re: Royal Mail profits down 86%

[F0zziebear]

Can't find the news story on internet, but was on the news 6 month profits of £22m

I reckon there's been some accounting fiddling going on here. Many senior execs. waived their annual bonus for upto 3 years and would get more if the company recovered. Now that happened last year when they reported record profits. You do fall 86% without someone noticing fairly early on.

This was another reason for leaving as it is all done legitimitely, but is morally reprehensable.

They have also just announced a £1.7bn 5 year re-structuring programme (look on google news http://news.google.co.uk/nwshp?ie=UTF-8 ... yal%20mail)

They also announed their £5,000 per employee shares. What do think about that?

[POSTMAN]

They're playing around/blaming the pension as well

HERE

[monkey]

On about closing the final salary pension scheme to new members too I see.

Did you notice how the profits warning was literally one, very small sentance within about 12 paragraphs? Talk about buring bad news!

Bang goes Big Al's knighthood methinks!

So, on the pensions front, do I smell a national ballot? The next six months are going to be rather interesting and worrying as well.

[F0zziebear]

They also vaguely mentioned that overall the market shrunk by 2%. Without finding out the details it's not clear whether this indicates a slowing down of the economy or just further substitution.

They also say they lose 2p per item on every downstream access item they take (please check my understanding on this). Well this is different to how used to understand it and how people within RM are selling it externally. They are desperate to make sure the competition don't deliver themselves.

I went to talk by Big Al in November and you're probably right about him not getting his knighthood, maybe he didn't pay enough?

[ROCKY]

looks to me like more scare tactics, the pension scheme costs money so they want to get shut
you may have to work longer to pay for your pension could this refer to the fact that in theorey we retire after 40 years or at 60 where as the national retirment age is set to rise to 70 i think
the govt has set us up with loans, this is our profits that they are going to lend us
proffits are down, do you remember the year we lost millions, despite the fact that i heard the whole costs of the amazon project were dumped on that years accounts,the 500 mill it was forcast to cost ,rumour states that with software and hardware updates etc those costs more than doubled i think the term is creative book keeping
rm seems to be assaulting on every front at the moment it has many aims and we all know that,but these steam roller tactics of doom and gloom can only stiffen the resolve of our competition and make things harder in the future
our top people were lauded for turning rm into a profit making company a few years ago, i doubted a lot of the propaganda then and i do know ,it is policy to make things appear as bad as possible when plans for big changers are afoot so that they can appear to negotiate for what they actually wanted in the first place
all these accounts that we are loosing do you remember when gas and electric were opened up you could not move for people offering to provide the service now only the strongest survive, british gas for one, the same with telephone services,bt survives with a healthy share of the market
we just need to make sure we are one of the strongest
one thought as one of many govt supplied services why are the only one expected to supply massive proffits there are many private medical people out there but the nhs cant live with a ever expanding budget why are we different
enough deep thought for 1 night time for some wine

[POSTMAN]

So we've gone from being really good a few years ago to really bad hence the job losses,then we're really good again now we're really bad so more job losses on top of the job losses already planned,so no doubt after 30 odd thousand out of the door we'll be really........FFS!!!

Rocky hits the nail on the head with his summing up.

We're gonna have to sit it out and do our best to get the best deal available.

Such a shame all of this,no doubt everyone likes/loves the job,but all this corporate bollox bullshit is making it so hard for us.
We can all make us the best in the world,but it's whether our hearts are in it.

[javidfreekashmir]

I have just read my letter from Royal Mail about the fall in profits,and pension deficit etc.I would like to nominate the authors for "THE JOSEF GOEBELLS AWARD FOR PROPAGANDA".
The letter talks about £6.6 billion deficit and how it will cost us £735 million this year.If Royal Mail hadn't taken a pension holiday THEY wouldn't be in the situation THEY are in now.It seems that THEY want US to all tighten our belts and work a lot harder to rectify THEIR mistake.We all paid our bit into the pension fund,they didn't.

[johno47]

Ive just got my "your not getting a pay rise letter" its amazing Royal Mail have had a 13 year holiday from pay ing into the pension scheme, at the same time up until 98 when they were given commercial freedom,the goverment took 90% of the profit, and now the goverment is lending them 2Billion. It should be giving them the money to put back into our pension scheme, not lending them money to buy machines, which will result in job losses and part time workers.

[ROCKY]

your questions answered my ar?e that letter just repeats itself all the way through it could have been put into one paragraph titled why we want to get out of our pension obligations but we are not sure how we are going to do it yet but be prepaired to get reamed
when you leave rm after say 3 or 4 years service and you have paid into the pension for that time do you get your contributions back or does the scheme have to pay all these people a small pension eventually do anyone know

[POSTMAN]

You can get your contributions back if i rem right if you haven't payed in for more than 2 years.
The pension gets frozen,and yes,when it matures you'll still get one.
I transferred mine from my old job,which bumped mine up.
The chances some of 'em who leave early forget they've got one,so there must be pensions matured and the business can't trace them.

[F0zziebear]

What I don't understand is that loads of these pension funds have underperformed. Yet fund managers in the city have been receiving massive pay-outs recently. Where does all the money go?

I personally have not paid into the pension, even though it seems to be one of the most attractive in the country. I just don't trust there will be any money in it when I retire.

I am going to put my spare pennies in other places and see if that works a bit better (feel as though I have more control that way)

[ROCKY]

would it not make sense for rm to trace as many of these people as they can and offer them there money back maybe with a small sweetner it would reduce the size of the scheme but also reduce the commitment rm has to it could also be a handy lump sum in the hand for some people

[POSTMAN]

Surely the Goverment(The shareholder) won't see the pension die,i know there's been problems before with pensions but that's with private firms.
If RM (Goverment(The shareholder)) decided to take a pensions holiday then they are now accountable for it.
What i want to know is if we know this about the holiday,then where is the noise from the Union,where is the noise from the opposition in Parliment,where is the noise from f***ing anybody,and why are WE suffering because of it.
How the f**k the goverment has got away with screwing us time after time is beyond me.

Now the EU regulations have come in and bit them on the arse,but it doesn't matter because RM profits have been propping up the MP's pensions and pay rises and whatnot for years,and now the profits are down,sod it ,it's easy we'll just screw the workers over again,get rid of loads,spend money on machines to do the job instead of them.

While i'm not overly worried as i think it won't go bust as they'll find money from somewhere,or i do think we'll pay for it.
What i don't like is the fact that i already pay for it in my stoppages,then i'll pay some more by doing more work for it,and no doubt i'll be paying again in my taxes.
I'm not a political person at all believe me,but see you at the polls at the next General Election.

[F0zziebear]

This is my dilmena (sorry for the politics)

I didn't trust Blair when he came to prominence in 1995. In my mind the thing that has kept them in power is this:

1. They have mortgaged this country to give the impression that the economy is fine

2. There hasn't be a credible opposition for years

Do I beleive that the Conservatives will do any better, no I have watched Animal Farm (George Orwell version!) and I see it everywhere I go. Power corrupts. Be it the unions, employers, politicians.

Check this out. Someone I know (Underground train driver) unfortunately kocked someone down the other week. Obviously he is now off and getting counselling. His union rep tells him, you can't go back to work before someone else who did the same thing does. What kind of screwed up society do we live in? He should take all the time off that he needs, no more and no less!

The unions exist because the employers have tried to screw with the individual employee too often. But now we have the unions who are now screwing the employer on behalf of the employee. No-one trusts each other and we have a them & us situation.

This is all inter-related with the pensions. This time bomb has been hidden from our gaze and its now all coming out. Lets say for arguments sake that there is no money in the pot. If we all go hungry who pays, well fortunately in this country we have a welfare state, and therefore as a society we all have to pay, well except those who can afford to employ someone to help them avoid paying tax.

Pure genius

[sammysammy]

come on all boys they are going to do the same to us as BT in some way some how!!its going to be so!