Coming back?

[Bounced_Czech]

Can you explain why you are on an hourly rate of more than £2 per hour than any other new starts?

[Barnacle]

Are you only allowed a 20 minute break on your 8 hour 20 minute, evening work shift? Delivering DPRs in the dark? For £12.57per hour, on most Saturdays and Sundays of the year? Ooft that sounds like a mugs game. I think I'd rather work for Amazon!

No, the “allowance” is 40 minutes, but I prefer to knock 20 minutes off the end of my shift.

Just some points of clarification lest you were inferring I am a mug:

(1) My own hourly rate is £14.87.
(2) I work 8.00 am to 4.20 pm, though on a Sunday I do 6.50 am to 3.10 pm. Dark nights are a no-no! If I do overtime - which I do often - I get £18.59 for each and every hour I do. That’s considerably more than the OT rate for those on legacy contracts. Overtime on a legacy contract might well be considered a mug’s game! I have just bought a three-year-old car outright just with my overtime for nine months.
(3) Saturdays and Sundays are the easiest days of the week. Sundays at our place are literally like a party. I know cynics like you won’t believe it, but there is a queue of people desperate to work Sundays. The Sunday party is an elite club, and if your name’s not on the list then you’re not getting in! Seriously, we are fighting hard against them bringing in a rota for the Sundays as we all enjoy working Sundays. We have enough of us now that we could realistically work only 1 in 6 Sundays, but who wants to do a hard Thursday instead?! Nah, you do the heavy packets on Thursday while I have my feet up at home, and in return I’ll plump for the light and postable LATs on Sunday!
(4) Conversely, for Amazon DSP drivers — and I was one in a past life — Saturdays and Sundays are the busiest days of the week; your van hire comes off the day rate; you have fuel, vehicle damage costs; you will likely be put on “standby” at short notice (ie no work and no pay); you have no holiday pay, no pension, etc…. Yes, on paper you might invoice over £1k a week if you’re lucky enough to get five days’ work but by the time you pay your expenses you’re left with little. Even in your own van it’s not much better than this. Working for Royal Mail in comparison feels like the lap of luxury, I promise you.

To any potential new colleagues reading this who are thinking of joining Royal Mail — I say go for it. Be under no illusion that the new contract is inferior to the old contract, but it is still very, very decent — and perhaps the best on offer in the job market— for employed delivery work. For doing six days a week, ie working one rest day as overtime, plus a couple of hours of “pressure overtime” here and there,I’m currently clearing after tax and NI just shy of £2.8k each month. That’s over £40k before tax. There are no delivery jobs out there offering permanent employment with this kind of pay and benefits - they all want you to be self-employed. No other employer will contribute 13.5% of your salary to a pension, topping up your 6% pension contributions to 19.5%. The job definitely isn’t for everyone — but no job is.

Why is your hourly rate £14.87? That’s not a Royal Mail hourly rate so are you adding everything in and then dividing it by your hours?

[Smoothbackground]

£14.87 is the Royal Mail DPR postie hourly rate for depots in the South East, though I know it is lower (£12.54 ph) elsewhere.

To deliver on our ambition we want the best and that’s why we’re delighted to offer market leading pay and benefits for our sector. For bringing your best and serving our customers with pride, you can expect to receive:

• Pay that’s 10% above the market average in our sector, paid monthly with an hourly rate of £14.87p/hr
• Overtime 1.25x the normal hourly rate
• 22.5 days holiday, rising with length of service (pro-rata)
• Contributory pension scheme
• Lots of opportunity to develop a career
• Full uniform provided if you’re on a contract of longer than three months
• Excellent parental leave policy
• Various discounts including high street vouchers, travel and attraction discounts, and savings on beauty products and gym membership
• Car parking available
• Cycle storage available
• Self staff kitchen available

[Bounced_Czech]

£14.87 is the Royal Mail DPR postie hourly rate for depots in the South East, though I know it is lower (£12.54 ph) elsewhere.

In the "South East" Does that mean inner London then? Because your wall of calculations about how much money you can make means precisely jack s**t compared to the majority of new start posties across the country employed on 30hr contracts at £12.54ph.

[fb1969]

I've randomly searched for jobs on the RM site. An office in London (SW postcode) gets £14.87 but an office in North Kent (ME), one in Woking (GU) one in Dorking (RH) and one in Margate (CT) only get the standard £12.54.

The office I worked in was in the south east (one of the postcode areas I've mentioned) and older contracts get an RRIS payment due to the area. But new contracts only get the standard £12.54.

It looks like £14.87 is the London rate and may only apply to an office with a London postcode. I am not expecting smoothbackground to reveal the postcode of their office, but £14.87 an hour is the exception rather than the rule.

[Smoothbackground]

Because of the stalkerish behaviour exhibited by some on here I will not reveal my work location, except to say I am not based in a London office nor one within the M25. It is not an anomaly either — all of us newbies at my depot are on the same rate of £14.87ph. In any event the hourly rate is irrelevant — i posted to provide some positive balance to the stream of negativity being spouted.

[Smoothbackground]

£14.87 is the Royal Mail DPR postie hourly rate for depots in the South East, though I know it is lower (£12.54 ph) elsewhere.

In the "South East" Does that mean inner London then? Because your wall of calculations about how much money you can make means precisely jack s**t compared to the majority of new start posties across the country employed on 30hr contracts at £12.54ph.

A postie earning £12.54 per hour still has the potential to earn in excess of £35,000 per annum if they do a reasonable amount of OT.

Were you previously registered on this site with a different username?