royal mail strike

Currently reading:
royal mail strike

chefs do require qualificiations, usually 2 years at college then another 2 years of work based training before you have all the quals you need.
 
Last edited:
oh you meant posties :eek:

they cant complain, they get paid a fortune, i earn less than my next door neighbour, all he has to do is pop a few letters in a few letter boxes (but he does do 2 shifts). if my job was that easy i'd wake up every morning laughing.

The median figure for all workers in 2006 was £447.10 a week. For postal workers the median basic pay was £323. Do they expect to get average uk wages for doing a bloody simple job? They're dreaming if they do. It should be minimum wage, other no brainer jobs are, why should posties be a special case? Its a typical case of a union thinking they can bend the govt over because RM is public, unions are so myopic, they always end up killing themselves with these tactics.

I have a degree, a good professional job, and i still dont earn the UK median wage. Do I complain? No, but if i get to the point where a postie gets as much as me per hour i'll quit and become a postie, why suffer a stressful life with responsibilites when i can be an envelope pusher instead?

RM workers need to stop listening to the CWU's propaganda and realise that their jobs are at stake if they continue to damage RM and give competitors a greater market share. You dont need to be a history professor to learn from what has happened in the past.

Competitors pay their employees on average 25% less than RM yet they dont have problems with strikes.
 
Last edited:
he does 2 shifts :p

basic for a postie is £256 (same as £13300pa), which is the same as most call centres in the north east, its an average wage for unskilled workers, expecting more is stupid, striking over wages is even crazier, ultimately you'll be replaced by a foreign worker who's willing to take less money or you'll put your company out of business.

while we're talking basic, staff also earn an additional £100 on average each week in overtime and pay supplements for night and weekend work. they're hardly struggling, plenty of graduates are earning less.

if the wages were really that bad RM would pay more, end of the day they are only putting up such a strong fight because they already pay more than they should in terms of the labour market. RM would cut wages to make them more in line with the rest of the industry if they thought they could. to remain competitive in the long term they need to.
 
Last edited:
he does 2 shifts :p

basic for a postie is £256 (same as £13300pa), which is the same as most call centres in the north east, its an average wage for unskilled workers, expecting more is stupid, striking over wages is even crazier, ultimately you'll be replaced by a foreign worker who's willing to take less money or you'll put your company out of business.

while we're talking basic, staff also earn an additional £100 on average each week in overtime and pay supplements for night and weekend work. they're hardly struggling, plenty of graduates are earning less.

if the wages were really that bad RM would pay more, end of the day they are only putting up such a strong fight because they already pay more than they should in terms of the labour market. RM would cut wages to make them more in line with the rest of the industry if they thought they could. to remain competitive in the long term they need to.

night duties in DO's are ceasing
early starts are ceasing so these allowences are defunct
sunday collections are being phased out so the same again
overtime,well thats why they call it overtime.its optional and as per the business requirements so cant be totalled into someones wage.
so if im not doing OT or theres no OT available um what?
 
I wouldn't really say the wages are that low tbh. At the end of the day its a job anyone physically able can do. You don't need HNC's,HND's a Degree, A-Levels or in most cases GCSE's.

No, but you are sent out like a pack-horse, with more and more mail and leaflets to deliver, up to ten pouches a day! In all weathers, for a poxy take home of £242 a week. Yes anyone can do it, but not many want to, that's why retention is at an all time low...................................
 
oh you meant posties :eek:

they cant complain, they get paid a fortune, i earn less than my next door neighbour, all he has to do is pop a few letters in a few letter boxes (but he does do 2 shifts). if my job was that easy i'd wake up every morning laughing.

The median figure for all workers in 2006 was £447.10 a week. For postal workers the median basic pay was £323. Do they expect to get average uk wages for doing a bloody simple job? They're dreaming if they do. It should be minimum wage, other no brainer jobs are, why should posties be a special case? Its a typical case of a union thinking they can bend the govt over because RM is public, unions are so myopic, they always end up killing themselves with these tactics.

I have a degree, a good professional job, and i still dont earn the UK median wage. Do I complain? No, but if i get to the point where a postie gets as much as me per hour i'll quit and become a postie, why suffer a stressful life with responsibilites when i can be an envelope pusher instead?

RM workers need to stop listening to the CWU's propaganda and realise that their jobs are at stake if they continue to damage RM and give competitors a greater market share. You dont need to be a history professor to learn from what has happened in the past.

Competitors pay their employees on average 25% less than RM yet they dont have problems with strikes.

Almost all of the above is nonsense.

Your mate might get good money, but as you said yourself, he does two shifts, most Posties do 20 - 40 hours overtime a week to survive, could you afford a mortgage and bring up a family on £242 a week ???

The median UK wage is a liveable wage, most guys I work with work double shifts, do part time jobs in the afternoon and send their Mrs out to work just to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. The job might be a no brainer but it is performed by people who are proud, well it has been until recent times, I guess casuals and Nigerians is the way forward.................

You say you'll quit if we are paid the national median, you better quit then, as I said above, most of us do, but we work our balls off, you would run if you had to work 80 hours a week for the average UK wage! Also, the Envelope Pushers you refer to, I work in a Mail Centre, we have solicitors, teachers, psychologists, bank managers, lots of people with degrees and they all push or flick letters, why, because it's a stress free environment and their chosen fields have proven to be ball breaking jobs with little reward.

The CWU are not a propoganda machine, RM have made 40,000 voluntary redundancies since 2003, they want another 40,000 before 2010, what impact does this have on the economy, they'll end up on the dole, or in poor jobs claiming tax credits, it's still going to cost the tax payer. Would you sit on your bum if you were being told that a pension you've paid into for the last 20 years was now only going to pay 50% of your finally salary as opposed to the 75% scheme that you signed up to, oh and even though it allowed you to retire at 60, we've decided that now you can't claim it until you reach 65.

Competitors, this makes me bloody laugh, without RM there is no competition, our 'competitors' use downstream access, they collect mail from contracts they have won or been awarded, drop it off at our mail centres, we have to process and deliver it. They charge new customers 10p an item, we are not allowed to, the cheapest we can do it for is 13p an item, of course customers will use our competitors. But since we've been on strike, have any of you recieved mail with TNT, UK Mails, DHL or and of our competitors logo on it? No, because we haven't delivered our competitors mail yet! Why do the public not understand this concept?

And finally, if our competitors employees do get paid 25% less, it's because they are drivers, they are not a delivery network, they collect and drop off at mail centres, they do 75% less work but get paid 25% less! We collect, process, and deliver, go figure............................................
 
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2186924,00.html

Analysts said the strikes would severely damage Royal Mail after it had appeared to be over the worst of its deep-seated problems.

"Royal Mail has been moved from a position of being reasonably profitable, now to a position of being zero profitable," Ian Senior, an economist, told Reuters. "And I suspect after this strike it will be a loss-maker."

He said that ever since postal regulator Postcomm was established, it had attempted to "interfere, micro-manage" the postal service, holding prices down well below rates charged by competitors in Europe.
 
This amazes me, in the 80s and 90s Royal Mail was considered to be the best postal service in the world, all other countries looked to us as a model.

We were effecient, we provided the best service of quality, we were the cheapest (and probably still are), we had a universal delivery agreement (and still do, the only country left in Europe to deliver on Saturdays), our pension was so much in credit that RM took a 13 year contribution break from it, our profits were running between 400 - 800 million per annum, not bad for a public company, we were labelled a blue chip organisation by the Yanks and Japs, we were awarded for having the best employee welfare support system in place and being family friendly and we still had proud and respected staff.

Look at the place now, all of this since 2000, why? Money, they want more and more, and cronies like Leighton and Crozier as leaders, lead my arrse, they have to go, fight on CWU, fight on.....................................
 
it seems Ian Senior shares my concerns about the future of RM.

RM could compete on price if they were privatised, the CWU prevents that. i dont see how an increase in wages will help anyone, least of all the employees, there's no point having a wage increase if it means your employer goes bust. even as a public organisation RM needs to be profitable to survive.

on the way to work this morning on the radio they was talking about the effect the strikes are having on competitors. they have seen record amounts of business as both individuals and businesses turn to private organisations to deliver their mail. in the 2003 strikes private organisations saw a lot of new customer retention as people who would have never tried anyone else suddenly realise that there are cheaper services available. iirc the retention percentage given was 25%. i didnt realise RM's competitors were cheaper until this morning. now i'm even more worried about the long term future of RM.

my bank statement wont arrive because TNT use RM to deliver. i know that, and it isnt fair the way RM are forced into letting other people take those contracts, but that wouldnt happen if the CWU let privatisation go ahead. TNT can still delvier something if i want them to, but i have to pay, TNT wont delvier my bankstatement because the bank dont pay enough to have it delivered by TNT, that is why TNT use RM to deliver my statement. if RM was private they could win my bank's contract from TNT or charge TNT a fairer price. that cant happen until the CWU join the real world.
 
Last edited:
it seems Ian Senior shares my concerns about the future of RM.

RM could compete on price if they were privatised, the CWU prevents that. i dont see how an increase in wages will help anyone, least of all the employees, there's no point having a wage increase if it means your employer goes bust. even as a public organisation RM needs to be profitable to survive.

on the way to work this morning on the radio they was talking about the effect the strikes are having on competitors. they have seen record amounts of business as both individuals and businesses turn to private organisations to deliver their mail. in the 2003 strikes private organisations saw a lot of new customer retention as people who would have never tried anyone else suddenly realise that there are cheaper services available. iirc the retention percentage given was 25%. i didnt realise RM's competitors were cheaper until this morning. now i'm even more worried about the long term future of RM.

my bank statement wont arrive because TNT use RM to deliver. i know that, and it isnt fair the way RM are forced into letting other people take those contracts, but that wouldnt happen if the CWU let privatisation go ahead.

who is talking about privatisation? we are talking of a level playing field or at least not as against RM as it is.
why stick to the wage rise point.the wage rise offered by RM is a wage cut in real terms.
eg the cash that goes in my bank every week/month no matter how RM dress it.
day on day we see crazy decisions. like the recent one of putting plasma screens in every office . cost around £15 million and as far as i know most still dont work.
ours is at best an expensive clock.
im told they were to be used for training and i see they are hooked up to the network.
so much for saving money
 
it seems Ian Senior shares my concerns about the future of RM.

RM could compete on price if they were privatised, the CWU prevents that. i dont see how an increase in wages will help anyone, least of all the employees, there's no point having a wage increase if it means your employer goes bust. even as a public organisation RM needs to be profitable to survive.

on the way to work this morning on the radio they was talking about the effect the strikes are having on competitors. they have seen record amounts of business as both individuals and businesses turn to private organisations to deliver their mail. in the 2003 strikes private organisations saw a lot of new customer retention as people who would have never tried anyone else suddenly realise that there are cheaper services available. iirc the retention percentage given was 25%. i didnt realise RM's competitors were cheaper until this morning. now i'm even more worried about the long term future of RM.

my bank statement wont arrive because TNT use RM to deliver. i know that, and it isnt fair the way RM are forced into letting other people take those contracts, but that wouldnt happen if the CWU let privatisation go ahead. TNT can still delvier something if i want them to, but i have to pay, TNT wont delvier my bankstatement because the bank dont pay enough to have it delivered by TNT, that is why TNT use RM to deliver my statement. if RM was private they could win my bank's contract from TNT or charge TNT a fairer price. that cant happen until the CWU join the real world.

Even if we were private, Postcomm would regulate us, the Department of Competition & Trade would ensure we could not compete and hold a Monopoly, they do it to Tesco and they are private!
 
who is talking about privatisation? we are talking of a level playing field or at least not as against RM as it is.
why stick to the wage rise point.the wage rise offered by RM is a wage cut in real terms.
eg the cash that goes in my bank every week/month no matter how RM dress it.
day on day we see crazy decisions. like the recent one of putting plasma screens in every office . cost around £15 million and as far as i know most still dont work.
ours is at best an expensive clock.
im told they were to be used for training and i see they are hooked up to the network.
so much for saving money

We got three 42 inch plasma screens installed in August 2005 at our Mail Centre, they were installed as a vehicle to share information and changes, two are offline and display the spectrum of colours and always have done, one has a photo of the Beatles permanently on it as the manager is a fan, a complete waste of time and money, RM management needs to look at itself.
 
money wasting is simply down to bad resource management, thats a company culture issue, and a very common problem in public sector companies. if they spent £15M and dont get a return on that investment then they've wasted money.

a level playing field requires at least a couple of competitors to have a real alternative to RM delivery. i remeber back in 2005 when TNT (aka Deutsche Post) said they were planning to hire postmen so tney could offer a real alternative for normal post, the only reason they did not was because they felt RM would not become privatised in the near future so they could not compete. therefore to make things fair RM need to be regulated. if RM went private and TNT became a real competitor then there could be a level playing field and the price wars could begin.

Even if we were private, Postcomm would regulate us, the Department of Competition & Trade would ensure we could not compete and hold a Monopoly, they do it to Tesco and they are private!
if RM went private competitors would develop postal delivery services and then the regulation of RM would stop. no one dares to invest in a delivery service that could compete until RM can be beaten as a competitor, that means RM must be private first. CWU know that but they dont want to lose their power just yet, even if it mean they kill RM. its the classic privatisation resistance problem we've seen many times in the uk, it always ends the same, how RM have lasted this long is a mystery.
 
Last edited:
money wasting is simply down to bad resource management, thats a company culture issue, and a very common problem in public sector companies. if they spent £15M and dont get a return on that investment then they've wasted money.

a level playing field requires at least a couple of competitors to have a real alternative to RM delivery. i remeber back in 2005 when TNT (aka Deutsche Post) said they were planning to hire postmen so tney could offer a real alternative for normal post, the only reason they did not was because they felt RM would not become privatised in the near future so they could not compete. therefore to make things fair RM need to be regulated. if RM went private and TNT became a real competitor then there could be a level playing field and the price wars could begin.


if RM went private competitors would develop postal delivery services and then the regulation of RM would stop. no one dares to invest in a delivery service that could compete until RM can be beaten as a competitor, that means RM must be private first. CWU know that but they dont want to lose their power just yet, even if it mean they kill RM. its the classic privatisation resistance problem we've seen many times in the uk, it always ends the same, how RM have lasted this long is a mystery.

funny you raise TNT.i know they trialed deliveries in glasgow just recently(last 6 months) but seems nothing has come of it.
TNT have a safe home market and (home) government funding so are in a safe position to rival RM.
they choose to take advantage of a system hindering RM
 
It's taken RM 350 years to build the infrastructure and network we have today.

TNT & Co are just jokers who will never and could never set up a service to deliver to 26 million homes daily, hence downstream access.................
 
money wasting is simply down to bad resource management, thats a company culture issue, and a very common problem in public sector companies. if they spent £15M and dont get a return on that investment then they've wasted money.

a level playing field requires at least a couple of competitors to have a real alternative to RM delivery. i remeber back in 2005 when TNT (aka Deutsche Post) said they were planning to hire postmen so tney could offer a real alternative for normal post, the only reason they did not was because they felt RM would not become privatised in the near future so they could not compete. therefore to make things fair RM need to be regulated. if RM went private and TNT became a real competitor then there could be a level playing field and the price wars could begin.


if RM went private competitors would develop postal delivery services and then the regulation of RM would stop. no one dares to invest in a delivery service that could compete until RM can be beaten as a competitor, that means RM must be private first. CWU know that but they dont want to lose their power just yet, even if it mean they kill RM. its the classic privatisation resistance problem we've seen many times in the uk, it always ends the same, how RM have lasted this long is a mystery.

I might be wrong, but don't the other privatised companies get regulated?

BT? Gas? Electric? Rail? Who can truly compete against these companies?
 
Back
Top