Mails Down Mails Down blah blah

[milly]

As my granny said, " you always get wan" and it's Milly today. Or another RM plant.
Ok less letters for you to handle in processing.
The impact on delivery of many more packets/parcels is always over looked.
Scanning on door step, delivery to neighbours, tracked items have all been gradually reduced.
Overtime ? It may be in Millie's case, that she is now feeling the impact as us on delivery that it is now focused on as a big money saver. Since privatisation OT is dropping. We on delivery have enforced lapsing, to fill up our time despite massive jobs lost from FT to PT. Maybe processing is a better option, any vacancies? seems easier than our lot in delivery.

I am no Royal Mail plant I have worked as a Postman for nearly 30 years so I remember what it was like when it was busy and now it ain't.
I am always puzzled why delivery Postman complain about their jobs,they have always been crap jobs,out in all weathers,waking up in the middle of the night to start work at 5.30 am.
There were no Vans or trolley's when I did them,all on foot with a heavy pouch over my shoulder,the first chance I got I went into the Mail Centre.

Forgetting than when you was a real postie you would probably be finished by 9am every morning...now people are out delivering till 3/4pm sometimes...Ignorance is bliss I guess.

I would be lucky to get out for 9am those drivers waited for no man.
The thing when I started with no seniority all the jobs with early finishes were sewn up by the old-timers,so I rarely got finished before 2pm.

[Newbie001]

Decline in mail this year is more to do with the crackdown on scam junk mail, some addresses now getting 1/2 letters instead of the usual dozen. But if anything most call-rates on duties seem to have increased. Definitely the busiest summer since I've been here. Although Dims will tell you otherwise.

[eastie]

15 years ago had 3 bags for my round ,now I have 9 bags plus a bag of lapsing, plus scanning parcels and doing collections
Yes addressed letters are down but I know what I would prefer.

15 years a go the job was a joke then.
3 bags !
You had it all way too easy !

Rural mate , still on the same walk

[milly]

Yet again the same old propaganda of "Mails Down" but down from what ??
Last Tuesday ,Last month, Last Year ????
They don't back it up with any information
Only thing that's down are F/T Postmen / Overtime/ S/A /and Pension

As I have said in a previous post,15 years ago we used to run our collection mail from 1.30pm to 8.30pm and now we run it from 6.30pm to 7.45pm.
Our road packet fittings have been reduced from 6 to 4 with far fewer selections on them.
If it is so busy how come I don't get over 30 hours a week in overtime like I used to.
I can't understand why people have difficulty in believing that mail volumes have dropped off a cliff,it's not propaganda if it is true.

Those 30 hours you used to get have probably gone to a part timer on a 20 hour a week contract. Thats straw man argument, there could be many reasons why you personally get less overtime. There's almost always loads of overtime in my DO anyway.

Since I started a few years ago on a 25hr contract they have introduced lapsing, more recently double lapsing has started creeping in, we do collections whilst out on our rounds, we have to sign in, then out on delivery, then back from delivery then sign out when leaving, 2D barcodes have been introduced, there are lots of them and they add even more time when they invariably don't scan or the PDA freezes. Other than the odd quiet tuesday in summer, I barely ever finish on time and it's not because I'm slow.

The reason I don't get the overtime that I used to get is nothing to do with Part-Timers.
In my office we have fewer Part-Time and Full-Time staff compared to 10 years ago.
We used to have an early shift of around 40 people plus another 10 on overtime.
Now we have no real early shift to speak of and they want take more hours out of whats left,I would imagine our early shift will be gone in 18 months.
The reason my Mail Centre has shed so many jobs is that the Mail IS DOWN from considerably from what it was.
This is a FACT and not a Strawman argument.
If you are on deliveries and you are busy you ought to be happy that there is plenty of work.

[ernieshoe]

Yet again the same old propaganda of "Mails Down" but down from what ??
Last Tuesday ,Last month, Last Year ????
They don't back it up with any information
Only thing that's down are F/T Postmen / Overtime/ S/A /and Pension

As I have said in a previous post,15 years ago we used to run our collection mail from 1.30pm to 8.30pm and now we run it from 6.30pm to 7.45pm.
Our road packet fittings have been reduced from 6 to 4 with far fewer selections on them.
If it is so busy how come I don't get over 30 hours a week in overtime like I used to.
I can't understand why people have difficulty in believing that mail volumes have dropped off a cliff,it's not propaganda if it is true.

Those 30 hours you used to get have probably gone to a part timer on a 20 hour a week contract. Thats straw man argument, there could be many reasons why you personally get less overtime. There's almost always loads of overtime in my DO anyway.

Since I started a few years ago on a 25hr contract they have introduced lapsing, more recently double lapsing has started creeping in, we do collections whilst out on our rounds, we have to sign in, then out on delivery, then back from delivery then sign out when leaving, 2D barcodes have been introduced, there are lots of them and they add even more time when they invariably don't scan or the PDA freezes. Other than the odd quiet tuesday in summer, I barely ever finish on time and it's not because I'm slow.

The reason I don't get the overtime that I used to get is nothing to do with Part-Timers.
In my office we have fewer Part-Time and Full-Time staff compared to 10 years ago.
We used to have an early shift of around 40 people plus another 10 on overtime.
Now we have no real early shift to speak of and they want take more hours out of whats left,I would imagine our early shift will be gone in 18 months.
The reason my Mail Centre has shed so many jobs is that the Mail IS DOWN from considerably from what it was.
This is a FACT and not a Strawman argument.
If you are on deliveries and you are busy you ought to be happy that there is plenty of work.

In 10 years time the same people who are moaning about their busy jobs will be posting in the Good Old Days forum talking about how much mail they used to get - how they all had full time jobs and went over it was so busy.

Too many of you on this forum be careful what you wish for.
Letters are dropping year on year. Believe it !
Be grateful you're swimming in packets - that will save 1000s of jobs !

[Judgee]

Well all I can go by is my round and in the last 6 years since it was changed in a revision, there has been no decline in mail, if anything it's increased. Maybe other parts of the country it has dropped but not in my immediate area.

What pisses me off about the declining mail argument continually being pushed at us is the total blindness shown towards the parcels market. When I started 15 years ago you were having a bad day if you got 10 packets for your walk in total. Now you get 10 for every bag. "Declining mail volumes" is always used as a stick to beat us with, to suggest we have far more time to cope with larger walks now. Totally ignoring the massive increase in packets and the extra time that that entails. That's without the added time sinks of more recorded/specials/tracked/2d scans, etc.

RM management only see what suits them, then harass and bully those that can't possibly complete on a daily basis. I can understand they want deliveries to now earn every penny they are paid and that's fair enough. But they should have a much fairer way of assessing just what is a manageable workload and what is not rather than just harping on about falling mail volumes as if that's all a delivery consists of!

[rubberbond]

Yet again the same old propaganda of "Mails Down" but down from what ??
Last Tuesday ,Last month, Last Year ????
They don't back it up with any information
Only thing that's down are F/T Postmen / Overtime/ S/A /and Pension

As I have said in a previous post,15 years ago we used to run our collection mail from 1.30pm to 8.30pm and now we run it from 6.30pm to 7.45pm.
Our road packet fittings have been reduced from 6 to 4 with far fewer selections on them.
If it is so busy how come I don't get over 30 hours a week in overtime like I used to.
I can't understand why people have difficulty in believing that mail volumes have dropped off a cliff,it's not propaganda if it is true.

It's usually a case of ,if you tell a lie often enough,it becomes the truth. Look at The Courier (although I don't now and I wouldn't recommend it for the more gullible amongst us. ) it's so full of propaganda and lies,it's a complete work of fiction, any article in The Courier is soon dismantled and exposed for the pathetic attempt at trying to fool us. You only have to look on here for the true picture. You can only fool some of the people, some of the time. I used to get 2 trays of mech mail in a morning,now I got 3 and a bundle,Mail isn't down where I work.

[milly]

Yet again the same old propaganda of "Mails Down" but down from what ??
Last Tuesday ,Last month, Last Year ????
They don't back it up with any information
Only thing that's down are F/T Postmen / Overtime/ S/A /and Pension

As I have said in a previous post,15 years ago we used to run our collection mail from 1.30pm to 8.30pm and now we run it from 6.30pm to 7.45pm.
Our road packet fittings have been reduced from 6 to 4 with far fewer selections on them.
If it is so busy how come I don't get over 30 hours a week in overtime like I used to.
I can't understand why people have difficulty in believing that mail volumes have dropped off a cliff,it's not propaganda if it is true.

It's usually a case of ,if you tell a lie often enough,it becomes the truth. Look at The Courier (although I don't now and I wouldn't recommend it for the more gullible amongst us. ) it's so full of propaganda and lies,it's a complete work of fiction, any article in The Courier is soon dismantled and exposed for the pathetic attempt at propaganda aimed at fooling us that it is, you only have to look on here for the true picture. You can only fool some of the people, some of the time. I used to get 2 trays of mech mail in a morning,now I got 3 and a bundle,Mail isn't down where I work.

Somehow you seem to end up with more Mail than the Mail Centres have processed for you.
The fact that deliveries are busy is due to the fact that there are two people to a Van so you are able to take more Mail out and cover more ground than Postmen in the past could deliver when you were dropped off by a Driver and you are probably out on Delivery for longer.
If it is so busy why have many Mail Centres shut down in the past 10 years,why does the TPO no longer operate if it is so busy.
Automation and a massive drop in Mail volumes is the reason why we will continue to lose jobs.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Is nobody reading other peoples posts. This thread is madness and looks like the deaf using sign language to talk to the blind.

Letter mail is down. That's a fact and a certantity, and reading between the lines most delivery posties accept that to be true.

Its not that the letter mail is down that's the bind for Delivery Posties, its the fact that traffic in other streams that have increased is ignored by management, that no extra time is given for DTN, that they have introduced more items that need scanning without taking the extra process into account.

The kicker is then when you tell management that you can't complete today the refrain "is well mails' down".

So stop this "must be a Royal Mail Plant" crap, and the reverse, it helps no one and is counter productive.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Over the last ~5 years, I've seen infamous duties in my depot go from needing 2+ hours overtime to complete to now typically no more than ~45mins (often no o/t on the lighter days of the week), doing the job reasonably "properly."

However, purely going off OPG sign in and sign out times, it looks like many OPGs have now got doddle duties and have time for double lapsing. Because when the duties were awful ~5 years ago, instead of having the daily argument with lino/DOM about overtime and/or cutting off, many OPGs were making their time at work at least ~90mins shorter by not taking all their paid break; locking up HCTs to do loops by pouch; flicking through the bundle to get mail for the next address while walking; coming in early and working for free etc. Now we get less sequenced and IPS mail, OPGs get out much earlier than they did back then, but they continue to "cut corners" (meaning they often finish way before their contract hours) as a kind of payback for when they made the duties look far more achievable than they were (and they didn't claiming overtime for).

[tommyrep]

As my granny said, " you always get wan" and it's Milly today. Or another RM plant.
Ok less letters for you to handle in processing.
The impact on delivery of many more packets/parcels is always over looked.
.

Indeed, you do always get wan.
So you dispute that mail's down (even though you said "Ok less letters for you to handle in processing") because there's "many more packets/parcels"?
Really?

Tman.
I do not disputed Mail volumes being down, though I could question exaggerated RM figures.
The impact on delivery is limited, the walker has still to cover the walk route and there is always d2d regardless of stamped nail. Call rate time is still the same delivering one or 4 letters.
Delivering tracked items, 2d bar codes and delivery to neighbors is without doubt added more in time required than a few less letters. Millie may have less to handle, the collection drivers still have to open boxes and collect mail. The time factor in doing that is minimal. Easily out weighed by congested traffic etc.
We have lost many jobs in delivery and all new starts will be on PT fir ever more.
I assume there will be an impact on processing jobs, but I do not work in that field.
Safe bet there are still ample linos and their like still employed to over look the remaining.
I reply in assumption you were referring to my post, or was it intended for " Millie" ?

[tommyrep]

Is nobody reading other peoples posts. This thread is madness and looks like the deaf using sign language to talk to the blind.

Letter mail is down. That's a fact and a certantity, and reading between the lines most delivery posties accept that to be true.

Its not that the letter mail is down that's the bind for Delivery Posties, its the fact that traffic in other streams that have increased is ignored by management, that no extra time is given for DTN, that they have introduced more items that need scanning without taking the extra process into account.

The kicker is then when you tell management that you can't complete today the refrain "is well mails' down".

So stop this "must be a Royal Mail Plant" crap, and the reverse, it helps no one and is counter productive.

Ok TBT
I apologise for using the term "RM plant". Some of our colleagues on this thread are being unfair on over stretched delivery posties, especially if they do not work on delivery. I know the forum is open to all sides of an argument, but as the RM propaganda courier proves, there are still a lot of colleagues out there to pose as great full employees of RM,, when I kknow from personal experience they are not the compassionate employer they wish to portray. Maybe not plants, but stooges possibly ??
I am truly staggered to read the views of a person who openly admits to jumping from delivery into processing because the work was too tough, and has an easier time with loads of overtime to boot, sounds like utopia. Then promoting an argument used by management to try and convince delivery staff that we have LESS work and by definition should be doing even more. I also recall the good old days, ( another criticism of some on thread who are of the view it was too easy ) but the pendulum has swung way too far now in the assumption that even more work can now be absorbed by duties that are currently unachievable - within duty time.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Call rate time is still the same delivering one or 4 letters.

If doing things properly, you would be stood still for longer while "filtering" the bundle for those four items for the next address, before then walking to the address and posting them through the letterbox. Those extra few seconds turn into minutes over a whole delivery.

[citypostie]

If they are cutting loads of jobs in mailcentres it's just carrying on from what they've done in delivery offices for years. That's why us postie's say it's still busy because we've had to take on the work of numerous duties that have been removed in revisions and when people retire they lapse the duty then eventually add it onto other frames. As for less overtime in mailcentres, obviously they want you to cover for the people who leave by working quicker like us postie's, good they should do away with all sa as well. I did nights in a mailcentre years ago and to say nobody rushed about is an understatement.

[Driver74]

Is the mail down it depends how far you want look back I've been in Royal Mail over 40 yrs although not in delivery anymore but there is certainly more Mail today we used to be out of the office 6.30-7.00 in the morning one bag was the norm 2 at most on a heavier delivery not many jobs lasted more than 2 hrs some less town centre jobs a lot less these were the senior jobs, then back for breakfast and second delivery maybe half a dozen letter plenty of days less than that but the job was 6 days an d 5 o clock starts but usually back in bed on Saturday morning by 9 so definitely not the Mail I take to delivery offices during the night and early morning today