Royal Mail Strike On 29 June

[Guest Bart of Darkness]

Thanks ANDY, that's the problem sorted then.

He's very good at 1 line solutions to big, complex problems.

If only his solutions were as good.

I wasn't aware I was charged with sorting out the Royal Mail..

And for free as well. An opportunity missed there.

[HPC Convert]

Back in 1999 a girl I knew bought a flat in the London fringe for 45k (120k+ in today's money) on a single shop assistant's wage of 11k.

Did you reprimand her as a fool for borrowing 4 times her salary when prices were about to crash?

[HPC Convert]

Seems that someone in the management of the Post office lost sight of that spirit of service and the special meaning that a delivery of post still has in many people's hearts. I would say that it used to be the most loved public service we have.

We are talking about the mail here? The rubbish that drops through the letterbox? The vast bulk of my mail goes into the shredder without being opened. I dont open bills or statements as ive seen them on line. I never open unsolicited mail. Friends and family all email me. In fact the only mail i ever bother opening that i have not requested (brochures etc) is the tax return paperwork. That does not fill me with love for the service.

[Guest DissipatedYouthIsValuable]

Lets hope the unions go down this track, and lets hope more people get unionised, the managment greed over the last few years has become excessive and beyond all reason and these people have no right to moralise about workers demands while fillling their own offshore tax free bank accounts, whilst at the same time workers have been told to fuk off when trying to achieve cost of living increases. Workers in many industries have also been told to fuk off as their jobs are being sent to India or China. As for causing wage inflation, all inflation starts with the production of new money, not wage demands, they are just a symptom, money supply in the UK has been increasing at the rate of about 12% per anum for several years now, price rises in goods and wages are now just trying to catch up. As for sustaining HPI via the continuation of the inflation (money supply growth) I suspect that will be the aim of government as that is what they have done every time in the past under similar conditions as we are now heading into. (ie devalue the currencey to keep nominal asset prices stable)

Exactly. This IS how it works.

[distant.sun]

We are talking about the mail here? The rubbish that drops through the letterbox? The vast bulk of my mail goes into the shredder without being opened. I dont open bills or statements as ive seen them on line. I never open unsolicited mail. Friends and family all email me. In fact the only mail i ever bother opening that i have not requested (brochures etc) is the tax return paperwork. That does not fill me with love for the service.

Typical "shoot the messenger" attitude here methinks!

[dnd]

i'm just glad to see a union taking a stand

most of the others appear quite happy for their members to effectively take a pay cut with percentage wage rises below official inflation figures

[Guest vicmac64]

Crozier and the board have been enjoying multi-million pound packages for the past few years, and there are hundreds of managers receiving £100k+ bonuses.

Can you really blame the workers when they are offered a real terms pay cut?

Not at all - its a scam and and affront to democracy!

Just like all the other modern businesses that care nothing for their country or fellow countrymen!

Greed will put us either into the stone age or will take away our freedoms - see if I'm right or wrong!!! Everyday I feel less free!

And thats from someone with no personal debt.

[It is different this time]

A postie earns a basic salary of about £15k.

So if the postie didn't work, How much would he get in?

Housing benefit

Council Tax benefit

Job seekers allowance

Rain day - sunny day benefit!

whatever else he/she is entitled to. What I mean is come on £15K is insulting this day & age. The poor bugger has to pay £1K to council to start with before delivering the post in snow!

I support them all the way and I don't care if my post is delayed, a couple of days, as long as they get what they deserve or else fat cats should get off their a**s and deliver it!

The thing is, if housing was more affordable (which is an easy problem to solve) none of these issues would arise.

I don't think the solution would be that easy as it is a bit too late for an easy solution. It will, hopefully, remove many corrupted politicians from the power and sadly make millions 'bankrupt' before people wake up to reality.

Edited June 28, 2007 by It is different this time

[HPC Convert]

So if the postie didn't work, How much would he get in?

Housing benefit

Council Tax benefit

Job seekers allowance

Rain day - sunny day benefit!

whatever else he/she is entitled to. What I mean is come on £15K is insulting this day & age. The poor bugger has to pay £1K to council to start with before delivering the post in snow!

I support them all the way and I don't care if my post is delayed, a couple of days, as long as they get what they deserve or else fat cats should get off their a**s and deliver it!

I don't think the solution would be that easy as it is a bit too late for an easy solution. It will, hopefully, remove many corrupted politicians from the power and sadly make millions 'bankrupt' before people wake up to reality.

Wouldnt they get some sort of tax credit or something to increase their pay?

[Guest vicmac64]

TB is going to enjoy watching his arch-enemy squirm so soon into his honeymoon period as PM.

Hey Andy congrats on your condescending manner!! NOT

They are not muppets - they are human beings just like me and you that do a hard thankless job to make a living - they probably contributed more by tax to the exchequer than the 'giants of industry' so I think they are entitled to protest.

I don;t want to see the Post Office decimated - and privatisation will make it more expensive - I mean have you travelled by train recently??? and do you really trust the sorts we have leading industry now!!! I'd rather cast my lot with the posties than any of our captains of industry today - who are just sly boys on the make as far as I am concerned!

Its high time we all started to think about our fellow countrymen again (and I'm no communist - I believe in freedom and DEMOCRACY and putting the United Kingdom and its people first - NOT SELF INDULGING GLOBALISM)

[It is different this time]

Wouldnt they get some sort of tax credit or something to increase their pay?

Yes they would but what I meant was if they didn't work at all, as they need to work a minimum of 16 hours to qualify for tax credit.

[Ben13]

i'm just glad to see a union taking a stand

most of the others appear quite happy for their members to effectively take a pay cut with percentage wage rises below official inflation figures

Unison still hasn't agreed the local government pay rise after the Government offered a below inflation 2%. Unison want 5% so I can see this one ending up in a serious dispute in the not too distant future. Winter of discontent anyone?

On a separate note, if all the local government workers (2 million plus) haven't yet had an annual pay rise would this be temporarily holding inflation back?

[dnd]

Unison still hasn't agreed the local government pay rise after the Government offered a below inflation 2%. Unison want 5% so I can see this one ending up in a serious dispute in the not too distant future. Winter of discontent anyone?

unions appear inactive atm - personally can't see anything happening

On a separate note, if all the local government workers (2 million plus) haven't yet had an annual pay rise would this be temporarily holding inflation back?

money supply is still running @ 13%+ for various reasons - so, no

[retroboy]

I work inside the postal industry. There's a lot of uninformed talk about what's happening.

The Unions would like a 27% pay rise phased in over five years to bring Postal Salaries up to the national AVERAGE. Let us not forget that the national average is not what most people are paid. That the average is the figure when every wage in teh country is added up and divided by the number of workers. In this, one city boy with a million pound bonus is worth at least 50 people on 20k a year. It's not an accurate figure and the Unions are asking for wages to rise above the median of the majority of the country. The Union were offered 2.9% which is not an unreasonable annual increase and keeps inflation at bay. Striking in search of an increase far beyond inflation to match a nominal and inaccurate 'average' is commercial suicide.

The Royal Mail is in a set of unfair handcuffs imposed by PostComm who seem to exist only to prevent the Royal Mail from operating on a fair footing with its competitors - who have free reign to cherry pick the profitable elements of the business and charge what they like. Personally I think the Unions are too strong in the Royal Mail, though I support unions as a whole and think they are very important, their demands here are simply financially unrealistic and utterly deluded. Striking will not achieve anything but hurt the business. The business does simply not have the money to afford a 27% payrise to the staff : it also has to deal with the pension defecit, open competition and the modernisation of the business. Personally I think Posties are paid a fair wage, certainly more than competitors pay their staff, and it may very well be proudent to sack all strikers and get minimum wage temps in. There's no shortage of unemployed people in the country that would do it. Competitors pay minimum wage. Also, being a Postie doesn't require any special skills or qualifications. Anyone can do it and frequently, any old person does do it. It's one of the few unskilled jobs left, and there's plenty of NEET's ("Not in Education, Employment or Training") joining the economy straight from school every year who will do it.

Firms currently working with the RM will simply jump ship to the competition when the post isn't delievered, further damaging the commercial standing of the RM and it's cashflow. Striking will achieve the exact opposite of what they intend. It could very well castrate the Royal Mail for years to come, destroy any hope of a 27% wage rise, and generate enforced involuntary redunancies.

As for the statement that "Crozier and the board have been enjoying multi-million pound packages for the past few years, and there are hundreds of managers receiving £100k+ bonuses. "... False. Croziers package is not multi million, it's about 1.3m per annum, and there are only three employees in the RM out of 195,000 that recieve more than 999k per annum including bonuses. There are some managers in the six figures but not hundreds, the average manager is on 30-40k, and senior management tend to be no more than 80-90k.

Ultimately the strike is REALLY about overtime. The RM are being very stringent on overtime, and I can see why. Many employees use overtime as a way of boosting their income - and there is no NEED for them to do overtime, it's gratituous. I often see people on overtime sitting around drinking tea and joking around.

Many people have no clue about what's happening in the Royal Mail - unions included.

If this strike continues, the RM will be in a very vulnerable place as will it's 195,000 employees. It is commercial suicide.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

And after the commercial suicide, the government will have virtually no choice but to step in with taxpayer-funded life support. There is simply no other organisation which can or would provide fixed price 'last mile' deliveries of small items, and collections from post boxes, throughout the UK. Were the UK to lose that universal service, it would be the first country in the developed world to do so.

Given that telecommunications has replaced the physical transportation of pieces of paper from A to B for so many applications, maybe that will eventually happen. Greetings cards are now the only things I send and receive by post which could not (easily) be done any other way. I still get some bills by post, but I pay them all electronically, and if they started arriving by email only it wouldn't bother me. But no government will be keen for the end of the universal delivery to happen on their watch, least of all a Labour government. I suspect the union know this, in the same way that Scargill planned what he was doing on the basis that no government would allow large-scale power cuts to happen after what went on in the '70s. Scargill failed to realise that Thatcher had a carefully formulated plan B in her handbag. I can't see what plan B this government can have to defeat unions representing workers who do jobs that the private sector won't touch.

Edited June 29, 2007 by The Ayatollah Bugheri

[Flat Bear]

I would not really consider myself a advocate of unions or uncompetative practices but

hem hem

I really do believe we have had a exceptionally good service from royal mail for as far as I can remember.

They have recently started to complicate things and generally lose their way in this efficiency drive which is entirely a higher managerial problem.

We have a postal service that delivers a letter to just about anywhere in the UK next day for 32p. Just think about that.

Will private courier firms deliver anywhere for this price? say double this price?

We wont know what we have lost until it is too late. What happened to post offices?

Most people know this was something that had been decided some years ago now by this government.

[retroboy]

They have recently started to complicate things and generally lose their way in this efficiency drive which is entirely a higher managerial problem.

We have a postal service that delivers a letter to just about anywhere in the UK next day for 32p. Just think about that.

Will private courier firms deliver anywhere for this price? say double this price?

Nonsense, it's not 'higher managerial problem', it's PostComm rushing in an illthought open competition without considering the effects it will have on the market. Management has, I think, generally responded well to the circumstances imposed on them. Postcomm have also prevented the RM raising postal rates to reflect the actual copsts of delivery. the RM loses money on every piece of non business mail it delievers and offsets this against the profits from business customers. Business customers leave to competitors who skim the profitable markets for their shareholders, so there's no cross subsidy. The RM can't raise prices thanks to Postcomm, so it loses millions and millions on 'the last mile'.

If personal non-business post were charged to reflect the actual costs of a letter, post would double or triple to European rates.

[Flat Bear]

Nonsense, it's not 'higher managerial problem', it's PostComm rushing in an illthought open competition without considering the effects it will have on the market. Management has, I think, generally responded well to the circumstances imposed on them. Postcomm have also prevented the RM raising postal rates to reflect the actual copsts of delivery. the RM loses money on every piece of non business mail it delievers and offsets this against the profits from business customers. Business customers leave to competitors who skim the profitable markets for their shareholders, so there's no cross subsidy. The RM can't raise prices thanks to Postcomm, so it loses millions and millions on 'the last mile'.

If personal non-business post were charged to reflect the actual costs of a letter, post would double or triple to European rates.

Postcomm are managing it. They are the people directing policy that is higher management. If they werent they could be told to b*g off. They are the people *****ing it up.