WALK WITH YOUR POSTIE AND SEE HOW TOUGH THE JOB IS
With some corners of the media and public not supporting posties and only publishing one side of the story, whilst accusing us and our union of being lazy and/or stirring up trouble, how about your readers listening to the real story of why posties are striking or withdrawing labour?
I am a postie of some years and thoroughly enjoy the job in rain or shine. I work with many others who feel the same. We do care about our customers and take care with your postal items.
Most of us (99%) do not steal/abuse your mail, but treat it with respect.
The job is very hard work, contrary to those who believe that we just go into the office, pick-up a few bundles and then waltz around our area chatting to people. The reality is a 6am start, two to three hours of sorting and checking your holds and redirections, killing-off dead letters and then bagging it all up. We leave the office at around 9am.
A typical area comprises about 500 homes. It is not just post and parcels we deliver, but also door-to-doors (junk mail to a layman). This is a lot of weight to carry. We typically have 16kg (35lbs) on the front of the bike and 8kg in each pannier. This is just for starters. Some rounds have up to 10 of these bags. A good round, if you are lucky, has a few less.
To move this lot we have to use cheap, unreliable and heavy bikes. We are also taking care of your recorded deliveries and special delivery items, ensuring they do not get stolen. Delivering to 500 homes will take about two-and-a-half to five hours of walking, cycling, and/or van driving in ALL WEATHERS, in uniforms not fit for the purpose. Our bags and coats are not waterproof, yet I can buy a tent that is!
One van area we have covers 49 miles! All delivered AFTER it has all been sorted and loaded. Could you do this every day? Many cannot, and leave fast.
As more homes are needed our area gets bigger. We get this extra put on the round and have to deliver it for FREE. No extra money here, either.
Royal Mail now also wishes to implement a new computer software program that will add even more work to our rounds (Equalization). It will add even more drops and tell us how fast to walk, or we get sacked.
When someone is on holiday or goes sick (they call it "lapsing"), we have to cover that round as well AFTER we have done our own rounds and all for FREE. If we refuse three times to do this extra work, even if we run out of time, we get our money stopped, as threatened by Royal Mail management.
Our contact of employment says we are entitled to overtime but Royal Mail now expects this for FREE or we don't get paid for the main duty.
Some of us in fact relied on overtime payments. After all, can we ask the utilities each quarter for some free gas and electricity? What would the reply be? Yet RM expects more for less and we have got to lump it.
New starters are taken on, on one-hour contracts, i.e. go sick or on holiday, you get one hour's pay. If they don't want you one week, or two or three weeks, you get one hour's pay per week. Could you pay your bills with one hour's pay after tax and national insurance? I thought not.
This new equalization and lapsing scheme (good word) is only the start. Next year they will want more cutbacks and the year after that even more, so by the time they are finished, you can expect your post at midnight.
As a thank you, we get approximately £300 take-home for a full-time round and approximately £200 take-home for a part-time round, plus aching limbs and stacks of fatigue. This year we get NO pay rise and NO bonus and certainly NO expense account, despite Royal Mail making a huge profit. Managers, however, did get a bonus for swinging the axe.
Considering we have posties of all ages, both sexes and physical abilities, this is becoming a joke trying to turn us all into robotic teams. We are not all the same.
Oh, one other thing before I go. I nearly forgot about our wonderful pension pot that has got a 5.9 billion deficit.
We do care deeply about business being inconvenienced, but how else can we protest before we drop dead from stress and exhaustion?
Still not convinced? Please go do a walk with your postie next winter and see how long you last. It is not as easy as it looks!
A Postie
