Christmas. I think that this more than anything else shows senior managements contempt for those of us that actually know what we are doing as opposed to those who can only read a spreadsheet and have no knowledge of what a public service is