PEOPLE'S POSTIE

[TrueBlueTerrier]

hhttp://tinyurl.com/yp4pqx

BY TOM MACK

10:30 - 20 October 2007

Villagers are calling on the Royal Mail to give them back their postman after he was given the sack.

Phillip Doughty, 22, was a popular character around Thurnby, where he had delivered the mail since he was 17.

After having two hospital operations and a bout of chickenpox, the Royal Mail fired him, claiming he had failed to explain his absence.

Now, the village is demanding him back.

Union leaders said he had been treated "harshly" and a parish councillor has written directly to the Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier, expressing the council's disappointment.

Nearly 300 people who had their post delivered by Phillip have signed a petition calling for their postie to be delivered back to them.

Jean Barbour, clerk to Thurnby and Bushby Parish Council, wrote a letter on the council's behalf protesting at the Royal Mail decision.

She said: "The parish council wanted to write to Royal Mail to say how sorry we were that the action had been taken and how much his work was appreciated.

"The feeling in the village was that he was a very good postman. He was also cheerful and had a chat with people and carried out his duties conscientiously."

Villagers such as Margaret Mayberry, who is a member of the parish council, collected the signatures for the petition, which has been sent to Royal Mail.

Mrs Mayberry said: "We took the petition to all the houses on Phillip's route and everything people said about him was positive.

"People were practically grabbing the petition to sign it and saying they wanted him back. They all said what a fantastic young man he is.

"I think we got signatures from about 99.9 per cent of his route.

"He was pleasant and helpful and very popular in the village."

The villagers have sent a copy of the petition to their MP Alan Duncan, who has written to Royal Mail expressing people's concerns.

Phillip, who lives in Telford Way, Thurnby, and is currently unemployed, said: "They said they fired me for poor attendance but I had doctors' notes and hospital notes for my absence."

Phillip's dad, Stephen, 58, who is also a postman, said: "He was trustworthy and a good lad so the village understandably don't want him to go."

A spokesman for the Communication Workers' Union in Leicester said: "He has been treated harshly.

"Phillip has not been playing the system, he's not been saying I don't want to go to work - he has had genuine medical problems."

A spokesman for Royal Mail said Phillip's attendance record was confidential. The company said: "The stages of Royal Mail's attendance procedure are intended to help employees maintain appropriate patterns of attendance and avoid more formal action.

"At every stage of the procedure there is an opportunity for employees to provide an explanation for their absence and for mitigating factors to be fully taken into account. Each case is treated on its merits.

"In this case, we believe the employee has been treated in accordance with our agreed procedures."

[norbet colon]

Never do anything wrong do they ? -everything is according to procedure never botched -yeah right !
Very best practice -being shopped to the papers all the time and taken to tribunuals.

[tatt]

Mitigating factors my arse, breach any stage of the attendence proceedure round our way and you are automatically staged.

[IWW Fellow Worker]

"At every stage of the procedure there is an opportunity for employees to provide an explanation for their absence and for mitigating factors to be fully taken into account. Each case is treated on its merits.

Don't they talk bollocks? The sad thing is, most of them don't realise they're talking it. They swallow wholesale the party line and think everyone else should. Perfect candidates for any totalitarian state where individual thought is discouraged.

[stressed eric]

im going through excatly the same at the moment. cant go into to much detail as dont know who's on here.
but for last 2 years they have been breathing down my neck disciplining me for a serious illness.
they've sacked me once and i got my job back within 4days, and there trying to scak me again i'm not laying down and neither should anyone else, these wan***s dont care how sick you are your another number to them.

mitigation my arse, they dont listen doctors reports specialists reports they dont take into account.

[mak403]

working at campbell st leicester i know philip,brilliant lad,really good postie,c'mon royal mail bring him back,all the best for the future philip

[Post Off]

im going through excatly the same at the moment. cant go into to much detail as dont know who's on here.
but for last 2 years they have been breathing down my neck disciplining me for a serious illness.
they've sacked me once and i got my job back within 4days, and there trying to scak me again i'm not laying down and neither should anyone else, these wan***s dont care how sick you are your another number to them.

mitigation my arse, they dont listen doctors reports specialists reports they dont take into account.

I'm thinking to meself right now that we need to expose these Royal Mail injustices, but even if I were to set up a web page on my website it will be too late for people who are suffering as you are now.

Tell me something, as I was wondering... If I was to set up a kind of blog about Royal Mail's attendance procedural practices and anything else that would be deemed as some kind of malpractice towards its own employees would I be breaking the official secret act that I signed so many years ago?

I applaud the people of Thurnby for their genuine and heartfelt goodwill towards Phillip, but this is an unusual event exposing (perhaps) for the first time Royal Mail's harsh attendance procedure.

[johno47]

Managers are brainwashed by :lfo and :cfo into forcing stages against people over sickness, their thinking is if they can get as many people out of the door by sacking them, the less they have to pay out in VR, managers had used to use discrection at one time to determain if a stage was necessary, now its happening in every office, managers are all too afraid to not issue stages because they get bollockings from area managers when they dont...UNITY IS STRENGTH.

[coppertop]

Well here we are again seeing RM's bull shi. as on of the country's biggest employers it is amazing to see what crap they get away with. Also RM have one of the worst track records for employee H&S , this shows in the way that this postie has been treated he is not the only one to be gotten rid of like this and I'm sure as hell he will not be the last.

[stressed eric]

well if anyone has anymore attendance procedure storys let me know, i need as much amo for my case as possible.
because of our CWU area rep been overworked, i've been fighting this more or less on my own, and the more backing i can get the better.

[sheena]

that is digusting the way that poor lad as been treated but thats royal mail all over if you are a piss head you get away with being pissed on duty to not turning up for work and not even ringing in with an excuse ha ha sick system its a joke why bother with a sick note just say you are piss head and you they bend over backwards for you. f**ked off is an under statement. good luck philip i hope you are back posting letters soon[/list]

[fatherchristmas]

i remember a PHG not long after i first started, so you are looking at 20 more years ago but he hadn't had any time off sick in 15 years impressive on its own. But unfourtunatley he had the cheek to have a heart attack and have 6 months off of course you know how this thread ends RM tried to sack him. He managed to see out his time and is now drawing his pension good luck to.

[shakapaw]

Doesn't that just show what a poor calibre of manager we are
subjected to.Unable to differentiate between a decent worker
and a genuine skiver.Seems to me rm are just hell bent on self
destrution.

[norbet colon]

that is digusting the way that poor lad as been treated but thats royal mail all over if you are a piss head you get away with being pissed on duty to not turning up for work and not even ringing in with an excuse ha ha sick system its a joke why bother with a sick note just say you are piss head and you they bend over backwards for you. f**ked off is an under statement. good luck philip i hope you are back posting letters soon[/list]

With the RMT , Alcoholism was regarded as a illness but if someone was disciplined and wriggled out of it with alcoholisim, if they missed as much as one meeting the orginal charge would come into play . Then the Transport Act came out and they wanted rid of that p***y culture. There was managers that wanted Breath Tests etc and the limit was more stringent than for motorists , 1-3 of a pint in the system was the maximum.
They just had purges to get rid of the p***heads , either the p***heads would be working all the OT to pay to P** their money up the wall, or they'd be taking too much time off as quell surprise alcohol is not very good for you and they tended to get infections etc .Best Example was a Liverpool Inspector sacked for failing a breath test as he'd used a alcohol content fresh breath spray. Idiot Managers actually childishly bragged about it.

With RM this sounds like one of Old St's Trendy Decrees about people getting help with Lifestyle /Addiction Problems & RM being this caring, respecting modern employer and earning outside awards & brownie points from the gullible & naive.
So if you've been in and out of hospital & poked & prodded more times than Sooty , harassed back into work accused of being a malingerer and work shy it's OK by RM , and they'll have you through the door .So tell RM Mr Carlsberg & Mr Heinken make you prop bars up and you won't get bullied .

[Stormproof]

Some of the guys at work said to get off my stage 3 I should tell my dom i'm a alcoholic or a druggie and that would guarantee I would keep my job. Everyone at our place with a genuine illness seems to get the elbow. Don't stand much chance of keeping my job then