An alternative view

[Shadedpostie]

You can't spend, it when you're dead mate! that's the way it's heading, you need to wake up and smell the coffee Pal.

T&C's are more important for the vast majority in my office.

Are people seriously forgetting why we entered these talks in the first place? I'm tired of the mentality of "I'll be okay without a pay rise long as they leave my terms and conditions alone!" And then what? We do this all over again next year and the year after? We deserve better than the s**t they are slopping us with! Union shouldn't have honestly put the idea in people's heads that things weren't going to change, especially when later on in multiple interviews they were saying that "oh we are willing to change!" It ain't a negotiation if only one side is benefiting from it, time to take what is ours.

[LouBarlow]

If you forget about what RM may or may not be lying about nobody honestly can deny that the workload coming through the door is the lowest we've seen for 20 years and has been in free fall since last summer.

Whose fault that would be is pretty irrelevant because in anyone's book that decline in workload spells financial trouble in any company that cannot cut its costs to match.

I'm not an RM apologist or a manager and I blame the board and management structure entirely for the predicament we're in but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Can anyone genuinely see letters volume increasing ever again?
Given the bleak economic outlook are parcels going to grow significantly?

Unfortunately we need to face this reality and not pretend the business is booming and nothing should change.

Spot on.

[Woody Guthrie]

This is my main gripe with the union, Martin Dave and others have agreed a workload which is totally unreasonable for a human being to achieve day in day out without keeling over and collapsing

Unfortunately this is not down to Martin or Dave.
It's down to the union at local level.

In my office the vast majority of us are finishing early even with lapsing and I'm well above 40. We've had full involvement in our revision, our start times and attendance patterns aren't changing and I suspect even after the revision most will still have some scope to finish early although not as much obviously.

What Martin, Dave and Co are guilty of is allowing this huge disparity between offices because there is still no top down accountability in the union, you're either "strong" or you're "weak" despite the fact you pay the same subs.

Understand all that however wasn’t the official union line that reps didn’t get involved with these revisions. Are you saying the ones who broke ranks from that are having better outcomes?

We've only been involved since the joint statement was released but in 10 days we've managed to turn their position around and produced our own alternative proposal.

It probably helped that we had threatened them with rule 13 industrial action if they had tried to impose their proposal and the vast majority of the office had submitted letters of protest.

This is the bit I don't understand, why reps allowed revisions to be imposed against the will of the members and then moaned that HQ had left them to rot when they could have fought these changes at local level.

[carlosevenos]

If they were that skint they wouldn't be able to pay the thousands of agency, as well as open docket overtime at many offices. Surely if it was that bad, there would be a nationwide overtime ban, and removal of agency immediately. Also they wouldn't be paying manager bonuses at every opportunity.

[Dexydog]

Or brought out of retirement to "organize" a revision on God knows how much.
Despite hardly any of current duties finishing on time as it is.
3 of them at our gaff today- plenty of money there for them to drink coffee together and tell us we can do more work which we haven't got time for.
It's smoke and mirrors and it sounds very much like the union have bought it.

[Acca Dacca]

Looks very much like trying to convince us that a slap in the face is a win because its not a kick in the balls

[Dorset Plodder]

This is the bit I don't understand, why reps allowed revisions to be imposed against the will of the members and then moaned that HQ had left them to rot when they could have fought these changes at local level.

A lot of Delivery Offices don't have Experienced Local Reps, a lot in my area don't even have a Rep.

No surprise then if they weren't aware of more effective ways to counter management revisions. Royal Mail has always loved to divide & conquer and I think we could do better to have a more all inclusive strategy to dealing with Low Level management. It varies so much from one unit to another.

[Dorset Plodder]

Looks very much like trying to convince us that a slap in the face is a win because its not a kick in the balls

[RTP]

This is the bit I don't understand, why reps allowed revisions to be imposed against the will of the members and then moaned that HQ had left them to rot when they could have fought these changes at local level.

A lot of Delivery Offices don't have Experienced Local Reps, a lot in my area don't even have a Rep.

No surprise then if they weren't aware of more effective ways to counter management revisions. Royal Mail has always loved to divide & conquer and I think we could do better to have a more all inclusive strategy to dealing with Low Level management. It varies so much from one unit to another.

Exactly or the reps are suspended.

Woody does talk a lot of sense, but in one breath he's seemingly blaming Union HQ for the fact that an office is either strong or it isn't and the next blaming reps for not being strong enough.

[Woody Guthrie]

No I'm wondering why HQ and the branches allowed this to happen.

They know which offices have no rep, they know which offices have had reps suspended, they even know which offices have in the past been screwed over yet very little was done to protect these offices.

If this was a business you would have sacked many of these branch officers years ago for gross incompetence, you would have closed many of these branches for running nothing more than an expensive social club for their mates with members money. You would have at least asked some difficult f***ing questions about why this was allowed to happen on their patch.

But no, because these guys are elected by a slim majority of some of the lowest turnouts in the history of democracy usually because the field is so poor most people use their ballot paper as a coaster they are pretty much untouchable no matter how poor a job they make of things.

[Wolf91]

If you forget about what RM may or may not be lying about nobody honestly can deny that the workload coming through the door is the lowest we've seen for 20 years and has been in free fall since last summer.

Whose fault that would be is pretty irrelevant because in anyone's book that decline in workload spells financial trouble in any company that cannot cut its costs to match.

I'm not an RM apologist or a manager and I blame the board and management structure entirely for the predicament we're in but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Can anyone genuinely see letters volume increasing ever again?
Given the bleak economic outlook are parcels going to grow significantly?

Unfortunately we need to face this reality and not pretend the business is booming and nothing should change.

Speak for yourself regarding workloads falling through the floor.
Our office is still heavy on parcels, perhaps not pandemic levels, but certainly pre-pandemic levels. Letters slightly less. Nothing out of the ordinary though.
Other local offices are the same.

The notion that Royal Mail is some apocalyptic wasteland where its entire workforce is scratching around for something to do everyday. This is simply not true.

You said it yourself - you are finishing early everyday with not much work. You seem to assume everyone else is in the same boat. We know who visit these board & you saying your workloads are extremely light - whether true - certainly doesn’t reflect on a lot of offices across the country.
Not one person in my office has finished “early” in weeks.

Most days involve cut-offs.
Jobs are too big currently without extra lapsing.
Yet they still want to carve hours.

[norris9]

If you forget about what RM may or may not be lying about nobody honestly can deny that the workload coming through the door is the lowest we've seen for 20 years and has been in free fall since last summer.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious....

In offices like yours where you are stating life is easy and there's not much to deliver.... you need MORE added to your rounds.

But this isn't the case in other offices. Not every office has it easy like you.

We have no day off cover, we fail our rounds most days and door2doors end up being neglected and are constantly 1 or 2 weeks behind. We haven't even had any revision yet.


How do you go from £768mil profit to a £400mil loss. Mail isn't down that badly for god's sake! It's obviously managerial errors elsewhere that have cost the past years massive losses.

[sindba]

If you forget about what RM may or may not be lying about nobody honestly can deny that the workload coming through the door is the lowest we've seen for 20 years and has been in free fall since last summer.

Whose fault that would be is pretty irrelevant because in anyone's book that decline in workload spells financial trouble in any company that cannot cut its costs to match.

I'm not an RM apologist or a manager and I blame the board and management structure entirely for the predicament we're in but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Can anyone genuinely see letters volume increasing ever again?
Given the bleak economic outlook are parcels going to grow significantly?

Unfortunately we need to face this reality and not pretend the business is booming and nothing should change.

Speak for yourself regarding workloads falling through the floor.
Our office is still heavy on parcels, perhaps not pandemic levels, but certainly pre-pandemic levels. Letters slightly less. Nothing out of the ordinary though.
Other local offices are the same.

The notion that Royal Mail is some apocalyptic wasteland where its entire workforce is scratching around for something to do everyday. This is simply not true.

You said it yourself - you are finishing early everyday with not much work. You seem to assume everyone else is in the same boat. We know who visit these board & you saying your workloads are extremely light - whether true - certainly doesn’t reflect on a lot of offices across the country.
Not one person in my office has finished “early” in weeks.

Most days involve cut-offs.
Jobs are too big currently without extra lapsing.
Yet they still want to carve hours.

This is a very good point.

Traffic is down from the last lot of revisions a year ago. But that revision itself left most duties way too big and unachievable.

[sindba]

And another thing - I've heard nothing from the Union about delivery spans.

They should be capped at 5 or so hours, no matter what the workload. Anything more is physically unsustainable.

They can't just keep putting more and more delivery on and shout about "call rate". We still have to walk down that road, and it's still exhausting.

[FilthyBloke]

If you forget about what RM may or may not be lying about nobody honestly can deny that the workload coming through the door is the lowest we've seen for 20 years and has been in free fall since last summer.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious....

In offices like yours where you are stating life is easy and there's not much to deliver.... you need MORE added to your rounds.

But this isn't the case in other offices. Not every office has it easy like you.

We have no day off cover, we fail our rounds most days and door2doors end up being neglected and are constantly 1 or 2 weeks behind. We haven't even had any revision yet.


How do you go from £768mil profit to a £400mil loss. Mail isn't down that badly for god's sake! It's obviously managerial errors elsewhere that have cost the past years massive losses.

Parcels were up 39% for that year and didn’t the government give Royal Mail at least £550m for covid? Or was that year before…