Dorset Plodder wrote:A lot of talk about taking Industrial Action and "Showing Royal Mail our Solidarity".... But will anything happen? Needless to say there will be CWU Communications on the build up to Christmas 2020.... We may very well get "Another" overwhelminging "YES" Vote (like we did last time)...... and then Nothing Happens!
You could argue that the YES Vote showed how serious we are .... and improved the CWU's Bargaining Strength.... but I often wonder if the effort really achieves anything? The Pension Problems have still NOT been addressed fully.
The union arguably made bad decisions last time in terms of their pet project, the SWW, which most of us didn't want.
The recent threat of industrial action at BA succeeded in a new if not better offer being made by the management. We have to get a yes vote and time our action to coincide with the general election which is predicted to occur on October 24th following a no confidence vote. If not then it would have to be for late November onwards to line up with Xmas shopping. None of us want to inconvenience the public or destroy RM but Rico et al need to realise by basing the future on some consultancy bods stupid ideas they have chosen the wrong path.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
Dorset Plodder wrote:A lot of talk about taking Industrial Action and "Showing Royal Mail our Solidarity".... But will anything happen? Needless to say there will be CWU Communications on the build up to Christmas 2020.... We may very well get "Another" overwhelminging "YES" Vote (like we did last time)...... and then Nothing Happens!
You could argue that the YES Vote showed how serious we are .... and improved the CWU's Bargaining Strength.... but I often wonder if the effort really achieves anything? The Pension Problems have still NOT been addressed fully.
The union arguably made bad decisions last time in terms of their pet project, the SWW, which most of us didn't want.
The recent threat of industrial action at BA succeeded in a new if not better offer being made by the management. We have to get a yes vote and time our action to coincide with the general election which is predicted to occur on October 24th following a no confidence vote. If not then it would have to be for late November onwards to line up with Xmas shopping. None of us want to inconvenience the public or destroy RM but Rico et al need to realise by basing the future on some consultancy bods stupid ideas they have chosen the wrong path.
To a degree it's going to be down to how long the mediation process takes. The CWU has to go through the complete whole mediation process otherwise there's probably a risk of RM going to court and getting a ballot declared null and void
If we assume Royal Mail will try to drag the mediation talks on and on and on, past Christmas (to blunt the threat of any strike action) then there is no prospect of any 37-hour week starting this October, then ?
Celgar wrote:
It would fall under business confidentiality.
Why?
The recent sales at Nine Elms and Mount Pleasant are in the news.
Because it's a short term business model that is doomed to fail. No one serious in business gets rid of freehold assets and switches to leasehold properties. In the short term it enables release of funds but in the long term it costs a hell of a lot more. Just like PFI which Gordon Brown invested the country heavily into. Another broken business model.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
norris9 wrote:Can we have a 4 day working week, please.
For letters and flats that'll probably happen at some point.Don't know if we could see Sunday deliveries of SDs and Tracked (for a premium) eventually
Not sure I could handle this job for 20+ years on a 5 day working week. Need more rest than 1 odd day at a time. Muscles constantly aching. Maybe it's just me.
I think in general the 4 day working week has been mentioned in the media over recent months, so maybe in time it might be something that happens nationwide.
You could do six days a week like I did in this job!
Yeah but we weren't out till 4pm back then, yes, six days a week but Saturday was done by 11 not 3 or later as it is now. Yes we were in earlier but didn't do 9 hr days.
You must have had a bad round I never saw anything later than 8.30 on a Saturday unless I was doing overtime!
I take it you're joking, as you weren't allowed to deliver before 7am! Is it like a monty python sketch, ' you used to get up at 3am half an hr before you went to bed.......' lol
At one time we did used to start delivering way before 0700 usually when it was still dark. Remember those crap red torches we used to have and the cycle lights that weren't that good either??? I never liked delivering in the dark to be honest and always found it a pain in the ****.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
LouBarlow wrote:Royal Mail just isn't a sustainable business any more. Let us be honest, we are paid well in comparison to our competitors, have better T&Cs and as even I have to admit now 'Mail *is* down' in terms of letters, which was already a loss-leading service. If you try and send a parcel via RM, it is ALWAYS more expensive than doing likewise with a cheap courier - sure, we may well offer a better service (but even that is debatable with the real-time tracking Amazon and DPD offer now) but people sending parcels do not care. I had a special delivery today, that cost £27 to send! Any rival courier would quote a fraction of that.
For Royal Mail to really compete on prices, they know that they have to reduce costs in the most costly area - i.e. us. If they were paying us the pittance that Amazon pay their couriers, then they would be able to offer similar prices. Even so, I can order something from Amazon up to 11pm at night, and *still* get it next day, so their service is at least as good as ours, and I would argue better.
It might sound pessimistic but having been in the job over 15 years now, I honestly think we are seeing the end of the company in it's current form. We might have bitched and moaned before, but when some big firm swoops in and buys a majority share (probably Amazon themselves) we will be in for the shock of our lives when they tear up our contracts and start paying us the peanuts they do their own employees now.
Brace yourselves!
We listened to that b******* today in the WTLL video about us being well paid compared to our competitors. The fact of the matter is that our competitors treat their workforce like **** often paying them well below the minimum wage on fake self employed contracts and sometimes in unsafe working conditions in badly maintained warehouses. Sorry for the swearing but I don't think any of us should be defending the scum that treat people like that.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
LouBarlow wrote:Royal Mail just isn't a sustainable business any more. Let us be honest, we are paid well in comparison to our competitors, have better T&Cs and as even I have to admit now 'Mail *is* down' in terms of letters, which was already a loss-leading service. If you try and send a parcel via RM, it is ALWAYS more expensive than doing likewise with a cheap courier - sure, we may well offer a better service (but even that is debatable with the real-time tracking Amazon and DPD offer now) but people sending parcels do not care. I had a special delivery today, that cost £27 to send! Any rival courier would quote a fraction of that.
For Royal Mail to really compete on prices, they know that they have to reduce costs in the most costly area - i.e. us. If they were paying us the pittance that Amazon pay their couriers, then they would be able to offer similar prices. Even so, I can order something from Amazon up to 11pm at night, and *still* get it next day, so their service is at least as good as ours, and I would argue better.
It might sound pessimistic but having been in the job over 15 years now, I honestly think we are seeing the end of the company in it's current form. We might have bitched and moaned before, but when some big firm swoops in and buys a majority share (probably Amazon themselves) we will be in for the shock of our lives when they tear up our contracts and start paying us the peanuts they do their own employees now.
Brace yourselves!
Excellent points. I have been in 2 years and would love to do another 12 which would get me close to retirement but I just cannot see it happening. I can see a huge shift in staff working conditions and income ahead because, as you rightly state, it is staff costs which are the biggest expense and where we are uncompetitive against all our rivals in the industry. Forget whether or not we provide a better service, that means nothing nowadays.
I can see one of the first changes being the axing of any allowance that isn't legally required, paid meal reliefs going and meal reliefs being cut right back to the minimum legal requirement
UK employment law entitles worker to breaks. If employers don't allow break time they have to pay their staff additional money.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
I expected more people to be discussing the latest RMTV video on these forums but its not happening? According to that video, royal mail & CWU have agreed not to pursue industrial action and that royal mail has proceeded into the external mediation stage with CWU on the 5 year plan. There is even a mention of the shorter working week discussions going into a seperate external mediation process and it sounds in the video like it is CWU's fault that it is not happening.
I am curious to see the next video from the CWU talking about this to see if the industrial action has indeed been prevented? Link to the RMTV video for those that have not seen it yet: https://www.myroyalmail.com/rmtv/rmtv-1 ... iscussions
Dorset Plodder wrote:A lot of talk about taking Industrial Action and "Showing Royal Mail our Solidarity".... But will anything happen? Needless to say there will be CWU Communications on the build up to Christmas 2020.... We may very well get "Another" overwhelminging "YES" Vote (like we did last time)...... and then Nothing Happens!
You could argue that the YES Vote showed how serious we are .... and improved the CWU's Bargaining Strength.... but I often wonder if the effort really achieves anything? The Pension Problems have still NOT been addressed fully.
The union arguably made bad decisions last time in terms of their pet project, the SWW, which most of us didn't want.
The recent threat of industrial action at BA succeeded in a new if not better offer being made by the management. We have to get a yes vote and time our action to coincide with the general election which is predicted to occur on October 24th following a no confidence vote. If not then it would have to be for late November onwards to line up with Xmas shopping. None of us want to inconvenience the public or destroy RM but Rico et al need to realise by basing the future on some consultancy bods stupid ideas they have chosen the wrong path.
To a degree it's going to be down to how long the mediation process takes. The CWU has to go through the complete whole mediation process otherwise there's probably a risk of RM going to court and getting a ballot declared null and void
From what Martin Walsh said previously a little while ago it was going to be a month of talks then a month of mediation then it would be legal to ballot for industrial action. So roughly mediation running from before the end of August til before the end of September then ballot for strike action which would begin before the end of October. We all know what will be happening at the end of October which then optimizes the disruption. Like petrol on a campfire.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
Xeonus wrote:I expected more people to be discussing the latest RMTV video on these forums but its not happening? According to that video, royal mail & CWU have agreed not to pursue industrial action and that royal mail has proceeded into the external mediation stage with CWU on the 5 year plan. There is even a mention of the shorter working week discussions going into a seperate external mediation process and it sounds in the video like it is CWU's fault that it is not happening.
I am curious to see the next video from the CWU talking about this to see if the industrial action has indeed been prevented? Link to the RMTV video for those that have not seen it yet: https://www.myroyalmail.com/rmtv/rmtv-1 ... iscussions
May be that not everyone saw it as not all offices do WTLL or follow all the rules. It did sound like RM had inserted an additional amount of mediation in addition to the month of mediation that is required before a ballot can take place. Being able to have the next hour of SWW is no recompense whatsoever for RM destroying the business on a whim and tens of thousands of job losses. The mail has dropped in terms of bulk and we all have to agree that is the case in terms of letters & flats. BUT the job has changed drastically from how we once used to do it. There are so many more procedures that take more and more time so it is now barely possible to complete the job within duty time. Yet another procedure - doing age checks on 'recipients' is being discussed and will likely be introduced bringing yet more complication to the job.
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
If things are so bad why is it royal mail are dragging their heals over the shorter working week ? Would it not be better for them to have staff working an hour less if there is less work to do ?
hero22 wrote:If things are so bad why is it royal mail are dragging their heals over the shorter working week ? Would it not be better for them to have staff working an hour less if there is less work to do ?
It's probably cheaper overall. 1hr less needed of docket in a lot of cases
hero22 wrote:If things are so bad why is it royal mail are dragging their heals over the shorter working week ? Would it not be better for them to have staff working an hour less if there is less work to do ?
The work fills the time at best but more often we go past duty time. An hour less just means more difficulty in getting the job completed. The SWW does not generally cost RM anything with the burden largely falling on posties. The fault is with government turning a blind eye to other companies not paying the minimum wage or corporation tax. In effect the market is rigged against RM .
The views I express here are mine alone and do not represent the views of Royal Mail Group.
LouBarlow wrote:Let us be honest, we are paid well in comparison to our competitors
No other company in the UK delivers mail as well as parcels. So I don't think you can compare a Van Driver dropping off parcels to a Postman walking 8 to 10 miles a day delivering mail and parcels.
I don't know about others, but I am constantly aching 24/7. Quite regularly I am falling asleep as early as 5pm in the evening. I can only speak for myself but this job does affect your life outside of the job and I think that is the main reason why it should pay more than a van driver dropping off parcels.
I am not sure what the longer term toll on Postie's bodies is compared to that of a van driver, but I'd assume a lot worse.
So there are obvious reasons why this job pays more and should pay more.
LouBarlow wrote:Royal Mail just isn't a sustainable business any more. Let us be honest, we are paid well in comparison to our competitors, have better T&Cs and as even I have to admit now 'Mail *is* down' in terms of letters, which was already a loss-leading service. If you try and send a parcel via RM, it is ALWAYS more expensive than doing likewise with a cheap courier - sure, we may well offer a better service (but even that is debatable with the real-time tracking Amazon and DPD offer now) but people sending parcels do not care. I had a special delivery today, that cost £27 to send! Any rival courier would quote a fraction of that.
For Royal Mail to really compete on prices, they know that they have to reduce costs in the most costly area - i.e. us. If they were paying us the pittance that Amazon pay their couriers, then they would be able to offer similar prices. Even so, I can order something from Amazon up to 11pm at night, and *still* get it next day, so their service is at least as good as ours, and I would argue better.
It might sound pessimistic but having been in the job over 15 years now, I honestly think we are seeing the end of the company in it's current form. We might have bitched and moaned before, but when some big firm swoops in and buys a majority share (probably Amazon themselves) we will be in for the shock of our lives when they tear up our contracts and start paying us the peanuts they do their own employees now.
Brace yourselves!
We listened to that b******* today in the WTLL video about us being well paid compared to our competitors. The fact of the matter is that our competitors treat their workforce like **** often paying them well below the minimum wage on fake self employed contracts and sometimes in unsafe working conditions in badly maintained warehouses. Sorry for the swearing but I don't think any of us should be defending the scum that treat people like that.
Who said I was defending them? My point is, I fully expect our future to involve the same conditions as our competitors. That video in WTL only emphasised Royal Mail's plan to become a parcel-focused company. How will they compete with rivals on price, if they are paying us a decent wage along with the cushy t&cs that go with it?
Needless to say there will be CWU Communications on the build up to Christmas 2020.... We may very well get "Another" overwhelminging "YES" Vote (like we did last time)...... and then Nothing Happens!
