What is a fair payrise for us?

[HTPostman]

.......Id also prefer an agreement on the holiday pay of which I’m now owed approaching £1500.

I’d settle for my PT contract being made up to FT and Christmas bonus type payment (say £200) in return for clearing the £1500..

IIRC RM don't have an option, it's the law, it beggars belief that they're still dragging their heels on this one!!!

That’s how I understand it too but I’m also aware if 25000 (or however many there are) PT are owed a similar amount, plus thousands of FT who work above their contracted hours too...that could have a disastrous impact on our jobs. No good us getting £1500 if RM as we know it then goes under.

That’s why I’d be willing to compromise. I pretty much do FT hours, every week I’m practically begged to work my day off and take extra on OT so it wouldn’t impact on RM to just pay me FT hours in the first place. Appreciate everyone is different though and it’s not 1 size fits all.

[SpacePhoenix]

.......Id also prefer an agreement on the holiday pay of which I’m now owed approaching £1500.

I’d settle for my PT contract being made up to FT and Christmas bonus type payment (say £200) in return for clearing the £1500..

IIRC RM don't have an option, it's the law, it beggars belief that they're still dragging their heels on this one!!!

That’s how I understand it too but I’m also aware if 25000 (or however many there are) PT are owed a similar amount, plus thousands of FT who work above their contracted hours too...that could have a disastrous impact on our jobs. No good us getting £1500 if RM as we know it then goes under.

That’s why I’d be willing to compromise. I pretty much do FT hours, every week I’m practically begged to work my day off and take extra on OT so it wouldn’t impact on RM to just pay me FT hours in the first place. Appreciate everyone is different though and it’s not 1 size fits all.

I can't see the government letting RM go under, they'd still need a company to deliver letters and flats. If need be they'd have to renationalise RM

[wacko74]

I contest the idea that postal workers are " unskilled". Good postal workers, in my opinion, are highly skilled individuals. !

Fooling yourself. You'd be on two or even three times the 12 quid hourly rate if you were classed as skilled, and you would've received three or four years training as opposed to three or four days.

Can't agree with that.

There are plenty of ''skilled'' jobs that don't require anything like 3-4 years training and once you have acquired that skill the job is often highly repetitive to the point where a trained monkey could do it and it requires none of the various wider ranging attributes required to be a postie.

[Tman]

Are you being ironic?
So what are these skilled jobs that you feel a trained monkey could do but still require less skills than a postie?

[clashcityrocker]

Once you've built one nuclear reactor you've built them all.
It's nothing like knowing a deep rural.......

[Woody Guthrie]

we've had to fight for everything we get. they don't give us it because they think we are worth it.

They give us it because they think it would cost more in the long run not to.

That's how business works, it's got nothing to do with our fighting skills.

It is however never a fixed position and our value is always subject to economic conditions.

[Grumpyoldmailman]

.......Id also prefer an agreement on the holiday pay of which I’m now owed approaching £1500.

I’d settle for my PT contract being made up to FT and Christmas bonus type payment (say £200) in return for clearing the £1500..

IIRC RM don't have an option, it's the law, it beggars belief that they're still dragging their heels on this one!!!

That’s how I understand it too but I’m also aware if 25000 (or however many there are) PT are owed a similar amount, plus thousands of FT who work above their contracted hours too...that could have a disastrous impact on our jobs. No good us getting £1500 if RM as we know it then goes under.

That’s why I’d be willing to compromise. I pretty much do FT hours, every week I’m practically begged to work my day off and take extra on OT so it wouldn’t impact on RM to just pay me FT hours in the first place. Appreciate everyone is different though and it’s not 1 size fits all.

That’s bad management yet again. We have had this conversation on many threads before. Let’s take a different angle on it. I know the dividend has been axed but all those hundreds of millions that has been handed to shareholders some of it is off the back of savings they have made by not paying you correctly on your holiday pay. Are you still happy to compromise? As I said it’s bad management and also illegal. Compromise, no way.

[Murdoch]

I was just about to reply with this. Sometimes I think people who have been with Royal Mail for a long time, are completely unaware of just how low the minimum wage is, and how poor the pay and working conditions are for most "unskilled" positions.

I contest the idea that postal workers are " unskilled". Good postal workers, in my opinion, are highly skilled individuals. Try taking Joe Bloggs off the street...give him a van full of letters and parcels and a PDA...and tell him to crack on with it...then you'll see just how skilled the majority of us all are. And don't forget that we are all " Essential" or " Key" workers".

I'd like to think we could get 3% or thereabouts and a cast iron guarantee on moving to the shorter working week ? I'd happily forego a pay rise in April 2021 in favour of a 37 hour week !

I specifically put "unskilled" in quotes, to emphasise that it wasn't myself that was making the classification, that it wasn't an opinion of mine. Simply the reality of the class of work that I was comparing.

That said, if you want my opinion of whether or not it's a "skilled" job. It's clearly not. I picked it up after a few days training, and other than additional duties (which is straightforward), I've learnt very little since. We literally just deliver letters and parcels, over and over again. It's very repetitive tedious work that requires very little brain power, and very little training.

However, it's a challenging job, and it's certainly not for everybody. I've seen plenty of people that you'd think would be competent, be completely useless at the job.

[Murdoch]

With skilled jobs it is lack of supply of skilled workers that drives higher wages, with us it is not lack of supply but retention of workers. We're paid that much because without it a lot of us would find easier ways to earn minimum wage.

I've always thought the reason we're paid more than other unskilled workers is the legacy of being a public service, in a monopoly position, with a strong unionised workforce.

I had never considered a retention issue, do many offices find it hard to retain employees? I guess this varies hugely from area to area.

[Woody Guthrie]

I've always thought the reason we're paid more than other unskilled workers is the legacy of being a public service, in a monopoly position, with a strong unionised workforce. .

Up until around 2000 when we actually were a public service in a monopoly position with a strong unionised workforce we were actually very poorly paid at least in basic pay terms.

The irony is as those three things have been undermined by first commercial independence then competition, privatisation and anti-union legislation our basic pay has increased significantly.

[Murdoch]

Up until around 2000 when we actually were a public service in a monopoly position with a strong unionised workforce we were actually very poorly paid at least in basic pay terms.

The irony is as those three things have been undermined by first commercial independence then competition, privatisation and anti-union legislation our basic pay has increased significantly.

That's interesting. How does this compare with workloads?

Every Postie that's been here for that long that I've spoken to, complains about how s**t the job is nowadays.

[Woody Guthrie]

Every Postie that's been here for that long that I've spoken to, complains about how s**t the job is nowadays

Every postie at every point in my career from day one has complained about how s**t the job is nowadays. It's what we do.

Workload was different in those days, easier in some ways, harder in others but work is work.

[wallan]

Not sure of the exact year , Ted Heath was Prime Minister ( 1970 - 74 ) part of the wage agreement was a Monthly Index Linked Rise , Inflation was High in those days , so for 12 Months we had a Monthly Wage Increase , we did well that year

[daveyeff]

we've had to fight for everything we get. they don't give us it because they think we are worth it.

They give us it because they think it would cost more in the long run not to.

That's how business works, it's got nothing to do with our fighting skills.

It is however never a fixed position and our value is always subject to economic conditions.

nah....its because we fought them. if we hadn't we would be on minimum wage.

[Woody Guthrie]

nah....its because we fought them. if we hadn't we would be on minimum wage.

Would you do this job for minimum wage?