RB5SCOTT

I'm interseted to hear your views on the strike

I sincerely hope you lose your jobs and the work goes elsewhere. I will be using alternative methods from now on with my business

davegtt

Try the other thread

RB5SCOTT

lol, i did look too oops

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

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#96 (permalink)
Christ, I'm amazed by most of the comments on this thread, most of you have no idea what the postal strike is about, and yet you rush to judge because you might experience some minor inconvience.

Most of you seem to link the strikes to pay rises, well that's because everytime their pay is reviewed, royal mail tries to shoehorn a whole heap of new working conditions in with the measily pay rise.

As I understand it the strike is about the following things (well the main points anyway):

1. Royal Mail want to introduce "flexible working" which as royal mail understand it means you turn up to work at your allotted time (for ease of reference lets say they all work 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday), and they say to you "there's no work for you to do at the moment, come back at 11am and work to your finish time" which then means that you either go home for 2 hours, or sit around at work until you are needed. Oh and by the way you then owe them 2 hours, so after doing this to you for 4 days, they can then say to you "you're coming in Saturday for eight hours to make up the hours you owe us". I know this is unlikely but as royal mail want it, it's perfectly possible.

2. Royal Mail wants to pay their employees monthly instead of weekly, but instead of saying "We know this will be difficult for you initially, so we'll offer you an interest free loan of a months pay to see you through the first month when you'll have no pay" they offer nothing and expect people to simply survive on thin air for a month.

3. As a final kick in the *****, "we want to change the way your pension is calculated, we know you've worked for us for 20 years but we're going to change things so that your pension is worth £10,000.00 less than it would have been". Oh and on the pension front for those of you who have commented on this, royal mail hasn't paid a penny into the pension scheme for years because it's been in surplus. Well what a shock, if you don't pay into a pension for years it will get to a point where it won't meet it's commitments.

Would any of you accept this in your career? I have a quite well paid professional career, and if my employer tried anything like this I would tell them firmly where to insert their job. Just because royal mail employees do a job that most of you apparently think is menial and unchallenging, doesn't mean they deserve to be treated like crap.

Oh and on the competition front, don't make me laugh, without going into the reasons for it ('cos quite frankly I don't understand how it happened), there is no competition, I could set up a postal service tomorrow and charge you 25 pence for a first class letter. What do you think I'll do with the letter? Well I'll take it to the post office where they are obliged by law to accept it, and they charge my delivery company 12 pence per letter, and royal mail have to take it and deliver it, is that competition? If you want competition then lets make it fair, if you want to accept a letter from a customer, you deliver it to its destination, that's fair.

I don't work for Royal Mail, my brother does and he is far from thick!

Sorry I've just come back from a night out, I'm half cut and hopefully some of this rant makes sense!

Matthew

p.s, my brother freely admits that there are lots of work shy a**holes at royal mail but don't tar them all with the same brush, lots of them work hard and get paid the same as the lazy feekers. I also work with a lazy feeker, but then I get paid twice as much, that's free competition!



Read This RB5SCOTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers
Colin

pslewis

The Pension thing is worth a fight alone

EddScott

1 - If your paid for those hours and don't work those hours, you should make them up. Granted it sounds awkward but if you worked in a job without a union, it would be put up or push off.

2 - monthly pay is hardly a big deal. I've always been paid monthly. Being given a months salary to keep you on track seems acceptable to me - how is it expected to be paid back?

3 - I assume by adjusting the pension they were going to give employees, the scheme is final salary? Yes its ****ty they are going to lop off a huge chunk but what about the rest of us on money purchase who have no idea what we will get in retirement? So much for the pension miss-selling scandal! Pension companies must be laughing their ***** off.

wrx-kris

Well I don't want to hear about their views and as such, don't care.
I do however think, they should lose their jobs for causing such disruption to us - infact themselves too.

If they don't like the pay - MOVE ON!

RB5SCOTT

2nd that

At the moment the important things i am waiting for:

1: My watch is still at Omega (fixed but not sending/delayed sending because of strikes)

2: PGR4 ( may have well gone to the shop )

3: Renewel of morgage papers

4: Some Millers diesel addative

5: Important work remitance's

6: My autocar mag

Now its not going to kill me to wait a little longer but what worries me now is how much of this stuff will end up getting lost and not delivered. Then how long do you hold out for because whenever you go back to the sender all they will say is that 'it was sent and the strikes are delaying things'

EddScott

I'm waiting for Ghost in Shell SAC DVD I bought off ebay. That was nearly 2 weeks ago.

This months PC Zone has arrived so its not all bad.

StickyMicky

waiting for an auto iris lens for the cctv camera at work (now not working at all when its dark)

hoskib

iTrader: (1)

and if anyone in the dartford sorting depot sees what looks like a vokey wedge, pop it on the top of the pile please there's a good chap

i understand your woes and job situation but I CAN'T FOOKIN CHIP WITHOUT IT AND IT'S KILLING MY GAME!!!

corradoboy

I support them. As an employer, you cannot expect people to get up, get ready and travel to work for an agreed start-time, only to send them away again because you are unable to organise your business logistics, and then expect them to give up their free time at the drop of a hat to again cover your ineptitude. This is a management policy which could only result in one thin, massive throughput of personnel as people tire quickly of such uncertainty and you end up only being able to employ those whom can't find work anywhere else. If the Post Office (I refuse to credit any organisation so awful with a Royal Seal, so the Royal Mail ceased to exist long ago for me) lose money on every letter delivered, raise the price. I couldn't care less if it costs me 27p or 37p to send an occasional birthday card. Business's who balk at the increased costs have several options too. Look elsewhere, become more efficient with your mailing needs or pass the price rise on to your customers (or all three, probably). I'd support a 50% pay rise to postal workers if it meant my mail arrived without the corners opened to inspect the contents, or that some of it even arrived at all (DVD's and such have a habit of being 'lost' ). Give someone a wage they appreciate and they'll protect that wage for themselves. When the finger points at a department accused of theft, if it's full of disgruntled minimum wagers they'll not care a hoot. Make them proud and they'll all improve the service. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

Coupe-Se

The idle ******* need to take a look in the real world where the majority of us work!!

If they don't like the new working conditions its simple ............. move to a job that gives them all they want (if they can find it).

It is bloody ridiculous that the idle ******* are allowed to stop the country from functioning properly, by taking so many days off work in such a short period of time.

The company I work for is being crippled by the lack of post, my house move has been severely delayed and everyone I speak to have important items stuck in the postal system.

I have not spoken to one person who now has an ounce of sympathy with the postal workers. Their action has pretty much pi$$ed everyone off and no-one gives a damn what they are moaning about. Well done to the union for dealing so well with the whole situation.

Holy Ghost

they also seem to getting hot under the collar about no longer being able to claim 3 hours 'overtime' for 30 minutes and the pathetic limitations on cross-functional working. like you can push a trolley but not unload it. spanish practices straight from 'i'm alright jack'.



i saw a union 'spokesperson' from mount pleasant sorting office (where else?) interviewed the other day. she began by saying "our members are expected to carry overweight bags ..."

judging by the strikers in the background and her own waistline, she should have said "our overweight members are expected to carry bags ..."

Gutmann pug

From memory we used to have a first and second class post. The first arrived with me around 8am the second sometimes came late in the day sometimes the following morning. They got rid of the second class post and the first now arrives with me sometime around 2pm. That's progress for you

Sonic'

I have had post

parcels and letters too strike hasnt affected me, and I have sent parcels and letters too and they have been delivered, all during the strike

EddScott

Our business post can arrive anytime between 9am and 11am - its always very late on Friday for reasons I can't work out. It can take up to 2 hours to sort our post which is a right PITA when its late.

At home its anytime between 10am and 2pm.

What I can't complain about is not having anything turn up. I've never suffered a "loss" but famous last words.

Dream Weaver

I had a Parcel Farce delivery today of all my Mi16 induction stuff (that I don't need til next year so no problem).

It was obvisouly subbed out though as the van had "International Delivery Network" on the side or something and he wasn't from RM.

DCI Gene Hunt

Most companies do this.... hardly news

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Quick!!! While you have your chance You so should not have said that on the internet

bugeyeandy

Typical attitude of someone who isn't prepared to fight what is rightfully theirs. Switch from weekly to monthly and you instantly lose a months pay which you will never see again until you retire/leave.

Final salary scheme, I too have a final salary scheme which I have paid in a lot of money over the last 17 years. Last year I was forced to double my payments to keep the same benefits purely because of money grabbing Gordon Browns rape of the uk's pension schemes. Just because you don't have what they have doesn't mean it's right to take it off them - smacks of the green eyed monster to me

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Our postman!

YouTube - boro pat (adult)

EddScott

I am fighting for whats rightfully mine - my post!

According to the above post, they are getting a months pay in advance. I appreciate its a PITA but they aren't being asked to live on thin air for a month.

As for jealous of a final salary scheme - what?? They've put ££££ into a scheme with absolutely no guarantees of getting what they expected and an increasingly likelyhood of more erosion rather than a scheme where I have investment control so I have an active hand in its future value.

LOL

ethanrob

iTrader: (3)

rumours are rife over on postmanchat.net that a deal has been done between the royal mail and the union numpties this evening,also the reason civil action has been taken to stop strikes next week is that the union didn't declare how many members would be striking,so breached a law there

thank god,we may now work in peace

marcus

bugeyeandy

Ok, i've been paid weekly for many years. If I was forced to work monthly I would then be paid monthly in arrears. As such I would not be paid for a month.
How that can be fair is beyond me, how about I come to you and say we've decided to pay you every second month. Would you be happy to lose that months pay?

p.s. Not quite sure what you mean by thats how things work in real life. Plenty of people are still paid weekly and they're all real as far as I know

RB5SCOTT

I still can't believe that people live by their pay cheques each week, don't they have savings to tie them over for a couple of weeks. What happens when they get a months worth of money, do they spunk it in a week lol

They want to try running a business and having to pay weekly wages and not getting the money for up to 60 days or longer if the w@nkers decide not to pay

bugeyeandy

Clearly you aren't. Seems only your way is the right way

bugeyeandy

I agree, apologies as I misunderstood the point you were trying to make.
In my opinion the only reason I see RM doing this is to keep hold of the money for longer and to make some money from the interest.
I'm sure if it was forced upon me it would be painful for a few months but i'd get used to it. Wouldn't be happy about it though.

p.s. I do get a little emotive on subjects such as this mainly because i've seen a steady erosion of large companies employees terms and conditions with little support for those workers when they rightly try to protect what they have (in many cases as part of their current contracts). Seems as these terms and conditions have fallen it's more acceptable to others to work harder for less money. I know it's a tough world but it'll be a worse one if we all end up working 60 hr weeks for £100. Exaggeration maybe but thats the way it's going.