Seniority is a Joke

[postslippete]

Pete, why didn't you? Nothing worse than those martyrs who come in coughing and sneezing and spreading it around to everyone else just so they can claim that they haven't been sick for X years.
The union fought for the rights of employees to have sick leave when they need it, so there's nothing clever about struggling in to work.

I guess I'm fortunate that I don't seem to get colds nor suffer aches and pains like some other posties. I can only put it down to the fact that I like to take my time on delivery and have a day off instead of working all the time.

[wacko74]

Well surely one fair and transparent alternative for picking who gets any vacant duty, at least as far as singleton rurals are concerned, could be based on whether the applicant already knows that particular duty without requiring training on it?

If there's more than one postie who does already know the duty then it could go down to seniority.

This would exclude the most senior posties from just rotating the cushiest rurals between themselves as most of them have been on the same duty for the last 20 or 30 years and don't even know any other routes in the office and would give leave reserves the chance to actually sign for a duty and reward them for their flexibility and experience.

[arnold cheshire]

Do you think we had easy duties 40 years ago and had top pick on holidays?

[azza30]

You could join as a reserve on shitty exploitative part-time contract, learn loads of rounds, be completely flexible, cover sickness late notice, never get a Saturday off. Work well beyond your exploitative contracted hours. Never receive a complaint, do everything properly to a high standard, always complete on time.

But, that counts for literally nothing.

The only thing that matters is how long you've been there.

You think people who started 20+ years ago got assigned the best delivery in the office when starting ?

Those of us with seniority have ALL done our time of doing the crap walks, getting the crap overtime, being a reserve and being shifted 2-3 times in a morning, those of us that stuck around for YEARS of this eventually are rewarded for that. If you decided to show loyalty to RM and stick around through the crap you too can benefit for seniority, in the mean time pipe down and grind through like those of us with longer seniority have done. I never dreamed of complaining about this even when i was new because I recognised people have earned the right to "easier" deliveries and at some point i`d be given the same perk. People want everything handed to them on a plate these days, earn your seniority and then you will deserve it.

20 years ago the shite walks were nowhere near as shite as they are now, with all the growth in housing and business. The walk no one wants now in our DO was half the size it is now- and no on wanted it then either.

[arnold cheshire]

Junior people go sick. all the time

[arnold cheshire]

Planners are too blame . We only have three decent walks anyway

[arnold cheshire]

Equal pay ? Unequal walks something isn't right

[arnold cheshire]

You could join as a reserve on shitty exploitative part-time contract, learn loads of rounds, be completely flexible, cover sickness late notice, never get a Saturday off. Work well beyond your exploitative contracted hours. Never receive a complaint, do everything properly to a high standard, always complete on time.

But, that counts for literally nothing.

The only thing that matters is how long you've been there.

You think people who started 20+ years ago got assigned the best delivery in the office when starting ?

Those of us with seniority have ALL done our time of doing the crap walks, getting the crap overtime, being a reserve and being shifted 2-3 times in a morning, those of us that stuck around for YEARS of this eventually are rewarded for that. If you decided to show loyalty to RM and stick around through the crap you too can benefit for seniority, in the mean time pipe down and grind through like those of us with longer seniority have done. I never dreamed of complaining about this even when i was new because I recognised people have earned the right to "easier" deliveries and at some point i`d be given the same perk. People want everything handed to them on a plate these days, earn your seniority and then you will deserve it.

20 years ago the shite walks were nowhere near as shite as they are now, with all the growth in housing and business. The walk no one wants now in our DO was half the size it is now- and no on wanted it then either.

The day was shorter

[arnold cheshire]

So it should be down to management pets and who shouts the most

[wacko74]

Do you think we had easy duties 40 years ago and had top pick on holidays?

Well we had easy duties 18 years ago (I know because that's when I started) often finished for 10.30, 2.5 hours before my finish time, other posties were even earlier... and back then the old timers were grumbling about how crap the job had become compared to the ''good old days''

So I can only imagine how easy the duties must have been 40 years ago.

[arnold cheshire]

We couldn't get holidays because the senior men had them we got worse walks because the senior men had them

[DGH]

So it should be down to management pets and who shouts the most

Obviously not.

But in almost all other unskilled work, tasks are assigned my managers not allocated by seniority. Certainly there is always going to be some unfairness. But you get on with it. This is why people who have worked quite widely outside of RM in other unskilled work find seniority bizarre. Almost anywhere else managers don't allow their most experienced staff to decide what job they're going to do, they make use of their experience in the manner they think will be most optimal.

The argument that's basically 'the managers can't be trusted' is flawed for the same reason as the inequality in walks has rightly been put at the door of the planners, not seniority. But you can't logically argue both. It is a flaw in senior management that some line managers may not be trustworthy in this. Seniority does not fix that, it avoids it in the same way that seniority does not fix the inequality of walks, it avoids it.

[Postie45]

Come on man, don't tell people to pipe down. You sound like a knob when you do that.

I'm expressing an opinion, have the decency to counter my opinion with reasoned arguments if you disagree. And please don't fall into the RM trap of making everything so personal. I'm making an argument against how RM operates, not the "dues" anybody in particular has paid, and I'm certainly not pissed off with my current situation. I'm on FT hours, and I'm happy with my role within the business.

Like I said, my opinion is that seniority plays a role, but it shouldn't be the only consideration.

i did make quite a few reasoned arguments about how its a fair system because it does apply to everyone and you would benefit from it given time. Its just that we go through this type of thread every so often, and no one can really provide a good alternative which would be legitimately fairer. If you do it by hours as someone has mentioned is that fair to someone who has family and cant do as many hours ? There is no perfect system at least this one ends up with everyone being on the same playing field.
What are these duties youre talking about where seniority wouldnt be the only consideration ? for almost all duties we require the same skill set, so how would you break ties for them ?

[koolishy67]

We couldn't get holidays because the senior men had them we got worse walks because the senior men had them

Absolutely correct

[twiddledumb]

Why did the union accept/propose the current seniority policy at Royal Mail? It is a complete and utter unfair pile of crap. There are many people in my office that basically take the p*** when it comes to taking time off for "sickness", it goes along the lines of they come in for 6 months, then they have 6 months on the sick (until their money drops). They do it every other year like clockwork and the union obviously protects them. Anyway, I and many others in my office have not had a day off in years, we work 5 days a week (sometimes 6) every week all year round, yet when it comes to seniority the people taking the p*** continue to get their sick time added to their time at Royal Mail, even though they aren't actually working at Royal Mail in that time.

The same goes for people who work one-two days (16-20 hours) a week completely unfair that as far as seniority is concerned a week at work for them is equivalent to a week at work for someone working 5-6 days (30+ hours) a week.

Why can't posties with good attendance records say 90% + a year be rewarded with an extra year seniority? Why can't seniority be based on the something fair like the amount of hours actually worked at Royal mail?

I remember that Royal mail tried to reward posites a while back with good attendance records by putting them into some stupid prize draw and that the Union complained it was punishing people on the sick, whereas most people would say it was rewarding people for the job they do. Nobody is saying punish people on the sick, all I am saying is reward people who actually come in and work. Why don't the union actually propose this to Royal mail? From my experience, they spend a lot of time and effort protecting lazy posties and do SFA to fight for posites that actually come in work their hours and have great attendance records.

What an idiot

Your right only mugs like me work everyday and get treated worse than lazy ba***** who try their best to as little as possible, would that happen to be you I am describing ?