Our Contracts

[sussexlad]

Just a question about our contracts after we strike next Friday. I know we can't be dismissed for taking part in official I/A, but as we will all be technically breaking our contracts would RM be allowed to then basically replace our current contracts with whatever they wanted?

[datasaint]

Royal Mail don't need a strike to alter contracts, they can just offer a period of consultation and change them however they see fit. If you don't like it don't sign it sort of thing and start looking for a new job.

I think they don't need to be so heavy handed anyway, reality is, who is going to win out in a battle of attrition, the members or the company?

I would like to say the members, but if you've got a family to support and a mortgage to pay, are you really going to go without for however long it takes?

It could be a long drawn out affair yet. A shame that the company would push its workers to that point, but then we are under Tory rule so ...

[Binsey]

Just a question about our contracts after we strike next Friday. I know we can't be dismissed for taking part in official I/A, but as we will all be technically breaking our contracts would RM be allowed to then basically replace our current contracts with whatever they wanted?

I am fully expecting this to happen.

With Asda and P&O now the precedent.

We now live in Clown World.

[portadown]

I see the mail on Sunday don't like us

[LaggyBand]

This is a scary thread..

My uncle told me a story yesterday after he heard I was striking.

He worked for BT a while ago and they called a strike.

Before the day, management called the staff in one by one, sat them down, and asked if they would sign this piece of paper.

The paper said something along the lines of “I agree to work normally from Wednesday onwards” (the day of the strike, don’t pull apart the exact wording, it’s his story not mine).

The staff members including my uncle one by one said no they’re not going to sign it, because they’ll be striking that day.

The managers took their decision no problem and they left. The odd person agreed to sign it, because they were going to break the strike.

Anyway after the day of the strike, the staff who didn’t sign the paper, ie the strikers, were told something along the lines of, you can’t come back to work now until you are “invited back”.

So they ended up on strike for six weeks.

[2chorizon]

Same thing happened in a large industry i worked in, in the late 90’s,

We started striking one day per week and then the company forced us “all out” we would turn up and they would tell us to clock back out and go home.

We were “all out” for 3 months with no wages.

It was a brutal strike, ended by a compromise between union and company.

[Dexydog]

Some may read this thread and think, "right I can't afford to lose my contract" and go into work.
Fair enough argument.
BUT- if the company actually want this strike to happen (one might argue the way they are behaving indicates this), why would you in turn want to work for a company that treats people like that?
If this is what they're after then they are playing a dangerous game- recruiting staff is difficult atm, and despite what they say its not like we're paid loads more than elsewhere.
Just look at all the other strikes happening- this is an indication of the general unrest in society.
There are too many of us to replace if we stick together.
We need to hold our nerve and stare them down.

[Woody Guthrie]

I'm not sure what the point is in this discussion.

If the employer is as mendacious and malignant as some of you believe there isn't much point in worrying about it.

They'll f**k us over whether we strike or not.

Personally if I'm going down I'm going down kicking and screaming.

[crimson king]

I'm not sure what the point is in this discussion.

If the employer is as mendacious and malignant as some of you believe there isn't much point in worrying about it.

They'll f**k us over whether we strike or not.

Personally if I'm going down I'm going down kicking and screaming.

^^^ Exactly this

There really is no other option.

[LaggyBand]

Reading the RM guidance for managers it kinda just seems like next day everything will be…fine?

[Sputters]

If royal mail get what they want in the end and i really hope they dont , how long do you think it would take for them to impliment them .

[priority102]

If royal mail get what they want in the end and i really hope they dont , how long do you think it would take for them to impliment them .

Any compromise from RM in order to strike a deal this year will only last until next years pay negotiations when what didn't get implemented this year will be back on the table again.

Sure as eggs are eggs.

[clashcityrocker]

If royal mail get what they want in the end and i really hope they dont , how long do you think it would take for them to impliment them .

Haven't they already started implementing them?

[GRS]

Not 100% sure but it wouldn't surprise me if RM went down the fire and rehire route. Could be a risky strategy though as they could end up in the same situation as BA, basically not be able to rehire enough staff to run the business. However if they want to split RM up then a smaller workforce would help this plan fall nicely into place? Who knows!!!

[Woody Guthrie]

Fire and rehire would be prohibitively expensive for Royal Mail in the short to medium term and the potential savings would not be large enough.

It made sense to P&O because they didn't intend to rehire but use a foreign pool of agency staff at a fraction of the cost (way below the UK minimum wage) this is only really possible in the maritime industry and on a relatively small scale.

That solution is not possible for Royal Mail, at best they could offer re-employment at minimum wage which is only a couple of quid below what we earn , agency staff do not come cheap because of the premium paid to the agency and there would be extra recruitment, training and retention costs.

Mostly though it would be the huge upfront cost of redundancy, you don't actually fire in fire&rehire you make people redundant and while the generous MTSF terms remain in place that route would be far too costly.

I'm not saying that some financial bod in Royal Mail hasn't scoped out the long term viability looking at everything from allowances to pension obligations and thinks it could eventually pay, it's just that the business would need a huge injection of upfront cash to survive the first 5 years, not sure the shareholders would like to see the £1 billion they might get from GLS being given away in redundancy payments.