Why are RM not employing casuals (for delivery)?

[nightcrawler]

Why on earth are Royal Mail not taking on casuals to help on the delivery side? We are seeing unprecedented levels of work, which I believe is really taking its toll on a lot of people’s mental health. We had one woman in our office yesterday who was in tears because she’s struggling to cope. Office morale is at an all time low. Yet, you have thousands of people who have lost their jobs this year due to COVID, many of whom would gladly work for RM, even if only on a temporary basis. You could simply let the casuals/temp staff deliver the letters, and the permanent staff do the packets. Nearly every day at the moment I get someone come out when I’m on delivery asking if there’s a problem with the post. Do Royal Mail even care about the mental well-being of their staff? Or has someone got to have a heart attack or something before RM act?

[hans solo]

RM don't care it's all about conning the public for profit

[wacko74]

In my office we've had 5 or 6 casuals doing afternoon pkts before and after Xmas (2pm -5pm), they're taking hardly any, perhaps 8 pkts each at most in 3 hours!
Whilst posties are out working 10-12 hour days.

Makes no sense, I don't understand why management aren't giving them more to do or taking fewer casuals on.

[Manboat]

We had about 10 casuals working afternoons when vans came back all through Christmas pressure and there’s still a few left now helping out, sometimes doing mail and sometimes parcels, they’re obviously not as efficient and with mainly working in the dark even harder for them to be fair.

[eastie]

we have casuals in our office covering for delivery people who have been told not to work due to health issues.

[fb1969]

We have had up to 6 casuals doing afternoon packets.

But that doesn't help when every day there are at least eight Yorks of mail that fails to make IPS, and a similar number of Yorks of packets. With vaccination appointments being sent by letter, RM have going to have to do something very soon to prevent a total disaster. "Fail mail" when the mail is vitally important is not a good idea.

[worktotime]

We failed christmas big style as we have about 8 vacancies unfilled since about March and not due to covid 19 or sick either , no casuals ,full dutys failing everyday and still failing now , the company are a joke and using covid as an excuse to get away with it and the union have done nothing , i give up .

[RobertT]

We've recently had over half the workforce off for various reasons, made a lot worse by Covid. There's been a few casuals doing walks.

[Grumpyoldmailman]

In my office we've had 5 or 6 casuals doing afternoon pkts before and after Xmas (2pm -5pm), they're taking hardly any, perhaps 8 pkts each at most in 3 hours!
Whilst posties are out working 10-12 hour days.

Makes no sense, I don't understand why management aren't giving them more to do or taking fewer casuals on.

It’s the same here. A couple of them were going out with 30 parcels and bringing 20 back. I say bringing back, they were not normally discovered again until someone got the van in the morning.

[wacko74]

In my office we've had 5 or 6 casuals doing afternoon pkts before and after Xmas (2pm -5pm), they're taking hardly any, perhaps 8 pkts each at most in 3 hours!
Whilst posties are out working 10-12 hour days.

Makes no sense, I don't understand why management aren't giving them more to do or taking fewer casuals on.

It’s the same here. A couple of them were going out with 30 parcels and bringing 20 back. I say bringing back, they were not normally discovered again until someone got the van in the morning.

Exactly. I can't understand why they're paying posties overtime to work 10-12 hour days and going out with vans packed to the rafters... and then paying casuals to deliver 8 pkts in 3 hours.

[Kesknight]

You needn't let anything effect your health. You have a start time and a finish time. It's not your problem and nobody can say anything to you.

[clashcityrocker]

We have agency workers doing packets 7 days a week. Normally 2 till whenever but earlier if a van is available.
One had about 150 packets the other day. There were at least 2 working on Sunday.
Occasionally they do deliveries but delivery is a bit difficult at the moment for anyone without any experience.

[robsdean7]

Why on earth are Royal Mail not taking on casuals to help on the delivery side?

It's odd, last year they asked casuals if they wanted to do delivery.

[Cucumber]

The simple reason, I think is security.
Casual staff in ours are doing packets that are all scanned into a route for them on a PDA.
Send someone new to the job out with a monster bag of all sorts of crap and it will end up floating in a canal somewhere.

[Jpro747]

Stop going over and beyond for a company that couldn’t give a flying f**k about your unachievable workload, your mental well-being, or whether you get struck down with covid and keel over. Just do your hours and if it piles up then so be it, let the failures of management be known to those at the top and to the public! Nothing will change if we carry on pulling them out of the s**t.