who is very concerned about our future?

[Chelseablue]

We need somehere to vent our frustrations at the mess that is the revisions ,,

[2yearpostie]

What is the purpose of complaining? Is it not more productive and positive to change the situation?

Complaining is how you change a situation.
Running away isn't. You could be running away into exactly the same situation or worse and it certainly doesn't change the situation for those left behind.

What happens on here is that by complaining about the same things people realise it isn't just them or their office, they're not just being awkward or resistant to change and they're not alone, hopefully this gives people the confidence to speak up and complain to the right people, people who can affect change.

Back in the day the same thing used to happen in the pub after work but at nearly a fiver a pint that's no longer an option.

okay, that makes sense thankyou.

[Jahpostie]

What is the purpose of complaining? Is it not more productive and positive to change the situation?

Complaining is how you change a situation.
Running away isn't. You could be running away into exactly the same situation or worse and it certainly doesn't change the situation for those left behind.

What happens on here is that by complaining about the same things people realise it isn't just them or their office, they're not just being awkward or resistant to change and they're not alone, hopefully this gives people the confidence to speak up and complain to the right people, people who can affect change.

Back in the day the same thing used to happen in the pub after work but at nearly a fiver a pint that's no longer an option.

Great post Woody.

Regarding the fiver, unfortunately since joining RM I now think of everything in terms of hours at work - so that pint would equate to half an hour on a duty. Now means I think twice about buying everything, knowing the tough shift to earn it!

[blacov]

I am going to go off topic but how on earth people can cope earning 17-18k? I mean is this a figure after tax? Do you guys live somewhere up north in a pretty remote location or a small town, where rent for a 1bed flat is like £400?

yes, ( but its a 3 bed house for £400 not a flat)

Wow I cannot believe that it is still possible to rent a 3bed house for £400. Postman wage must be going a long way there.

[Jahpostie]

I am going to go off topic but how on earth people can cope earning 17-18k? I mean is this a figure after tax? Do you guys live somewhere up north in a pretty remote location or a small town, where rent for a 1bed flat is like £400?

yes, ( but its a 3 bed house for £400 not a flat)

Wow I cannot believe that it is still possible to rent a 3bed house for £400. Postman wage must be going a long way there.

I can't believe it either. I earned 17k last year but I'm not the primary earner. I don't know how any family anywhere in the UK could survive and enjoy a modern life on that.

[WASD]

The reality is RM are failing to grow. They're losing ground to competition, and their original business model is on its last legs, (6day letters).

A lot has been invested since the privatisation and sales of shares. Entire new van fleets replaced bikes, new trollies, sorting machines, the new recent parcel hubs and parcel post boxes. Many of these require new staff and training.
Sure, RM has to pay investors a return, but so they should. Selling off assets and laying off staff is just a byproduct of poor business management.

I don't blame staff for the lack of modernisation, i blame management up top. Unless that's what you meant?

A company that had the monopoly, had cash in the bank, and saw global trends changing, should be on top. Many people saw the beast that was Amazon pre 2010, it was glaringly obvious. Many also experienced poor customer service from the likes of Citylink pre 2010 and Yodel soon after. Looking back at online sources i see Comet was liquidated in 2012, so that shows how progressive internet shopping was becoming years before. Hell, we had mail order catalogues pre widespread broadband. Market professionals are supposed to know this stuff and predict where companies need to adapt.

It's not like the internet was something no one could have predicted shopping wise. You just need to look at overseas manufacturing and how China invested, unlike the UK in many areas. We can also take a look at supermarkets and how they grew to such sizes, their complacency cost them too, the likes of Lidl reinventing the supermarket has forced others to adapt.

I doubt RM will go anywhere any time soon, but the postie as we know him/her will be gone.

Good post. I guess the point I was making was kind of the same as yours. I agree the business has just been ticking over for far too long, I don’t however believe anything has really been invested in the business since privatisation. Vans and stuff like that are just a cost of doing business. If you look at the property RM have sold off it could have paid outright for the new parcel hubs, which as I already said should have been in place over a decade ago.

Ah, my bad. I thought (wrongly) you were disagreeing with me, but i understand your point now. We are definitely on the same page near enough.

It's a shame really, as with others which have said the same many times previously i expect, that many employees are on the same line of thinking, but yet RM, CWU and the regulator, just can't seem to make it work together.

[Iva bigredbag]

"The reality is RM are failing to grow. They're losing ground to competition, and their original business model is on its last legs, (6day letters). "

You do realise that RM and all other companies long term business plan of "growing" really means continue to trash the planet by enabling the population to get more and more crap delivered to their door every day. Think about it all that crap we deliver leaves a massive impact on the environment. These stupid economists, politicians and CEO do not have the brains to realise that you cannot have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources, eventually a tipping point is reached, like climate change, extinctions,pollution, massive losses in biodiversity, eco system collapse, ultimately the collapse of civilization. So yeah, the "we need to grow" mantra is a one way ticket of the edge of the cliff for the human race.

[blacov]

I am going to go off topic but how on earth people can cope earning 17-18k? I mean is this a figure after tax? Do you guys live somewhere up north in a pretty remote location or a small town, where rent for a 1bed flat is like £400?

yes, ( but its a 3 bed house for £400 not a flat)

Wow I cannot believe that it is still possible to rent a 3bed house for £400. Postman wage must be going a long way there.

I can't believe it either. I earned 17k last year but I'm not the primary earner. I don't know how any family anywhere in the UK could survive and enjoy a modern life on that.

in London and in affluent areas in the south east 17k annual salary is borderline poverty

[Iva bigredbag]

In Sunderland you are living like king if you are on 17k.

[einastronaut]

There are 20+ duties in our DO. In the last 3 or 4 months, there have been, on average, perhaps 7 staff in each day to cover said duties. Last week there were 4 people in. Often there is only 1 person on IP sorting for the entire office, packets and letters. Most of the duties in the office are routinely "stood down".

There have been very few covid related absences; this isn't a consequence of the "pingdemic". There are 6 people on long term sick, variously burnt out and waiting for a payoff, or taking the biscuit with lax S/L policies. Summer A/L cycles another 4-5 staff out of rotation each week. Beyond that there are more vacancies than staff, the rest have quit. Every new starter in the last 3 years quit in their first 6 weeks.

We've had 4 DOMs in the last 18 months - the last threw in the towel last week, giving a farewell speech about being abandoned by his superiors.

Agency staff are sent in just to walk off the job before even attempting a duty.

Cast-offs sent from other offices come and take the mail out for a walk and bring it all back.

The hardest to cover duties in our office get their mail out once or twice a week.

Royal Mail has a future, but on a par with budget carriers like Hermes and DPD, delivering parcels when it can find the staff to do it. There is no quality of service anymore. Management don't care about it. They don't want to resolve the issues that lead to poor service. The don't want to stop removing duties, they don't want to acknowledge the existence of 2500 new builds, they don't want people doing less than 10 hour days in one office but similarly don't want to do anything about another office down the road finishing at 11:30 while getting paid till 3. They don't want to do any revisions to our office because any revision would surely require everyone doing less, so they leave it as is.

The shorter working week is great and positive for us, but it just means people are cutting off earlier. Already impossible workloads have an even narrower delivery window, and so, inevitably, much of it comes back even if it does go out.

Specials and tracked parcels get delivered on bare minimum staffing levels, and that's all that's expected now. That's all the job has become. "Best efforts".

[Jahpostie]

Wow, I thought our depot was a mess.

[Mr Rush]

Royal Mail has a future, but on a par with budget carriers like Hermes and DPD,

Unlike Hermes and DPD, we have the history and goodwill attached to the company name. It's the last resource the company will have. But when that is inevitably exploited for temporary financial gain it'll be the end of the road. All the easy solutions (selling off all the real estate, gutting the workforce, gutting terms, extending deliveries for hours on end) will have already been used to prop up the share price. On that day we will take our place in the saturated less-than-no-frills delivery market, presumably after rebranding.

After that, potential investors in Consignia will either be awaiting the return of serfdom or the prophecised miracle of AI drone delivery.

[Postmandan17]

"The reality is RM are failing to grow. They're losing ground to competition, and their original business model is on its last legs, (6day letters). "

You do realise that RM and all other companies long term business plan of "growing" really means continue to trash the planet by enabling the population to get more and more crap delivered to their door every day. Think about it all that crap we deliver leaves a massive impact on the environment. These stupid economists, politicians and CEO do not have the brains to realise that you cannot have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources, eventually a tipping point is reached, like climate change, extinctions,pollution, massive losses in biodiversity, eco system collapse, ultimately the collapse of civilization. So yeah, the "we need to grow" mantra is a one way ticket of the edge of the cliff for the human race.

Every day when I look at the amount of parcels being loaded into knackered vans that surely don't pass an emissions test I realise how truly f****d we all are. Every single one of those parcels has a massive carbon footprint. It's demoralising to think that people will keep filling their houses full of s**t until the fire is at their door. And we'll continue to deliver it until the entire world collapses.

[2yearpostie]

I am going to go off topic but how on earth people can cope earning 17-18k? I mean is this a figure after tax? Do you guys live somewhere up north in a pretty remote location or a small town, where rent for a 1bed flat is like £400?

yes, ( but its a 3 bed house for £400 not a flat)

Wow I cannot believe that it is still possible to rent a 3bed house for £400. Postman wage must be going a long way there.

Obviously prices have risen since I moved in, but within a 10 mile radius theirs these kind of things around me.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/ ... el=RES_LET

[2yearpostie]

Wow, I thought our depot was a mess.

We panic if one parcel is left over, we havent failed a job yet all through the last 2 years.