Royal Mail Statement.

[POSTMAN]

Well done the FOzzmeister and good luck with it mate.
Now have a word with your guvvy and get us a good deal on some mobiles for the members.

IT'S GOOD TO TALK!
IS IT BOLLOX!
IT'S BETTER TO WRITE

[gspot01]

The whole point of being an individual in a union is that as an individual you are allowed to get your viewpoint across to the whole spectrum, this is done by participating in a democratic voting system.

Something you dont seem to understand is that every one has the right to one vote YES/NO and once that vote is taken that is when you are governed by the result. Before that stage if you take part in the meetings which by the way are open to one and all and everyone is welcome to free speech in order to put over their point whether you are for or against the line that the union are taking.

The really important part is that by being a part of the union, you no longer have to stand out there on your own, being bullied into a harsh regime by the very people who think that if they cut 40,000 jobs and save money then its a good idea to award themselves a bonus. Sorry but to my mind the cuts should start at the top of the tree and work down, after all its the common postie who actually does all the work in this business. Maybe its time some of those fat cats got of their arses and tried doing our job for a week before telling us that we are underworked and overpaid.

The union has never stopped trying to negotiate an agreement on modernisation, the difference is that they have the mandate to do that because we all as individuals voted for them to take this road.

Crozier and Leighton never once allowed any of us to have any say on the plans for this business, it has been and still is being forced on us with no negotiation involved.

Time for all us individuals to stand up and be counted and show them that we can have a voice and fight back, but together we are stronger. So lets go as a united body, hey ive an idea we could call it the CWU

[Jonboy]

a friend sent me this from his wifes buisness.

Thank you for signing up to this service. Our intention is to keep you up to date with any developments regarding industrial action.

Strike action starting Wednesday 25th July

Royal Mail is hugely disappointed that the Communication Workers Union has announced a series of strikes over a two-week period beginning at 7pm on Wednesday 25th July 2007, and ending at 12 noon on Wednesday 8th August.
The situation is complex, but we have identified the probable impact on services for the week commencing 23rd July. The strike will affect all Mail Centres, and 26 Delivery Offices that are co-located with Mail Centres on Thursday 26th July. The remaining Delivery and Collection services will not be available on Saturday 28th July.

Please note, this does not affect Royal Mail's operations in Northern Ireland,

We have well-developed contingency plans designed to reduce the effect of the strike and keep disruption to our customers to a minimum. Managers will be volunteering to help keep as much of the service operating as possible.

We are currently assessing the likely impact on mail services for week commencing 30th July and we will update you in due course.

Here is the list of Delivery Offices that may be on strike on 26th July:

• Cambridge Delivery
• Canterbury MC Delivery
• Cardiff Delivery
• Coventry Delivery
• Darlington Delivery
• Dartford Deliveries
• Derby Delivery
• Doncaster Delivery
• Hemel H. Delivery
• Inverness MC Delivery
• Maidstone MC Delivery
• Manchester MC Delivery
• Northampton MC Deliveries
• Norwich Delivery
• Oldham Delivery
• Paddington Deliveries
• Reading MC Delivery
• Romford MC Delivery
• Shrewsbury MC Delivery
• Swansea MC Delivery
• Tonbridge MC Delivery
• Truro MC Delivery
• Watford MC Delivery
• Wolverhampton MC Delivery
• Worcester MC Delivery
• York MC Delivery


What this means for you
• There will be normal access to Royal Mail services on Thursday 26th July.
• On Saturday 28th July services will be limited to a single collection from Post Boxes outside of Post Offices and these collections may be earlier than the normal advertised times.
• There will be no delivery or collection services on Saturday 28th July.
• We will attempt to deliver Special Delivery items. Special Delivery Saturday guarantee will be suspended for Saturday 28th July.
• Parcelforce Worldwide's guaranteed services will remain unaffected.
• Royal Mail's Branch Direct, Sameday and Door to Door services remain unaffected
• All other mail services will be subject to delay.


How can you help us to minimise disruption to your mail?
• Please try to bring your planned mailings forward to avoid Thursday 26th July
• Do not post on the day of any strike, but post early in the day if you really have to
• Try to post at your local Post Office, but be aware that will not be able to accept bulk mailings (refer to the messages for Business Customers below).
• Normal customer service helpline - 08457 740 740 will operate - but will be very busy - so please be patient.
• Royal Mail's website will contain the latest updated information.


Messages for Business Customers
• Business customers who use bulk mailings are asked to bring forward postings to the earlier part of the week if at all possible.
• We regret that on Thursday 26th July Royal Mail's Mail Centres will not collect from business customers
• Please avoid posting on Thursday 26th July.
• There will be no delivery services on Saturday 28th July.
• Please provide us with as accurate and as early forecasts as possible.
• Tell your account manager or Customer Operations Manager (COM) as much as possible about your mailing plans. This will help us to plan our resources.


24-Hour strike on Monday July 23rd in Northern Ireland
The Communication Workers Union has previously announced a 24-hour strike in Northern Ireland only, starting at 7pm on Sunday July 22nd and continuing through Monday July 23rd. Again, we have well-developed contingency plans to minimise the impact on your mail services, but there will inevitably be some disruption.



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Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales, under number 4138203, registered office 148 Old Street, London EC1V 9HQ. Mailsort®, Walksort®, Presstream®, Royal Mail, the Royal Mail cruciform and the colour red are registered trade marks of Royal Mail Group Ltd in the UK and other countries.

[IWW Fellow Worker]

If that's a list of the 'may be on strike' offices, I wouldn't mind seeing a list of the 'will be on strike' offices because they don't seem to have anything from the Warrington, Crewe or Merseyside areas and I would think plenty of other areas too.

[F0zziebear]

I think the public and business have so far being relatively unaffected by the strikes.

I have always said that if you are really serious about making a difference then a European wide strike, a mutli-sector strike, or a sustained strike is required to get people to sit up and listen. At the moment the neo-liberal approach is dictating direction. In some ways this approach works well, but in others it can be dreadful. TNT and Desutrschepost handled their privatisation more successfully, however their own workforces in their own country's are suffering badly, yet their international businesses are doing well.

I personally believe the current government has mortgaged our futures over a period of ten years. Inflation is outstripping wage rises by at least 2.5% p.a Gordon Brown knows this and has said that public sector pay rises will not rise inline with inflation. The money just does not exist to pay for the extra jobs created and the wage inflation required to keep up with house prices.

I expect further strikes on the back of higher interest rises and harder times for all.

A couple of responses to points raised.

Thousands of managerial jobs have been cut in the four years since Single Daily Delvery. I can personally vouch for this as I was one who took VR and was also involved in cutting out jobs, which had been created and were in my opinion hindering the ability of the company to turn strategy into reality and communicate more directly with the frontline.

Crozier and Leighton could have stood up to the government, but then where would they get the money for the pension hole from? They ended up in a corner and made a pact with the devil. To be fair to Leighton he did threaten Brown with taking the business into administration a few years ago. Personally I would have rejected the strings attached and resigned from the company rather than take it down the current path. Maybe they honestly believed that they could make the necessary cuts?

As for individuals and unions. I fully understnad why unions exist in the first place, which normally arises when the employer attempts to screw over the employee. This came about from the industrial revolution as we separated ourselves from the land and relied on our labour to gain money which we could exchange for goods and services.

However, I would have liked to have negotiated with staff on a performance related basis as not all workers are the same, even though in theory they are supposed to do the same job (delivery staff, or processing staff)

As for earning 25% more or others earning 25% less. Competitors are able to employ processing staff at lower wages as they do relatively simple jobs. The machines are high tech and do not require much training to use. Their little/no video encoding as the mail is bulk consolidated mail. So RM is technically right in it's ascertions, but I would argue that their comparison is not a direct one and is potentially misleading. The competitors also get away with not having to pay the 'other' costs such as pensions, healthcare etc... that are part of the good terms that RM staff get in comparison to the private sector. This you may argue is the benefit of unions and the public sector. However, it is the shareholders of private companies who demand returns on their investments, which is the nature of investing in a company. So I raise the question, where is your pension money being invested? It is being invested in companies or lent to governments and in return you get your money back with a interest. It's swings and roundabouts, and it's about time you asked where your money was being invested on your behalf. Let's not be blinkered and only debate half of the story.

Rant over

Off to see Homer being washed away

F0zz D'oh!

[catch]

[center]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul20 ... _prn.shtml[/center]

I really don@t know how much longer this situation can go on, I feel that the cwu have done very little to get a clear message across to the general public as to the real situation and we don't seem to have support from other unions either. Read the above article then tell me that the cwu are dealing with this in the interests of the membership or is their a hidden agenda?

Well the WSWS has their own hidden agenda - they think a (their) political party should be running working class struggles instead of the unions.

Having said that, the unions, CWU included, have their own interests which aren't in-line with the workers in them. The CWU bosses always have to keep their place at the negotiating table - if that means threatening more militant action to , that's fine, if it means reigning in militant action and cutting a deal that means workers lose out and gets people back to work, that's fine too. The ability of a union to negotiate with management is directly in line with it's ability to ultimately control the workforce and keep them working.

When it comes down to it, for an outright win in the dispute, both the breadth and depth of the strike will have to increase. Both the CWU and Unison have strong links with Labour, Unison has stopped a lot of potential strikes by public sector workers which might have embarrassed the government. Nothing against grass-roots union members, but actual structure (and individual leadership) is set against real self-organisation and co-ordination.

So any extension is going to require going outside the union framework - directly to workers in other sectors, and trying to get the message out to the general public directly as well. Also stuff like the Oxford wildcat and the Southend work to rule - it's important they get widespread support and aren't allowed to be picked off one by one.

[Jonboy]

Dear


Thank you for signing up to this service. Our intention is to keep you up to date with any developments regarding industrial action.

Strike action starting Wednesday 25th July

Royal Mail is hugely disappointed that the Communication Workers Union has announced a series of strikes over a two-week period beginning at 7pm on Wednesday 25th July 2007, and ending at 12 noon on Wednesday 8th August.
The situation is complex, but we have identified the probable impact on services for the week commencing 23rd July. The strike will affect all Mail Centres on Thursday 26th July, and Delivery and Collection services will not be available on Saturday 28th July.

Please note, this does not affect Royal Mail's operations in Northern Ireland,

We have well-developed contingency plans designed to reduce the effect of the strike and keep disruption to our customers to a minimum. Managers will be volunteering to help keep as much of the service operating as possible.

We are currently assessing the likely impact on mail services for week commencing 30th July and we will update you in due course.

What this means for you
• There will be normal access to Royal Mail services on Thursday 26th July.
• On Saturday 28th July services will be limited to a single collection from Post Boxes outside of Post Offices and these collections may be earlier than the normal advertised times.
• There will be no delivery or collection services on Saturday 28th July.
• We will attempt to deliver Special Delivery items. Special Delivery Saturday guarantee will be suspended for Saturday 28th July.
• Parcelforce Worldwide's guaranteed services will remain unaffected.
• Royal Mail's Branch Direct, Sameday and Door to Door services remain unaffected
• All other mail services will be subject to delay.


How can you help us to minimise disruption to your mail?
• Please try to bring your planned mailings forward to avoid Thursday 26th July
• Do not post on the day of any strike, but post early in the day if you really have to
• Try to post at your local Post Office, but be aware that will not be able to accept bulk mailings (refer to the messages for Business Customers below).
• Normal customer service helplines - 08457 740 740 and 08457 950 950 will operate - but will be very busy - so please be patient.
• Royal Mail's website will contain the latest updated information.


Messages for Business Customers
• Business customers who use bulk mailings are asked to bring forward postings to the earlier part of the week if at all possible.
• We regret that on Thursday 26th July Royal Mail's Mail Centres will not collect from business customers
• Please avoid posting on Thursday 26th July.
• There will be no delivery services on Saturday 28th July.
• Please provide us with as accurate and as early forecasts as possible.
• Tell your account manager or Customer Operations Manager (COM) as much as possible about your mailing plans. This will help us to plan our resources.


24-Hour strike on Monday July 23rd in Northern Ireland
The Communication Workers Union has previously announced a 24-hour strike in Northern Ireland only, starting at 7pm on Sunday July 22nd and continuing through Monday July 23rd. Again, we have well-developed contingency plans to minimise the impact on your mail services, but there will inevitably be some disruption.

Strike action at Crown Post Offices
Separately the CWU have also announced strike action at all Crown Post Offices in the Post Office Network, on Friday 27th July, between 14.30 and 19.00, and on Tuesday 31st July, between 14.30 and 19.00, Please note, this action does not affect the 14,000 plus sub-post offices nationwide.




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Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales, under number 4138203, registered office 148 Old Street, London EC1V 9HQ. Mailsort®, Walksort®, Presstream®, Royal Mail, the Royal Mail cruciform and the colour red are registered trade marks of Royal Mail Group Ltd in the UK and other countries.


I think they are worried abit more than last time dont you!!!