Is it good that unionised employees have the fall-back of industrial action if they're getting a poor deal - or is it, as I currently believe, purely a right royal pain in the backside for their customers, who all still have to go to work whether they have issues with their employers or not.

>The Communications Workers Union (CWU) has announced further strike action. Two 48-hour strikes are planned. The first will begin at lunchtime on Thursday 4th October and ends at lunchtime on Saturday 6th October. The second will begin in the early hours of Monday 8th October, ending in the early hours of Wednesday 10th October.

So what they're billing as two 48 hour strikes are either side of a non-working day, and are surely going to equate in reality to the best part of a week without anything approaching a decent postal service?

I am prepared to be swayed from my current opinion if there really are valid reasons ...

M.

Well I belonged to a Union and felt my rights were protected.  I even took secondary Action in support of the miners (funny how Arthur Scargill's predictions were right on the nose).

I know several people whose employers are not giving them what they are entitled to re holidays, but are too afraid to say anything, as they might loose their jobs.

But are the union for RM workers really protecting anything - or just putting further nails in the RM's coffin, as the service becomes more and more unreliable? And yes, I know that private companies setting up in competition are able to pick the profitable services to deliver, but people will just step further and further away from snail mail as it becomes worse.

M.

Look at it from the other direction. How will it improve with closures of post offices, with reductions of collections,with reductions in staffing and yes with the loss of the more profitable parts of the buisness. Do they just accept all these things and watch the service end slowly? Would we be paying any attention or as much even if it wasn't going to be a pain in the proverbial without the service or should we just get used to the fact that we are going to have this anyway if they don't manage to change the way things are going?

It has become worse long before industrial action, I believe the workers and the Unions aren't stupid, they already see the undertaker taking measurements, and this is their last ditch attempt to get folk to notice what is happening.

I remember in London in the 1980's getting 3 deliveries daily, and I could almost set my watch by the postie, 8am, 11am and 3pm.  I had a lot of pen pals then and a mother who would censor my mail so used to hang about waiting to get my mail first.  First class mail always arrived next day, as did a lot of second class.

Locally I heard Cadbury's are shutting their factory in Bristol over next to years, moving production to Poland and Birmingham.  Wages in Poland are about 20% of ours yet their cost of living is at least 75% of ours so people are on poverty wages.  Why do you think so many well educated people from Poland are working here in menial jobs.

Yes I agree everyone should have the right to take industrial action if needed BUT. I am secretary of a Canine Society and I should have entries coming in. Thiis going to make life very difficult. I am wondering whether to contact training clubs eyc where I have sent schedules to ask them  to advise exhibitors to email me their entries. More work ,but thats my job I suppose.
Getting back to the postal workers, I am not so sure we have a 'postal service' I used to have the same postlady,and she always came between 7.30 & 8am. but two years ago everything changed. Now I get different posties all the time and post could and does arrive often as late as 1.pm.. Okay, I'll stop moaning.

Yes, think we've actually had 3pm deliveries at times, although somewhere around midday seems more usual. Really helpful for those who are out at work, with no hope of getting deliveries.

I am being educated a little on email from one of our old members and am having a bit more sympathy for how badly and rapidly the posties' roles are degenerating.

M.

My dad is a postie and has been for almost 30 years.  I spoke to him last night, mainly to find out whether the closures will be affecting his branch.  He says that the system has changed an awful lot since he has been there and not necessarily good changes, even more so now as they no longer do TV licences etc etc. 

Where he lives in a rural location and has a population of around 3500 people and there are 4 posties.  He loves his job as the Head Postie and always has.  He has never ever been on strike (for one he doesn't believe in it and two you dont get paid if you are on strike).  There are a couple of the others though who do strike but not always for the cause (more for a day off ).  He is a member of the union and has used them on previous occassions for peace of mind more than anything on things like overtime and holiday entitlements etc.

Luckily his office will not be affected (its mainly the branches that are close to another one, ie within a mile or so of each other where the smaller one will unfortunately close).  Being rural, at certain times (especially around Christmas) he is always invited in for a sherry and mincepie but even this more personal approach is being lost with the cutting down of delivery times as he can go days without seeing a certain person whereas before he could guarantee to see them at least once a day and make sure they were ok (mainly the older generation ;))

If you got mail today or next time you get it, (don't believe all you hear in the media some may land on your mat tomorrow) look at the post marks, how many are actually Royal Mail and how many are TNT/S Mail/DHL etc., these have still been delivered by your postie through something called downstream access.
This means that competitors can got to the big companes and offer to deal with their mail at a reduced rate confident in the knowledge that anything in rural areas can be passed on to good old Royal Mail at less then they have been paid to deliver it and all they have to do is deal with the inner city higher profit bits.
The is so called competition, Royal Mail is the only company that is forced to deliver to every address in the country so is it any wonder they are losing business as they can't compete on a level playing field.
Surely by now the competition should be making some effort to deal with rural post, then a Royal Mail strike would have far less impact as someone would be there to take over

well normally i take the view "if you dont like what your being paid then go get a different job" (cant bear whingers who complain they are underpaid!)but if a bit of a postal strike will help dear old RM then they have my blessing because i think the service is fantastic and it still completely astounds me that i can go to our post box at 5pm and by 8am the following morning it can be in London or wherever.....for 32p!

you are really luck to be able to post a letter etc and it get to the person the next day,
i have had first class letters not delivered for three days , had post pinched , had next day delivery delivered two days later, and i am sure i am not alone
carolann

I still think that the Royal Mail provides excellent value. Yes the deliveries have changed in that there are not so many as there used to be and the post is no longer here before breakfast but to be able to get a letter from here to anywhere in the world for what I consider to be a comparatively small charge is excellent.

I am not well versed in the new postal charges but believe I could send a small packet to Scotland - 0ver 600 miles away - for just over a pound whereas if I wish to catch a bus to my nearest large town - 12 miles away - it would cost me nearly £5  so yes I think it is still a good, if different, service.

So many rural areas have lost their post offices as more and more services are taken away from them and it makes it extremely hard for anyone without a car to be able to do simple every day things such as having access to actual cash that the loss of these PO's has a very detrimental effect on rural life. Not everyone has internet access and many elderly people, whose pensions etc are paid directly into a bank account are able to travel far to get to a bank.
My elderly aunt used to get her money paid into a PO account and she could hobble off to the PO to get cash to pay the milkman, bus fares etc but now, with the closure of her village post office, she has to get my dad to draw some money out of his account, he has to drive 60 miles return to give her the cash and then she gives him a cheque to pay him back if she has used up her paper money and is totally reliant on someone else being able to get it for her if she runs out :(

Industrial action is a pain to the customer but it does make us all realise how vital some services are and what the consequences are for the community if these services are lost or suffer major cutbacks - the only way to make people sit up and notice is to take drastic action. If we don't like the hassle caused by industrial action just imagine how difficult it would be if we didn't have the services full stop

All business have to modernise, the Royal Mail must have had a huge cut in letters being posted in recent years due to e.mails.  This will obviously lead to modernisation and a reduction in staff, it is something a lot of business have to go through.  Just because the Royal Mail has a union where a normal private business doesn't, should not give them special privileges.  From previous redundancies from RM they got a much better pay out then the normal person does in other jobs, most of them have been voluntary.  (BIL is a manager for RM and lets put it this way, he certainly would not be a manager in any other employment.)

The Post Office however has a completely different role.  The elderly rely on this possibly more then the younger population.  As the current middle age population ages I think they will be used to banking etc on the internet, so perhaps now is not the right time to make reductions in Post Offices.  Saying that, I am sure the majority of elderly people have a bank account, or certainly should have for security reasons.  What I feel is going wrong is the accessibility of that cash.  There are far too many cash machines popping up that charge you take out your money.  The elderly especially should not be drawing out large amounts of cash to carry around, but need to withdraw small amounts frequently, with a charge of £1.75 a time their pension is soon eaten up.  Around here you have to travel to a large supermarket or a bank in the high street to get a free withdrawal, all local machines on local parades of shops charge a fee.

I am not really familiar enough with the details of the RM strike to comment specifically, but I am glad that all unionised employees have the right to take industrial action. If this were not the case, employers would be unlikely to treat employees reasonably and fairly, as there would be little motivation to do so. ITs too easy for "the customer" to distance themself from the "employee". I am an employee of the nhs but I am also a customer of the nhs and numerous other organisations of course. Would those who complain about the striking postal workes or any other workers, be prepared to sacrifice their OWN right to industrial action?
Speaking as a clinical person I more or less do not have the right to industrial action, and have to tolerate awful working conditions.....but I wouldnt deny that right to others.

My daughter is a postie and is going on strike and has my backing, the way she has to work and the health and safety laws that are broken daily to make the deliveries are totally unacceptable.  Their bags are supposed to weigh no more than 16kgs most days she is loading the van with upwards of 18kg bags and some as heavy as 22kgs which is against the RM's own regulations let alone government ones, most posties are part time staff where my daughter works there is only 1 full time postie.  By law the post has to arrive within a set time frame so all the post that folk put in the boxes over the next few days will have to be sorted and delivered by the end of the first working day back so all the part timers not only lose their wages for this action but they also have to work for as long as it takes to clear the backlog without overtime or any extra pay.

My daughter has her wages docked if she goes to the toilet more than  once per shift, if her 'specials' aren't completed on time again docked wages all down to the manager in their particular branch.  She has just found out that due to her manager she has lost several hundred pounds wages because he's cited her specials as not delivered on time when in reality after a Union check they were found to be the earliest deliverys they'd had for her run in 3 yrs and the job she's doing should have been allocated to the guy taken on at the same time as her as its a very heavy round without the van deliveries of the other bags to the rest of the staff on their rounds.

I don't know enough about the specifics of the Royal Mail job (other than what is obvious to a customer) but I can't help but feel that this is not a good move for the service. I too remember getting 2 deliveries a day, and now I'm lucky if I get my mail before 2pm!! Some of the news reports I've seen comment on how the service doesn't want to undertake the modernisation....but surely they HAVE to modernise?? I'm all for worker's rights, but the customer is now left with the best part of a week with no service....if I was a competing company I'd be setting up my own counter service...
I don't want to see the service go, and I don't want to see smaller post offices close, so I don't know the way round this, as I still need to be able to rely on a service which at the moment we don't appear to be getting
(I once posted a card to my parents for their wedding anniversary in August, post marked, clearly written....they got it the following JANUARY!!!) 

answers on a postcard??!!!

Well, my post is working - I'm certainly beginning to understand how difficult the posties' lives are becoming. :(

>I too remember getting 2 deliveries a day, and now I'm lucky if I get my mail before 2pm!! Some of the news reports I've seen comment on how the service doesn't want to undertake the modernisation....but surely they HAVE to modernise??

One of the people who is educating me, and has a friend who demonstrates to them what an unfair lot a postie's life is, asks me to point out that this 2pm delivery IS the moderisation and that's one of the things that the Posties are objecting to!  Staff cuts mean that the posties have to do their own round, and then as there are no back-up staff to cover sickness, holiday etc someone then has to do the 'No Postie here today' round after their own, hence the 2pm delivery.

M.

I got my Parcel today from their 48 hour guaranteed parcel service. Which cost £7.50 for a dog bath. Thought that was dirt cheap..

i think the service is fantastic and it still completely astounds me that i can go to our post box at 5pm and by 8am the following morning it can be in London or wherever.....for 32p!

Exactly I think we all need to stop and think about just that Sam. I sent a letter on Monday to the US it was delivered Wednesday. (I know it went out the county But you get my point). 75p

I am not so sure we have a 'postal service' I used to have the same postlady,and she always came between 7.30 & 8am. but two years ago everything changed. Now I get different posties all the time and post could and does arrive often as late as 1.pm.. Okay, I'll stop moaning.

BUT do you still get your post delivered everyday.  " WE" have driven the cost down and they have had to be competative to compete with things like e-mails etc so the service had to change BUT overall we still get a very good service.

someone needs to step in and help. Not many other countries do they deliver to your door. :-)

Schip I'm not sure where your information comes from, but the only mail that has to be delivered by a specific time is the so called specials or next day deliveries, any backlog will be cleared in however long it takes, your daughter cannot be forced to do overtime.

She has Ingrid, I know you work for the post office but believe me when I say they've all been told that if they strike the backlog HAS to be cleared before they go home that day by law - she ain't going to stay at work if she didn't think she'd lose her job and neither would the others who work with her who are more mature, they also have Union reps in there. 

She's given up her flat as she knows she can't afford the rent after this mth with the loss of earnings she'll be facing after the strike days, she's already been seen by the Union about problems she's having there and they've told her they're 'keeping an eye on the situation' and log all the time the manager tells her she's not done the deliveries within the allowed time span so will be penalised for it.  

It is a small town area shw works in where everyone knows everyone else so believe me they know where you are when and who you're with, they docked her wages for going to the Toliet at the Dr's after she'd delivered there.

Schip I would suggests that firstly she contacts personel about her missing pay and unpaid overtime, it just doesn't happen without a good reason, and if her line manager is telling her she has to do unpaid overtime to clear the backlog then he is in effect bullying the staff so she should report that too.

A couple of bits for her to look at

http://www.postwatch.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=30
http://www.postwatch.co.uk/index.php?option=com_easyfaq&task=view&id=8&Itemid=44

and the legal stuff
http://www.psc.gov.uk/

I worked for Royal Mail in collections about 5 years ago. I have to say that at that time they were the best company I had ever worked for. They looked after us and were always fair plus for doing what I did I was on decent money. After working in horses working very hard for a pittance I thought my luck was in!!:-D

Can't say what they are like now as obviously that was 5 years ago.:rolleyes:

I have to agree that I think they do a fantastic job getting letters to and from in the time they do. Obviously sometimes things go wrong and that is always the things you hear about, not the millions of letters and parcels that DO get to where their meant to be going on time. As with everything else you are always going to hear more about the bad stories than you do about the good.:rolleyes:

I'm afraid I'm of the same thinking that if you want a better paid job.....you go and find a better paid job. I always felt I was paid very fairly for the work I did at Royal Mail.

EDITED TO ADD: I never had the problems of wages being docked if I went to the toilet more than once per shift etc. As you are out and about most of the time unless you are in sorting how would they know how often you are going to the toilet??

Again this in only my opinion of the time I spent at Royal Mail.

im not quite sure of the logic of being "put out" that ones post arrives at 2pm? Someone has to be the 1st on the round and someone has to be the last! Ours arrives between 7am and 9am depending on weather and workload......our postie also takes away any post we leave out stamped and gives us a shout to tell us if the horse has ecaped again!!!

I have lived in 2 areas in the last 12 months and have had a great posties and our mail at the first house always arrived before 830 and this one is always before 12 they are friendly and always pass the time of day, my husband works for Parcelforce and their pay and conditions are as disgraceful. They don't go on strike but work to rule unfortunately Royal Mail cannot do that because they have to shift the mail on a dail basis.