An 'unofficial' forum for those who either work for Royal Mail or are looking to work for Royal Mail through the Angard Staffing Agency.This is an open forum.
SpacePhoenix wrote:Many permanent RM staff probably started off as casuals
Yes, me too. I've started as a casual and no NDA or DRIVING ALLOWANCE ect. Then when I was getting somewhere they would let me go for four weeks then start me back. But I stuck out and eventually got in. This particular post just got to me as I see anguard as a set up to create a two tier workforce and all the MCs are going to be like Amazon fulfilment centres with temp contracts and crap conditions. If you go sick you lose your job. I work for DWP now in the sickness/disablement side of life and the cases I see of people who have worked lots of years, sometimes decades for an employer, being dumped onto the sick long term as not just RM but most big companies go down the route of part time and zero hours contracts. The governments own figures shout about just over a million unemployed. Bull. There are 12.7 million claiming welfare. Most of them are IN work. Maybee this is why I get so passionate about workers rights and as an ex RM worker, I see how they are changing/changed to an employer who looked after you to one that couldn't give a toss and makes more and more people reliant on welfare benefits to supplement their wages. I wish every casual or contract casual could get a full-time contract but it was just the posters, I AM, attitude that stirred me that day. I really didn't mean to cause offence.
Navalron wrote:Yes, me too. I've started as a casual and no NDA or DRIVING ALLOWANCE ect. Then when I was getting somewhere they would let me go for four weeks then start me back. But I stuck out and eventually got in.
Back when i started off as a casual iirc it was 12 weeks then I think it was 2 weeks off
Navalron wrote:This particular post just got to me as I see anguard as a set up to create a two tier workforce and all the MCs are going to be like Amazon fulfilment centres with temp contracts and crap conditions.
I think Amazon are moving towards full automated warehouses. There was a thing on the news the other day that some of their fulfilment centres in the US are having robot packing stations installed
Navalron wrote:This particular post just got to me as I see anguard as a set up to create a two tier workforce and all the MCs are going to be like Amazon fulfilment centres with temp contracts and crap conditions.
I think Amazon are moving towards full automated warehouses. There was a thing on the news the other day that some of their fulfilment centres in the US are having robot packing stations installed
Amazon also got those wheeled robots called "Amazon scouts" delivering items on the streets in some places of USA. I don't trust them in my area because of uneven pavements/concrete and lots of stairs plus troublemakers may kick them over or something. Postmen and processors still got some life in them yet
Certainly don't have an 'I AM' attitude, my comments were about *some* RM staff and many RM staff I'm friendly with have said the same ('he couldn't hack it on lates', 'she's only here 'cause she knows manager X', etc). All over this forum folk discuss other RM employees - posties, drivers, sorters, managers - so felt it was OK to do the same and definitely wasn't looking to stir up a row. Have been a casual (Christmas and now Angard) with RM for well over 10 years so feel pretty well qualified to discuss this stuff but think even someone relatively new to the job should be allowed to express their views. Agree with a lot of what was said re Amazon and so on. Having recently been with another mail delivery firm I'm not surprised RM's struggling to compete when warehouses up and down the land are stuffed full of temporary staff on minimum wage, working in environments totally geared up to processing parcels in a way RM mail centres aren't. An increase to the minimum wage to a genuine living wage would force these companies to essentially stop undercutting RM so drastically when it comes to pay and obviously I reckon the rules around agency staff and zero hours need tightening further. Why not incentivise companies that employ staff directly and retain them for X number of months/years? Can't be right that a company's workforce might be more than 50% casual labour (at my old place those of us employed directly were outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1 at times). Just a few thoughts, again not looking for a row
26l34 wrote:Certainly don't have an 'I AM' attitude, my comments were about *some* RM staff and many RM staff I'm friendly with have said the same ('he couldn't hack it on lates', 'she's only here 'cause she knows manager X', etc). All over this forum folk discuss other RM employees - posties, drivers, sorters, managers - so felt it was OK to do the same and definitely wasn't looking to stir up a row. Have been a casual (Christmas and now Angard) with RM for well over 10 years so feel pretty well qualified to discuss this stuff but think even someone relatively new to the job should be allowed to express their views. Agree with a lot of what was said re Amazon and so on. Having recently been with another mail delivery firm I'm not surprised RM's struggling to compete when warehouses up and down the land are stuffed full of temporary staff on minimum wage, working in environments totally geared up to processing parcels in a way RM mail centres aren't. An increase to the minimum wage to a genuine living wage would force these companies to essentially stop undercutting RM so drastically when it comes to pay and obviously I reckon the rules around agency staff and zero hours need tightening further. Why not incentivise companies that employ staff directly and retain them for X number of months/years? Can't be right that a company's workforce might be more than 50% casual labour (at my old place those of us employed directly were outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1 at times). Just a few thoughts, again not looking for a row
I agree with you 100%, especially about the way other so called postal companies use casual and agency staff and great them like dirt, paying the least they can get away with and getting millions of pounds of tax payers money to build these sorting centres as they say they will create so many jobs blah blah.
