Mails Down Mails Down blah blah

[jetblack]

Can anyone help me understand the situation with Whistl & UK MAIL et al? Are royal Mail legally obliged to carry their letters or is it a commercial choice?

I believe RM are bound to by the regulator.

Go figure.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Can anyone help me understand the situation with Whistl & UK MAIL et al? Are royal Mail legally obliged to carry their letters or is it a commercial choice?

I believe RM are bound to by the regulator.

Go figure.

Yes - It's part of our licence as a Universal Service Provider.

If you see a letter stamped "Condition 9 Access Agreement" it means it entered the system through an incorrect channel and the DSA company will be charged the full amount of postage.

[clashcityrocker]

you'd lose the contractual money but how could they continue to function without RM doing the final mile deliveries? They just don't have the infrastructure and could not create it in any kind of timescale that would prevent them going bust.

You have answered your own question.
The prevailing theory is that monopolies are a bad thing for the consumer, so introducing competition is a good thing, But given that it would be impossible for any company to do that for the reasons you have stated (and given that we have a 500 year head start) we have to give them access to our pipeline.
How many companies offer gas now? How many have laid their own pipelines?

[tone123]

"The prevailing theory is that monopolies are a bad thing for the consumer, so introducing competition is a good thing, But given that it would be impossible for any company to do that for the reasons you have stated (and given that we have a 500 year head start) we have to give them access to our pipeline.
How many companies offer gas now? How many have laid their own pipelines?"

Good point. Personally I'm not certain that competition is automatically a great thing and definitelynot when there is too much of it.
I can't help but think that if RM was still a public, nationalised service there would be no need for this to occur as the monopoly that would exist could be used to give the best possible & cheapest service to the consumer. The only reason that competition is needed is because RM now have too generate dividends for the shareholders.

[jetblack]

Competition is often good for the consumer (where price fixing and market rigging isn't a factor - a charge often levelled at the energy market amongst others) but its rarely good for the employees. For employees in competing firms its usually a race to the bottom.
And consumers, during the day, are employee's themselves for the most part. I would suggest that the loss as employee's more than outweighs any gains as a consumer,.

Most postal services, worldwide, are still state owned. This is because they are what is known as a natural monopoly, are service orientated and are a crucial part of the communications infrastructure of the nation.
But not here in the neo liberal heaven that is the United Kingdom PLC of 2017. Oh no - we know better

[clashcityrocker]

How does the demise of milkmen relate to the postal market ?

The average herd size has risen, as those holdings with smaller herds have left the industry. In 2014 the average number of cows per UK herd was 133, compared to 97 in 2004, and 75 in 1996.
This is akin to the amalgamation of delivery offices. Small is disappearing.

The decline in the size of the dairy herd has been accompanied by a similar fall in the number of dairy producers. The number of registered dairy producers in the UK fell from 35,741 in 1995 to 13,815 in 2014, a 61% reduction.
As the numbers of postal workers has also declined.

Whilst the number of UK dairy cows has decreased, the yield per cow has increased by 93% since 1975. As a result, total domestic milk production has increased by 9% over the period.
And that is the % increase in productivity that will be necessary for the business to survive.

Which bit of the demise of milkmen and the relation to the postal market don't you understand?

And here's the rub......Between 1995 and 2015, doorstep delivery has declined from 45% to 3% of the retail milk market.

So when your rural area no longer gets a daily mail service or you have to go to a central point to collect it, don't say the warning signs weren't there.
The idea has already been MOOted.

[Tman]

Or until the Great Bearded One moves in to Number Ten.
He's promised renationalisation of RM.
Or did he? Or was that then and this is now? Or was it just an intention? An idea perhaps? Something that slipped from the mouth of the Idiot Abbott?
Who knows?

[jetblack]

How does the demise of milkmen relate to the postal market ?

Which bit of the demise of milkmen and the relation to the postal market don't you understand?

Just not sure its the most fruitful of analogies Clash TBH. I mean, there's been a decline in the sperm count amongst UK males over the last 25 years - can we make an analogy with the postal sector here as well ?

Maybe its just me - if yourself and others find the comparison useful then all well and good.

[clashcityrocker]

Just not sure its the most fruitful of analogies Clash TBH.

The original post was simply to point out that what was once regarded as commonplace and perennial disappeared in 10 years.
We don't have a God given right to exist in quickly changing times.

The second post was a bit of light hearted Sunday afternoon banter, attempting to provide a quasi intellectual defence of the original post.
It is not meant to be totally serious. The idea has been MOO ted. That is a joke because MOO is the noise a cow makes. You probably missed it if you have had a sense of humour bypass.
(Note to self: Don't make jokes in a thread Jetblack is posting in because he doesn't understand them.)

[jetblack]

The idea has been MOO ted. That is a joke because MOO is the noise a cow makes. You probably missed it if you have had a sense of humour bypass.
(Note to self: Don't make jokes in a thread Jetblack is posting in because he doesn't understand them.)

Oh yeah. Missed that one. Ha ha.

Just for the record - milk consumption has gone up in the UK over the last 10 years.

But yes - increased productivity and automation has led to a reduction in the numbers of cows used (posties are the cows here) - thus the CWU proposal of a 35 hour week. That is - the same amount of cows. The postie cow could do less work (cos he is after all a human being and not a factory farmed bovine), have a better work/leisure balance and, with the aid of automation, could thereby ensure a happy workforce and a quality of service second to none. Good milk that is - none factory farmed milk - there is a growing market demand for this sort of thing, and rightfully so in my view.
The alternative is a diminished herd milked dry, a one way ticket to the abbatoir for a good portion of us and the dairy owners getting very fat indeed.

I'm getting into the swing of this now - just need to find a place for the milkman in the grand scheme of things

[postslippete]

The letters are counted by the sequencing machines. That count is verified and I have never heard a senior rep question its accuracy.
The figure generally quoted is that letter traffic is falling by about 5% each year and the figures on the first page of this thread would seem to be roughly in line with that.

If you are on delivery, let's say for ease of maths you have 1 000 letters/day.
A 5% drop would be 50 letters less/day. Over the 20 bundles on a delivery it would be 2 letters less/bundle approximately.
You wouldn't even notice. And of course if your round was made bigger it would be undetectable to you. The decline would be subsumed in the general increase of extra delivery points.

50 fewer letters would mean approx. 2 minutes less on prep.
From a business point of view those 2 minutes are not really recoverable. You can't really be given 2 more minutes lapsing, the reality is it just means 2 minutes scratching your arse.
But 2 minutes per postie = 100 000 minutes (assuming about 50 000 posties) or about 1.500 hours or about £15 000/day. And that is without taking into account of the effect on our colleagues in processing or distribution. And worse. the trend in letter traffic appears irreversible. Even the removal of the cap on D2D has done nothing to alleviate the decline in our workload.

So those with their heads buried in the sand who refuse to acknowledge the reality of the decline in letters (which are still the bulk of our daily workload) or those that choose to disbelieve the RM " propaganda" about traffic will never understand what is going on in their industry.

Personally I don't see any way of resuscitating this business. It is slowly dying. If they hived off GLS the death would be swift if not painless.

Great post.
In a nutshell what 5% less letters means per year.
This is likely to accelerate.
bills, invoices, utilities, bank statements, greetings cards, magazines, advertising literature is all declining year on year.
Paper Car tax discs and TV Licences have disappeared.
100's of magazine titles have disspapeared or gone online the last few years.
Sky mags, Saga.
How much longer do you think companies like Screwfix are going to send paper catalogues when they have an online presence.

There will be more things that currently get posted that will go online.

The traditional postperson will have to change or die out.

Then you have the advances in technology that will replace labour year on year.

Packets are the only way to sustain jobs.
The vans and trolleys were bought in so packets can be delivered - forget about H+S.

A lot of people on this forum need to wake up and realise what is happening.
So many people are in total denial.

In reply to somebody posting earlier.
Yes new houses are being built.
Yes there has been a big influx of EU Citizens swelling the population.
LETTERS HAVE STILL DECREASED !

Absolutely spot on. Not all of us on this forum are completely and utterly in denial about the decline of mail volumes that is going on and will continue.

There is no way back from declining letter volumes, which means the only viable way to manage the decline across the postal industry is to make Royal Mail the market leader in parcels.

Taking industrial action would do untold damage to the Royal Mail brand and our competitors in the parcels market will seize upon any opportunity presented to them by industrial action in our business. I may sound like a broken record, but this is deadly serious. If you take industrial action, it is not like in the past when business and customers could be persuaded back to our brand. In today's postal market, customers and business partners have more choice than ever before with who to take their business to.

If Royal Mail is disrupted with industrial action, how long before companies or local authorities decide they will no longer send paper statements or council tax bills through Royal Mail. They could instead decide to simply put it all online. Once that happens then that business is gone and gone forever.

Companies like Amazon may pull the plug completely on Royal Mail if the business is disrupted by industrial action. They have the capacity to deliver already and may just decide to expand it right across their operation. If that happens and Royal Mail loses that business, it will be gone and gone forever.

So those of you who think that you will be protecting your jobs and terms and conditions by standing at the gates instead of delivering for our customers - THINK long and hard because this time the damage from industrial action would be permanent. The scale of job losses resulting from such industrial action would be unprecedented. Make no mistake.

For all that Royal Mail have been spouting off about "Managing the decline" and falling mail volumes, ask yourself why they have invested millions of pounds into CSS machines and staff trained to use them?? Why are Royal Mail keen to send everything on one wave of mech? Why the need for investing in D2D collating machines? Yes, mail volumes might have fallen BUT Royal Mail still make the profit not just on parcels, but on parcels and letters!! Royal Mail have not given up on the letters side because it still brings in much needed revenue. The only decline that Royal Mail want to manage is the reduction of postal staff numbers because now they have the technological and processing means, all they want now are operational postal staff working on bigger outdoor duty spans of approximately 6 hours plus. I'm not saying that won't happen eventually but it would be a bit unrealistic to expect it to suddenly happen overnight. Like, we would all turn up one week at the depot at 11am and find all the mail ready to be delivered for us at the delivery office, and then we would take this work and finish at 5pm.

Nobody wants a strike. A strike is basically lose-lose. We would lose a few days or perhaps a weeks wages but RM as a privatised company would lose hell of a lot more in terms of its business lost and its reputation. And what company is prepared to commit commercial suicide like that?? Royal Mail are the only ones that really pulling the strings in these negotiations; they don't have to agree to the CWUs 35 hour working week at all!! I'm not deluded enough to think that the Royal Mail won't change, it will do just like it has done in the past, in agreement with the CWU so that we as its workers don't lose out too much in terms of our pay and pensions.

However, if we don't vote or be prepared to go out on strike, we would lose far more than a week's worth of wages. The mood is for optimism for an agreement though and not for caving in to Royal Mail ridiculous demands that we should somehow operate like myHermes or Yodel - two of the worst courier companies in the UK. If this company ever operates like Amazon do and is able to hire and fire staff were necessary with a high turnover because of crap terms and cons - it will be purely because we didn't stand there in solidarity at the gates.

[tommyrep]

An accurate and a true reflection /reality check of the situation we find ourselves in, very well summarised by Postslippette.
Do we just accept the unfair removal of our T&Cs at the whim of RM?, on their basis of it's the only option to compete with our rivals. ?

[Tman]

For all that Royal Mail have been spouting off about "Managing the decline" and falling mail volumes, ask yourself why they have invested millions of pounds into CSS machines and staff trained to use them??

Why? because they got their predictions and then future automation strategy wrong, that's why.
Before the CSS programme was even officially signed off RM was having to move CSS's around the country to save having idle machines etc.
The original CSS duties at our local DO finished about 9am....now they're done and dusted by 6am if they take it easy.

[clashcityrocker]

BTW - we are the big fish in this particular pond.

It doesn't matter how big a fish you are if the pond you swim in is suffering deoxygenation caused by the green algae of letter traffic decline.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that none of the other fish deliver letters.
We are the only fish in our pond.

[ScousePostie]

We had so many packets on our walks today that we could have actually swam in them. Told DOM that we would need to leave large packets and lapsing. He showed me figures that stated the walks only had an 35 and 42% call rate and that there was only one other walk in the office with a higher call rate. I found this quite hard to believe, but still accepted his argument. In the end I agreed with DOM that the lapsing would be left. 45 minutes over today.