Are Royal Mail workers on strike?

[Pistonsbeneath]

^ well put

Employers have to take responsibility, there will always be somebody who's more desperate and more willing to degrade themselves. They need protecting as much as anybody - fair workload and fair pay for all!

i am doing 5 hours unpaid overtime tomorrow due to having to...

i frequently have to do unpaid overtime...and my employers don't recognise a union (in contract)

[rbnc]

True, I don't know why they bother with H&S and minimum wage. I have a sugar plantation out the back, got 20 Negroes and half a dozern lumpen working for a cup of corn a day and if they're dumb enough to cut their hands open and not be able to work, well they should pay more attention.

Reductio ad absurdum..

The point you make is a good one and I don't think you could have put it any better...

We do live in a free market and if someone wanted to do my job as well as me for half as much, I'd be fired and that person would be employed. That's how it works...

Listen, I've followed this Royal Mail thing pretty closely and from what I can work out both parties are equally to blame, the CWU are talking and acting like a bunch of petulant teenagers and demanding things that they know aren't feasible at the very last minute.

Threatening to stagger three-day strike to one day per role to cause maximum disruption to CUSTOMERS was a fairy cynical move that punished only the customers and the Royal Mail long-term was another shitty move on the part of the CWU as well.

Mandelson doesn't seem to give a fucking shit that we're going to see Royal Mail privatised now and is unwilling to do anything because he has his COCK up the arses of the Royal Mail board.

In short anyway, it's too-far now. Bye bye public services.

[slothrop]

To be honest, I saw the thread title and thought the first post was going to be "because I can't tell the fucking difference". I'm generally in favour of solidarity with the unions, but if they're on strike does that mean they're going to stop forging signatures on recorded delivery stuff and then leaving it on the doorstep?

[rbnc]

does that mean they're going to stop forging signatures on recorded delivery stuff and then leaving it on the doorstep?

WORD.

[the acid never lies]

does that mean they're going to stop forging signatures on recorded delivery stuff and then leaving it on the doorstep?

WORD.

Who's 'they'? Looks like your postie is a derkhead

[slothrop]

I know nuff people who've had problems with that sort of stuff - forged signatures on recorded delivery stuff, posties putting 'sorry you were out' notes through the door when they were sat next to the door and noone knocked or rang, "private and confidential" letters (eg CRB checks) left at the bottom of the public staircase in a block of flats, 'do not bend' packages folded in half to go through letterboxes - there are a lot of systemic problems (probably mostly down to the RM being run on a shoestring after all the profitable bits of its business were hived off to private firms) and so on, I'm not saying all posties are naturally stnuc, but it doesn't make it any less annoying when it's your package and you've paid extra to get recorded delivery so you can be sure it'll turn up safely...

[rbnc]

does that mean they're going to stop forging signatures on recorded delivery stuff and then leaving it on the doorstep?

WORD.

Who's 'they'? Looks like your postie is a derkhead

Well this is just my personal experience but this kind of shit has happened almost everywhere I've lived whilst living in the UK. Brighton and now London is DIRE. I don't even get about 25% of my mail. For example: BT have sent me three routers since September 29th and I haven't received one. The DVLA had to send my new licence twice. I'm getting livid just talking about it.

Also my mum runs an online store selling art materials and shit and if she doesn't send shit recorded delivery she reckons there's about a 10% chance it will go missing. Again that's just her opinion based on her experience. I'm sure loads of people have fantastic, fun-filled experiences of Royal Mail, mine and every single person I've spoken to just seem to be 'unlucky'.

Another thing is that when you send something as insured and it doesn't get there, they refund you the price of the item you sent, but not the postage fees...So in short they when they don't provide the service you paid for and then don't..They keep your money. That's more policy-making than staff on the ground. But it further illustrates that our postal service is fairly shitty.

[AnalGangstaHo]

I used to be a postie and can admit to both signing for Recorded deliveries and leaving p739 slips through doors without even attempting a delivery, all due to laziness.
I can also admit to voting for strikes, locally and otherwise simply for a day or two off work, and I worked with a load of people I'd hang about with and they'd all do the same. There was no better feeling than biking in work, tired as fuck, to see a burning bin at the front gates with a load of people round it due to some dispute that had gone off on the night shift. We'd give it ten minutes then about six of us would fuck off my mates house, laughing as we biked, and get wrecked all morning. Good times.

On a more serious note, when I first started it was a great firm to work for. There were a couple of guys in charge of our depot and they were top blokes. One of 'em used to walk round and personally thank you for doing your job if he knew you'd had a particularly heavy day or were drenched and shivering like fuck or whatever, and this made a massive difference. After while tho they both got replaced with proper evil stnuc and it suddenly became one of the worst places to work for. About this time they also got the main perk of the job, ie early finishes, scrapped and then morale hit rock bottom. Fair enough they've got a business to run but it's how they went about it that sucked. We also began seeing a lot more mail being put on our rounds and this was the advertising shite which goes straight in the bin. On really heavy days you'd be getting your round ready and because you were getting out later than you would have before it all changed, you'd realise that you be going over your set hours so people were saying that they'd only do half or X amount of there round and there was fuck all anyone could say. This led to the bosses going round and asking people if they wanted overtime but more often than not it ended up in one of them going out to do it themselves, much to our amusement. If they'd bin a bit more like the fellas I first mentioned, then a lot of the time people would be willing to put themselves out. Fuck those other stnuc tho, even if people needed the money they'd say no sometimes. Honestly, they were fuckin' scum.
I seen a guy who I used to work with there a couple of days ago and I asked him if it's still shit and he said it's worse. He moved from delivery after getting in work 4 minutes late and as he went to sign on one of the bosses went to put a red mark next to his name. My mate, who'd had 40 years there, told him it was only 4 minutes. The tnuc replied "4 minutes
is 4 minutes" and continued to put the red mark next to his name.

Horrible company.

[rbnc]

Do you put it down to lower subsidisation from the government or what?

All our services that get privatised, go up the shitter. Look at British Rail for example.

p.s the BT router I moaned about not arriving for over two months came just a minute a go...Weird.

[poulplade]

@Trotsky: LOL you speak danish, or just hit the translate button somewhere on the interwebz?

@ Firky: Thanks for the link- quite interesting.

It seems that the problems Royal Mail has been through, is the same thing people and employees/workers are experiencing with Danish Mail right now.
Here in Denmark we only used to have only Danish Mail. But now some private mail firms are beginning to pop up. for example Bring, I think its Norwegian, the biggest in Scandinavia. It seems that conditions are getting worse after privatization.
I think its quite a problem that the other firms don't engage in solidarity strikes or the likes. Because in the end, they are just accepting worse working conditions. Why should one be interested and have pride in a job, when you are badly paid, have even worse working hours etc...
How are the unions in UK?

It's getting politcal right now hehe.

[metalboxproducts]

Do you put it down to lower subsidisation from the government or what?

All our services that get privatised, go up the shitter. Look at British Rail for example.

p.s the BT router I moaned about not arriving for over two months came just a minute a go...Weird.

Clearly they are watching your every move. Thats how much power they have.........

[firky]

@Trotsky: LOL you speak danish, or just hit the translate button somewhere on the interwebz?

@ Firky: Thanks for the link- quite interesting.

It seems that the problems Royal Mail has been through, is the same thing people and employees/workers are experiencing with Danish Mail right now.
Here in Denmark we only used to have only Danish Mail. But now some private mail firms are beginning to pop up. for example Bring, I think its Norwegian, the biggest in Scandinavia. It seems that conditions are getting worse after privatization.
I think its quite a problem that the other firms don't engage in solidarity strikes or the likes. Because in the end, they are just accepting worse working conditions. Why should one be interested and have pride in a job, when you are badly paid, have even worse working hours etc...
How are the unions in UK?

It's getting politcal right now hehe.

Scandinavian countries are light years ahead of us when it comes to unions, something like 80% of your blue collar work force is in a union and you Danes have the highest minimum wage in Europe, maybe the world. There would be massive strikes if the governments tried to push through what the UK gov did in the 1980s and the French one tried in 1995 although I have heard that there's been a steady undermining of working class gains in Scandinavia since at least the early 1990s, and it's happening quite steadily and seemingly succeeding in avoiding provoking a proper union confrontation.

The unions in the UK are large and do have a certain amount of punch but it's a shadow of it's former self, employers basically know that they have the backing of the left wing (ha!) government in not backing down to strikers and unions, they may make compromises but they know there are strike breakers out there. There's a few union success stories but nothing like you guys have.

[djelements]

It looks like we have the union thing on lock in the states.