In simple terms...What is the Royal Mail strike all about?

Question

Would someone be able to explain the key points that are causing the Royal Mail to strike?? What are they unhappy about?

Answer 1

Postie here -

Its all down to the Royal Mail's "modernisation plans". The company wants them to go through, the staff and union feel that they need reviewing. Its been brewing for some time, its not a result of the current financial climate (although that hasn't helped). Its quite complex, but I'll try to put it in simple bulletpoints with examples. After that I'll put my own opinions.



- Closure of sorting offices / redundancies - Royal Mail wants to streamline itself to cut costs.



- Working hours - Royal Mail wants to alter the shift times of its employees, and have more staff be made part-time or "flexible". The idea being that if there's not as much mail as usual, they can send some staff home instead. Removing the notion of job security.



- Working practices - A good example - in the past and currently, a postman must finish his round come what may. If its a heavy day, he stays behind to finish his own time (the exception being for exceptionally high loads, usually because someone has gone sick, and someone is covering him). In return for staying late on heavy days, he goes home if he finishes early on the light days. New plans imply that going home early on light days won't be allowed, yet we will still be expected to work extra hours for free on heavy days.



- Pay - There's the feeling of paycut in the air, made stronger by the fact that the rest of the plans are likely to make the job take longer and be much harder physically (heavier bags, no time for rest breaks, etc).



- There's also the suggestion of scrapping the postman on his bike or on foot, and replacing them all with vans. Postmen will then have to work in threes, splitting a round between them. This seems to be an inefficient and chaotic way of doing things if you ask me.





Changes to the working conditions and hours will ultimately lead to a reduction in service to you. Postmen will have much less time on their hands and be rushed, as they will have bigger rounds to get through in the same amount of time (even though unofficial figures from the staff in the offices say that the amount of mail is going up, Royal Mail insists that it is going down).

In general, the plans will probably lead to even later deliveries, early final collections, and less local coverage.

The strikes are about us and our jobs, yes, but also we provide a public service, and we believe that service will be run down if we don't act, and we'll take the blame from the public because we are the fall-guys on the street.



Personally, I think they should bring the post office back to its "glory days" when I first joined up.

It used to be a Government Department, like the NHS, where public service was put before profit, and postmen were respected by the public and their employers and did a good job.



If it stays as it is, modernisation is needed, but I think they should focus on using their resources to their full potential to improve revenues, rather than cutting costs by cutting the service.

Answer 2

It is a set up by the Union bosses and Gordon Browns election campaign team.



The idea is that anybody who wants some easy money can get a job as a temporary postie until the end of the dispute - which will not be until after the next election. As a first step they are recruiting 30,000 before Christmas. This will create the illusion of mass job opportunities in the country for good pay and simple work, while the nation is falling apart.



In order to confuse the union membership, and to hide the real purpose of this 'strike', the aims and purpose of it have been kept deliberately vague and impossible to achieve. One of these is the problem of a £6 billion hole in the posties pension fund. They would like it to go away.



Another is the way in which great big shining machines can sort letters faster than posties can. They would like these to go away too, or maybe have them replaced with slower machines, similar to the posties.



One good reason for holding the strike is to mess up Christmas, which is what they most enjoy doing anyway.

Answer 3

Also, one of Royal Mail's problems is the competition. Nothing wrong with competition, you might think, it's all good for the customer.



But look at the mail that gets delivered to your house and business every day. Where the stamp used to be, you'll see 'TNT' marques, 'DHL', 'UK Mail' and others.



What these competitors do is collect mail from businesses, do a minimal amount of processing, then pass it all on to Royal Mail. This is called 'downstream access'.



Yes, your Royal Mail postman delivers all the mail from the competitors too.



But surely, UK Mail, DHL etc pay Royal Mail to deliver this mail to its final address? Yes, but at a rate which is a loss to Royal Mail. What other business would do something that deliberately cost itself money?



Royal Mail's charges are dictated by the regulator, PostComm.



What Royal Mail management together with the unions ought to do is fight PostComm. Allow Royal Mail to charge its competitors a proper commercial fee for delivering their mail.

Answer 4

In cynical terms, its because Christmas is coming up and that's their busiest time. If they are not doing their jobs, people will be more likely to listen to their demands.

I think they are protesting changes that will ultimately cost them money from their overtime, wages and bonus schemes.

Answer 5

There is a secret society of postmen and sorters who all want the Post Office to finance sex change operations for them.



In fact they want to be FEMAIL MEN

Answer 6

The breaking of unions.

Answer 7

Greed and idleness.