Santa's postal helpers are left out in the cold

[memorius482]

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Published on Thursday 15 December 2011 08:39

Disgruntled temporary Royal Mail workers who were taken on to deal with the bursting festive mailbags are complaining they have yet to be paid.

A total of 407 seasonal workers have been taken on at Preston’s Royal Mail sorting office to deal with the extra workload during the busy Christmas period.

Now the distressed temporary workers have contacted the Evening Post to complain they have still not been paid because of problems with a recruitment company which has this year been given the responsibility for temporary staff.

In the past, Royal Mail used to directly employ Christmas casual workers, but this year agency Angard Staffing Solutions has taken over the hiring and management of temporary staff.

One worker, who did not wish to be named, said: “I have been working here for the past three years over the Christmas period and there has never been a problem before.

“But this year, since the agency took over, it has been chaos and no one has any idea of when they will get paid.

“We are supposed to be paid weekly, but I have been here a few weeks but have still not received a penny.

“Some of the temporary workers have received some of the money they are owed, but most still haven’t received anything.

“One worker has only 65p in his account and is coming to Preston from Blackburn and is really struggling.

“The whole thing is a shambles.”

Another worker, said: “There are about 50 temporary workers on my shift and out of them, only two have been paid.

“The reason I took on this job was to earn some money for Christmas. But at the moment, it is looking doubtful whether I will get my money by then.

“Fortunately, I can survive on a day-to-day basis as my wife works. But there are some workers who were relying on this money to pay their bills and are now really struggling financially.

“Some workers can’t even afford to put petrol in their car to get to work.

“When we spoke to management about it, they just told us we would be paid on Friday. Then when Friday came, we were told it would be Tuesday, but we have still had nothing.”

Angard Staffing Solutions is an in-house employment agency owned by Royal Mail and part-managed by Reed Specialist Recruitment.

It was set up earlier this year to handle the postal service’s temporary workforce requirements.

Problems with Angard seem to have affected workers across the country and an online forum called “Royalmailchat” has been inundated with complaints.

Heulyn Gwyn Davies from Royal Mail today confirmed that there are 407 seasonal workers at Preston. However, he could not confirm how many of these had been paid.

He said: “Most temporary staff have been paid on time and correctly.

“We are aware of some seasonal workers who have unfortunately not been paid when they should have been.

“We are urgently resolving this with our external supplier.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to any temporary worker. We do understand how important it is that they receive their correct pay on time.”

[philw]

Heulyn Gwyn Davies from Royal Mail today ....... said: “Most temporary staff have been paid on time and correctly.

“We are aware of some seasonal workers who have unfortunately not been paid when they should have been.

“We are urgently resolving this with our external supplier.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to any temporary worker. We do understand how important it is that they receive their correct pay on time.”

It would seem that this rather tired quote must have been put out by the RM PR bods as this very same quote, word-for-word has appeared in all of the media reports to-date, but attributed to various people.

[POSTMAN]

It would seem that this rather tired quote must have been put out by the RM PR bods as this very same quote, word-for-word has appeared in all of the media reports to-date, but attributed to various people.

We see it all the time,especially with the news stories we post up about how bad our revisions have been.
Word for word,just change the office name.

[Jobe]

I was expecting my first wage yesterday. I didn't panic because we had the reassurance above that 'most casual staff have been paid' but now reality has landed and I'm in the not paid category. I know quite a few are intending ceasing their employment next week but as this is my only job at present I haven't got that luxury. I'm beginning to feel a bit like Bob Cratchett working for Scrooge.