Privitisation. A good thing

[kjm]

Yes, privatisation will be fantastic.......for the investors!!! Royal Mail is ripe to be raped.....assets to die for, including a cash rich pension fund, prime location land/buildings and a workforce that will be targeted for their terms and conditions. These people are interested in one thing only......profit,profit,profit....and once every last penny has been squeezed, they will drop the baton....and what is NOW, a profitable, trusted company will be left to rot.
So, yes....if i was looking to make a quick buck and then run, Royal Mail would be in my sights......some of these investors must be looking at us like Jimmy Saville used to look at a broken down school bus............ i'm voting yes....

[UnhappyGremlin]

....for the shareholders.

Not me. Or us.

[Shambles]

Yes, privatisation will be fantastic.......for the investors!!! Royal Mail is ripe to be raped.....assets to die for, including a cash rich pension fund, prime location land/buildings and a workforce that will be targeted for their terms and conditions. These people are interested in one thing only......profit,profit,profit....and once every last penny has been squeezed, they will drop the baton....and what is NOW, a profitable, trusted company will be left to rot.
So, yes....if i was looking to make a quick buck and then run, Royal Mail would be in my sights......some of these investors must be looking at us like Jimmy Saville used to look at a broken down school bus............ i'm voting yes....

Hear hear!

[Stormproof]

come back four years from now when you have a zero hour contract and working at minimum wage.

The CWU is trying to secure YOUR job and money for the next five years, RM are saying they will safeguard jobs etc for three years, when that three years is up, they will make everyone re-apply for their jobs at a lower wage and benefits etc.

Someone at work overheard me having that exact conversation this morning and then kicked off and accused me of scaremongering

[wandle]

RM are saying they will safeguard jobs etc for three years, when that three years is up, they will make everyone re-apply for their jobs at a lower wage and benefits etc.

But surely, if this 'doom scenario' were to occur, do you really expect the CWU (i.e. all of us) to meekly say 'OK, fair enough', we'll roll over', without a huge fight ?
Any attempt by RM to try that sort of shite could, and should, be met with an instant ballot for strike action.

But, if you truly do believe that RM will do what you say with absolutely no opposition from the union, you may as well quit the CWU tomorrow morning and at least save yourself £3.43/week for the next 2.5 years. Hell, you could even spend the £445.90 saved, on some extra Royal Mail shares. Should rocket in value if your 'doom scenario' were to occur

(PEOPLE SHOULD REALISE THAT ANY AGREEMENT REACHED WILL BE BACKDATED TO APRIL OF THIS YEAR, when the previous agreement expired. So, in reality, 3 years protection will in fact only have about two-and-a-half years remaining, even if RM/CWU reach agreement next month)

[pokos27]

zero hour contracts, no sick pay, no ill health retirement and no holiday pay. Offices will be merged, it will be awful, and it began with down stream access.

[barrowc]

If you wonder what happens when a company has to pay out most of its profits in dividends, cast your mind back to Royal Mail in the period 1976 to 1999. Over that time £2.481 billion of RM's profits weren't available to be re-invested in the company. The Government claims they didn't just pocket the money but invested it in the Post Office network and the RM pension fund (although both of those had suffered due to Government policy in that period - removal of the DSS contract and contribution holiday by RM, respectively) - details at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 4w0032.htm

Whatever really happened to that money, not investing it meant that we soldiered on with clapped-out machinery and completely wrong-headed ways of working (did we seriously do video coding for at least ten years without anyone thinking about machine learning? We now pay Lockheed Martin for a system - Address Interpretation - that we could have developed ourselves at least a decade earlier) We can see how far behind our competitors we are in terms of tracking items and automating packet sorting.

If too much of the profits we make are squandered on dividends then we might never catch up investing in the actual tools for the job. We may well have access to bank loans to fund such investments but servicing those loans (i.e. paying them back) could easily become a major burden.

I want the people in charge of Royal Mail to be thinking about how to make RM better for everyone and not thinking solely about how to make the share price higher

[Edward Hunter]

A privatised royal mail could possibly de-recognize the union. I believe virgin did this recently
http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/2012/11/ ... de-unions/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Thorby Bislam]

And you can't have a "massive minority." It's an oxymoron. If it's massive, it's not a minority; if it's a minority, it won't be massive.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

How do you know that after 3 years everyone will have to reapply for their jobs and get lower pay? It just would not happen.

Are you blind to what has happened elsewhere? am i surrounded by fools and idiots?

Looks like you are you miserable twit. Instead of wasting energy moaning, please explain to us fools what will happen.

What you ask has already happened in our sector, just ask the City Link workers who under RMT have balloted for IA because of massive changes to their contracts. This has happened only 2 years after an equity firm took over.

[Brain Fury]

If you wonder what happens when a company has to pay out most of its profits in dividends, cast your mind back to Royal Mail in the period 1976 to 1999. Over that time £2.481 billion of RM's profits weren't available to be re-invested in the company. The Government claims they didn't just pocket the money but invested it in the Post Office network and the RM pension fund (although both of those had suffered due to Government policy in that period - removal of the DSS contract and contribution holiday by RM, respectively) - details at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 4w0032.htm

Whatever really happened to that money, not investing it meant that we soldiered on with clapped-out machinery and completely wrong-headed ways of working (did we seriously do video coding for at least ten years without anyone thinking about machine learning? We now pay Lockheed Martin for a system - Address Interpretation - that we could have developed ourselves at least a decade earlier) We can see how far behind our competitors we are in terms of tracking items and automating packet sorting.

If too much of the profits we make are squandered on dividends then we might never catch up investing in the actual tools for the job. We may well have access to bank loans to fund such investments but servicing those loans (i.e. paying them back) could easily become a major burden.

I want the people in charge of Royal Mail to be thinking about how to make RM better for everyone and not thinking solely about how to make the share price higher

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of government ownership.

[UnhappyGremlin]

But surely, if this 'doom scenario' were to occur, do you really expect the CWU (i.e. all of us) to meekly say 'OK, fair enough', we'll roll over', without a huge fight ?

So why not just have that huge fight now? Why wait?

And yes, I think some would fall for it. It has happened in other companies, and in Parcelforce I believe, people offered new contracts with a 'sign it or they may be no job for you' threat, and they do.