Postal Strikes

[Wester]

for those that arent already aware:

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=1000002&mediaId=51600692

I wouldnt be looking to send anything anytime soon.

[kwak zzr]

this is going to get nasty:(

[ASM-Forever]

Complete bunch of ..... its like they know when im expecting important mail/packages!

[Ed]

It's miserable to call 2 two-day strikes so close together. I guess that posties are going to lose a lot of pay.

[Wester]

not so much that, but the promise of week long strikes if the issue isnt solved.
Businesses everywhere are bricking it. and other carriers like DHL are rubbing their hands with glee.

[kwak zzr]

our lot are thinking of calling it a day with these strikes, my mate and his wife are £300 down with this weeks strikes i just dont know how the union expect everyone to keep it up? plus the workers DO realize how damaging this is for the buisness.

[kwak zzr]

Complete bunch of ******s...its like they know when im expecting important mail/packages!

Tossers.

use city link their very good.

[G]

It seems crazy, the royal mail have said they are going to have a massive shake up soon (which in all fairness is probably needed) and cut alot of jobs.........who do you think is going to be first on the redundancy list, yes the people striking.

I dont know what to think of it all, I dont think the strikes are doing anygood other than loosing the workers pay. End of the day the mail system is so random and unreliable how are people to know whether or not their mail was meant to arrive on the day it did or 2 days earlier, all the workers are doing is creating more work for themselve when they actually return to work, they will evenntualy be replaced with bloody polish who dont strike anyway.

Its a downward spiral on for workers and the royal mail and its a damn shame :(.

[kwak zzr]

the changes are being brought in on Monday (8th) if the staff like it or not, its our pensions that are effecting thing now.

[G]

the changes are being brought in on Monday (8th) if the staff like it or not, its our pensions that are effecting thing now.

What are the changes?, I dont think I know enough about it.

Kawk do you work for the RM, hope it goes well for you :( theres nothing more stressful in life than troubles at work.

Although will you be at home anyway getting full pay after your off so you can just pretend to strike and get paid :D.

[kwak zzr]

full pay "oh yes!"

[kwak zzr]

http://www.cwu.org/default.asp

[Ed]

http://www.cwu.org/default.asp

Had a quick look at the site. I'm honestly surprised at the amount of campaigning the CWU does on all sorts of issues.

[kwak zzr]

yea always moaning about something.

[Wester]

not so much that, but the promise of week long strikes if the issue isnt solved.
Businesses everywhere are bricking it. and other carriers like DHL are rubbing their hands with glee.

I am now ****ting it.
I found out just now one of my new purchases (which is already 2 days late) is indeed being delivered by royal mail. Not a happy chappy.

[kwak zzr]

if its registered post or special delivery you'll still get it, the scabs,managers and personnel staff work the shop floor still processing priority items.

[kwak zzr]

i'm waiting for a pc, insurance cheque, 2 sd cards and a netgear router from ebuyer.

[MR UKI (1)]

i'm waiting for a pc, insurance cheque, 2 sd cards and a netgear router from ebuyer.

Oh the irony Kwak :)

[haggis]

Sorry, i just cant afford to strike, call me a scab if you like. I really dont care. What i do care about is the loss of £60 a day, on the off-chance the union can squeeze a better result out of RM. For full-timers that's a wage loss total of £540 up to next Tuesday.

The union rep here is up his own ar5e anyway, promises the earth! There are a couple of militant workers who are his best mates - everyone else laughs at their pettyness - and just went on strike for the first few but soon realised theres nothing to be gained.

The job's nearly f***ed anyway, RM are issuing all new starts with 1-hr contracts and then asking them to do a further 20hrs or whatever on OT -at a lesser rate of course! And they're therefore not accrueing holidays, pension etc. What a bloody farce!

[kwak zzr]

your not wrong mate i think the end is near.

[tigersaw]

Whatever happened to the postal service - its become a POS in the last few years. Used to be you put a first class stamp on, posted it and then postie man delivered it next day. Now you have to evaluate every friggin envelope like you have nothing better to do and keep a vast assortment of stamps at home, (or find a post office 'no more than 3 miles away' and queue 'no more than 5 minutes'), post by the specified time and then await delivery sometime whenever in the day - or collect yourself from the sorting office but not after 2pm. Jesus on a tricycle. I thought the RM has lost the plot when they tried to rebrand to consignia, but now its just too much effort to try and comprehend what they are up to. Sympathy for their workforce, can't be nice working with such low morale.

[kwak zzr]

in a nut shell tigersaw you are right , the PO used to be a good SERVICE now its just all about money, when i started 19 years ago it was a very different place to work.

[600+]

Not sure if I understood the comment correctly but on this mornings bbc news there was a guy saying

"how can we schedule a family life when we will not know how many hours we are gonna be working or which days"

Now obviously he was referring to the flexi time the royal mail want to put in place. Surely though they would tell people in advance what hours they will be working, there will be a shift rota and they would know how much money they would get as they would have to sign new contracts since their R&Rs would change.

I work this way and many other people do so not sure where the problem is but maybe Darren can shed some light on this as an insider.

[Ed]

Job for today is to sign up to Hays DX. I can't put up with all these interruptions.

[kwak zzr]

what they want to do is send us home on light days and bank hours to use over the christmas period when it's heavy, no one knows when the light days are so it could be done on a daily basis, for familys with partners working and kids at school this will cause problems and if you refuse the PO want to be able to suspend you on conduct issues which may lead to the sack. the royal mail now want to cut the work force but dont want to pay redundancy pay they want to get rid of ppl for free.

[kwak zzr]

Job for today is to sign up to Hays DX. I can't put up with all these interruptions.

i don't blame you Ed.

[SoulKiss]

It seems crazy, the royal mail have said they are going to have a massive shake up soon (which in all fairness is probably needed) and cut alot of jobs.........who do you think is going to be first on the redundancy list, yes the people striking.

I dont know what to think of it all, I dont think the strikes are doing anygood other than loosing the workers pay. End of the day the mail system is so random and unreliable how are people to know whether or not their mail was meant to arrive on the day it did or 2 days earlier, all the workers are doing is creating more work for themselve when they actually return to work, they will evenntualy be replaced with bloody polish who dont strike anyway.

Its a downward spiral on for workers and the royal mail and its a damn shame :(.

I hearby propose "Soulkiss' Law".

This is based on "Godwins Law" but substitutes the use of an immigrant nationality in place of Nazi, when applied to jobs being lost due to said immigrants.

So on that basis, Graeme - you lose :P

[SoulKiss]

Whatever happened to the postal service - its become a POS in the last few years. Used to be you put a first class stamp on, posted it and then postie man delivered it next day. Now you have to evaluate every friggin envelope like you have nothing better to do and keep a vast assortment of stamps at home, (or find a post office 'no more than 3 miles away' and queue 'no more than 5 minutes'), post by the specified time and then await delivery sometime whenever in the day - or collect yourself from the sorting office but not after 2pm. Jesus on a tricycle. I thought the RM has lost the plot when they tried to rebrand to consignia, but now its just too much effort to try and comprehend what they are up to. Sympathy for their workforce, can't be nice working with such low morale.

What the Royal Mail SHOULD have done at the point of email becoming a threat was to re-align themselves to the increase of packages that they should have anticipated coming from Amazon/Ebay etc.

The letter service would then have been able to be subsidised by the increased revenue that would have brought in.

As it is, the RM is too expensive, too slow, and due to shoddy recruitment policy, I and many people I know, dont trust it to deliver what is sent, I always phone a day or two after posting anything I had no choice but to post to confirm it got there.

Their solution to this problem is to introduce chargeable tracking - which in this day and age should be free.

This is the second strike action that I dont understand - first there is the Underground strike where people want their jobs protected due to the company they work for going under - how does that make sense?

Then this one - stirke because the buisiness is going under, so forcing customers elsewhere, when it is inevitable that jobs are going to have to go, and NOT losing those jobs for a %age will result in everyone looking for another job if things play out to the only conclusion.

[kwak zzr]

i suppose ppl don't like change, i've worked the early shift for 15 years and you plan your life accordingly, the employees at RM are worried that there will be no one to fetch the kids from school and the pension cut is even more worrying.

[kwak zzr]

What the Royal Mail SHOULD have done at the point of email becoming a threat was to re-align themselves to the increase of packages that they should have anticipated coming from Amazon/Ebay etc.

they did and saw a large increase in packets hence the last price restructure, at Wolverhampton mail center we have just ha installed a new packet sorting conveyor to tackle the increase.

[kwak zzr]

Their solution to this problem is to introduce chargeable tracking - which in this day and age should be free.

their new product is called royal mail tracked which does this whilst the item is in the system.

[tigersaw]

the employees at RM are worried that there will be no one to fetch the kids from school

Dont they come equipped with legs nowadays?

[kwak zzr]

we'll my son's 3 and even my 9 year old cant be trusted on her own and there's to many psycho's out there.

[Ed]

Job for today is to sign up to Hays DX. I can't put up with all these interruptions.

£1K pa, £150 set up fee, £260 for some unexplained reason but I think because we'd have a fairly high volume. On average we post 75% of our mail to DX users and cos we send a lot of packages the average franking cost is around 80p per item so I reckon we'd get our money back in around 6 - 8 months.

Seems like a no-brainer.

[kwak zzr]

you pay yearly then with hays no matter how much you post? thats a good idea.

[Ed]

you pay yearly then with hays no matter how much you post? thats a good idea.

Pretty well, yes. If you do huge volumes then you have to pay more but we're comfortably within tolerance.

[Jdubya]

But, joe public and business suffers...let alone mention what impact the strike has on the economy...

[kwak zzr]

well like Ed's done, the best thing is to do is to source another carrier thats what commercial freedom is all about and the government want this.

[Biker Biggles]

Well Kwak for my 4000th post Ill wish you good luck in your battle with HMG and its PO lackeys.I see your managers have settled.I wonder how many of them will be expected to work zero hours contracts and be told to go home unpaid as and when.
Great to "modernised" aint it?

[Paws]

my dads a postie and hes sick of all this :(

[kwak zzr]

Well Kwak for my 4000th post Ill wish you good luck in your battle with HMG and its PO lackeys.I see your managers have settled.I wonder how many of them will be expected to work zero hours contracts and be told to go home unpaid as and when.
Great to "modernised" aint it?

yep it sure is;) its only my pension that is a great concern to me, i am willing to change with the company but our union isnt and they know more about this than i do.

[Jdubya]

well like Ed's done, the best thing is to do is to source another carrier thats what commercial freedom is all about and the government want this.


Fair enough but not all businesses want to go down that route. All of the post, even the stuff from commercial carriers like UKMail, etc. is still delivered by RM so joe public is still stuffed.

[kwak zzr]

soon UK Mail ect will be delivering so the customer will have more choice and i don't blame anyone that takes their business elsewhere.

[Biker Biggles]

Yup.There's genuine modernisation such as new sorting and CAD systems which is fine by most peoples standards,and even a certain amount of properly managed job losses which can be done if the will is there,but then seems to come the sheer arrogance of todays managers and their utter contempt for their staff.Its not just the PO of course,this is rife and is the reason we seem to be slipping back towards the old us and them mentality.
The British Diseaes was always mostly one of inept management and class arrogance.The temporary fix was to emasculate unions,but they never dealt with the real problem.

[kwak zzr]

do you work for CWU Mr biggles? :):):)

[Biker Biggles]

No:cool::cool:

Any vacancies?

[Moffatt666]

This is interesting. I am irritated with the strikes but yet I do support (and pay my dues to) the CWU.

[kwak zzr]

:takeabow::takeabow::takeabow::takeabow: i always stand by the union and trust they are making the right decisions, the strikes anoy the hell out of the postal staff too because @ 12 weeks to christmas they aint getting paid.