The posties are digging their own grave though Scott

 

A business customer seeing the postmen on strike is going to switch to UPS or DHL or whatever which will result in even more loss of revenue and loss of even more jobs, the management won't be hurt by businesses switching to private firms the posties themselves will so the more they go on strike the more they are going to p*** off their customers

 

You seem to forget though that this is actually the first time there have been national Postal strikes for over a decade... Royal Mail was losing business customers LONG before any official strike actions were taking place... They've been losing customers because of foolish management decisions which has made the service shaky and unreliable... The Govt had no business privatising parts of it as far as I'm concerned, or ending its monopoly... The Postal Service should remain within the State sector as far as I'm concerned (as should water, public transport, gas and electricity..), I dont trust Private concerns to manage the mail frankly, the Royal Mail has actual laws and statutes which it must adhere to and all Royal Mail employees are bound by the Official Secrets Act because they are State Employees. I'm not so confident about some of those private companies as far as actual privacy and integrity of the mail goes....

 

What is the reason for the postal strike?

 

Is it to highlight the fact that customers get a bad service?

I'm expecting post :(

Strikes are the only recourse that workers have though Rob, the threat to remove labour does damage the management's position... It's unfortunate that customers have to suffer, but the way I see it customers are workers themselves by and large and would not be willing to put up with being exploited any more than the Posties would, so there should be some sense of solidarity and support there.... Workers should NOT have to tolerate being shat upon, so therefore the removal of labour is the only thing a worker can do to put pressure on management... You cannot negotiate with people who refuse to even sit in the same room and talk with you, which is exactly what is going on.. The big bosses at Royal Mail seem to think a 20 minute "Conference Call" on video phone where neither party is even in the same building is the same thing as an intensive bout of collective bargaining.....

 

And frankly, I dont see how shedding almost 40,000 jobs will in any way improve the service at all, technology cannot actually deliver the mail into people's front doors ffs (or have they got some sort of "robotic postie" or summat...?). Even the actual sorting still has to be done manually when it gets to a certain stage, machines cannot actually accurately separate the mail into specific mail routes.... I should know, I routinely had "Code Sorted" bundles of mail about half of which was for another several Posties' routes and vice versa.... Technology is not the be all and end all the management makes it out to be, dont believe the hype.....

 

As for the whole cheque thing, don't you mainly do work at schools or summat Rob...? That means you'll be paid by LEAs correct...? Well, you can insist that LEAs pay directly into your bank account... One or two LEAs have tried to force me to take a cheque, but I point-blank refused them saying that BACS is the way I wanted paid cos a sodding cheque takes about 5 fukkin' days to clear, as well as the fact that I know all the things that can go wrong with the Postal system as well... The whole "cheque through the post" thing is dreadfully old hat now I feel (and hardly very secure unless it's sent through "Special Delivery" next day..), especially in this day and age of Electronic Money Transfers, BACS, Direct Debits, etc.... Just refuse a cheque mate, citing that you dont trust the Postal system.... :lol:

 

i could use bacs, or any electronic way... but wouldnt that compound the lack of need for posties? the royal mail are losing customers, so they cannot support the same workforce capacity.

The only thing that keeps the posties busy nowadays is delivering junk mail. If it wasn't for that we wouldn't need them. I honestly believe that in about 10 years time there wont be any posties. With email and hand held palm computers,new generation mobile phones there wont be any need for mail as we know it.

 

Don't say it won't happen cause who would have predicted 20 years ago that there would be next to no milkmen delivering to the doors.

i wanted to use the milkman, but he delivered shyte milk... warm, off, just sour... so i cancelled and got fresh cold milk from the shop.

The only thing that keeps the posties busy nowadays is delivering junk mail. If it wasn't for that we wouldn't need them. I honestly believe that in about 10 years time there wont be any posties. With email and hand held palm computers,new generation mobile phones there wont be any need for mail as we know it.

 

Don't say it won't happen cause who would have predicted 20 years ago that there would be next to no milkmen delivering to the doors.

 

 

Well, if that's the case Bri, how do you explain the facts that many utilities companies, phone/telecoms companies, banks, etc are actually sending out MORE bills, statements, letters, etc than they were before the advent of the Internet....? Doesn't square mate.... Used to be you'd get a quarterly phone-bill or statement, now they come every month, ditto for many banks and building societies.... The Internet is a great thing, unfortunately it can get hacked pretty damn easily by determined individuals, viruses, Trojans, etc which send systems crashing, people's emails can be spied upon and bank details gathered this way... Presumably this is why many companies opt NOT to go 100% down the Internet path for sending out bills, statements, etc...

Don't say it won't happen cause who would have predicted 20 years ago that there would be next to no milkmen delivering to the doors.

 

Yeah, cos Supermarkets and the corner shops are gonna keep your mail for you innit mate...? :lol: :lol: Dont talk rot, you're always gonna need someone to deliver your mail, you cant compare it to milk ffs.....

 

telecoms companies are actually sending out MORE bills, statements, letters, ... Used to be you'd get a quarterly phone-bill or statement, now they come every month

 

 

On this point I agree with you, our Company only get our line rentals thru BT, no calls, and we used to get 1 bill about 5 pages every quarter, now we get a 13 page bill every month, talk about overkill. And not very green :lol: .

 

However there is no denying the absolute volume of mail is declining in the last 20-30 years, apart from pure junk mail. I don't know what the post office staffing levels were 30 years ago but I bet they were much higher than today, and if the changes to reduce staff even more are implemented then they will be a lot lower in the future. But this has happened in every industry in the UK apart from Government which increases. <_<

 

Read some info on present crisis and found the following reports:

 

Royal Mail says it cannot afford a higher pay offer and that modernisation is critical for the organisation to survive. It claims to have lost 40 per cent of its bulk business mailings to rival operators this year.

 

Leighton and Crozier are determined not to bow to union pressure, reiterating that the organisation must change if it is to survive. A spokeswoman for the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform would not comment on specific meetings.

 

We'll make £10m from strike, says post rival

 

· Private sector competitors see 'extraordinary' demand

 

James Greenbury, the chief executive of DX, which is backed by private equity group Candover Partners, said the delivery group had attracted an "extraordinary" level of demand from new customers - more in the past week than for the whole of last year.

The comments highlighted the threat to the state-owned postal service from the low-cost and aggressive private delivery firms. Groups such as DX, Global Mail and Dutch-based TNT are coming into the market at a time when overall mail volumes are falling because of email and other electronic media. "We are taking on a significant number of new customers in a controlled fashion," said Mr Greenbury. "We could take on more but we do not want to compromise the quality of our service and are concentrating on only signing up those people who we believe will want to stay with us long term."

 

DX was formed after a Royal Mail strike in the 1970s and its managers believe any protracted dispute between the state-owned postal service and the Communication Workers Union will be another boost for private firms. Competitors are already making inroads into the business post market as a result of full deregulation.

 

Since private operators were given access to the UK postal market, Royal Mail says it has lost 40% of its business customers, including the Department for Work and Pensions, BT and last week online retailer Amazon.

 

The CWU can dream, but ministers will quite clearly be on the side of the management over the need for automation. The government has put £3bn into the Royal Mail and the Post Office in recent years, plus another £1bn into the pension fund, and wants a return on taxpayers' money. Anything else would be viewed as illegal state aid.

 

Looks like the article below shows its a European problem to:

 

TNT Post to cut 7,000 jobs and freeze pay

 

The Dutch operator, one of the main challengers to Royal Mail in the British market, loses its domestic monopoly next year. It is the latest European mail operator to feel the effects of plans for full liberalisation of the EU's €90bn postal market by 2009. Britain opened its market to full competition in January last year.

 

The company said the wages of its approximately 60,000 employees would "at best" be frozen for two-and-a-half years and it would seek changes to employment terms and offer incentives to encourage staff to leave the company.

 

TNT said it hoped to avoid large-scale compulsory redundancies under the cost-savings plan which was first announced in December 2006. It said operational efficiency measures alone would be insufficient to achieve the €300m savings and this could mean 11,000 staff losing their jobs without the proposed changes to employee terms and conditions.

 

 

Another article I found which criticises the Royal Mail:

 

Once upon a time, I posted a parcel and it was never seen again. Sadly I am becoming all too familiar with this story; post office counters are now approached with a mixture of fear, optimism and hope. I've even developed a special postal prayer: "Dear God", is how it starts, "please let this parcel make it." Sometimes God listens; sometimes he's too busy with more important things.

 

In 2004, 202 postal staff were convicted of theft, and one man sentenced a few weeks ago was the mastermind behind a £20m scam, involving credit cards and cheque books stolen from a north London sorting office. Royal Mail (motto: "It's personal") thinks 202 thieves in the midst of its 196,000 employees is "low". But if 202 is the number caught and convicted, it doesn't take a huge leap of cynicism to imagine that there may be more still at it.

 

It's easy to knock Royal Mail. After all, for the past 350 years, until New Year's Day when its monopoly ended, it has mostly done a stalwart job. But it doesn't help its cause, especially now it's under full-scale assault from privateers. Royal Mail won't say how many items of post are stolen because it prefers to talk about profits and purr about the 94% of first-class letters delivered the next day. Its report for the half-year to September 25 2005 didn't mention the world stolen; it made only one oblique reference to post going missing - hailing the fact that the number of letters lost had halved in the last 10 years. Congratulations! In one year, 16m items of post went missing; in among the 83m items processed every day that may not seem a lot, but to the people who sent them and those who never received them, it's one too many.

 

Crucially, there are no figures for post being tampered with, which seems to be a real growth area. Most of us don't report it, either because we don't realise it has happened or because complaining takes real dedication. Royal Mail doesn't make it easy. You need to be able to give up the contents of the box/envelope that has been tampered with, so that it can be investigated. Eventually, after hanging on the phone for half a day and writing letters, it will probably be decided that the person sending the parcel didn't package it properly. Yet it's only by complaining that the watchdog Postwatch will have any idea how widespread the problem is.

 

Post abuse is often very subtle; you may notice the sticky tape on a parcel is quite easy to remove because it's been opened already, the parcel may look battered beyond mere transportation distress, or window envelopes may have a small cut at the side, made by a razor blade, to see if a credit card or any tickets are inside. Sometimes a parcel is opened, the contents removed and the whole thing repackaged. And if you sign for it you're stuffed, unlike your package, which may well be empty.

 

I don't doubt that most of Royal Mail's staff are decent, honest and hard-working - two of our postmen (one a postlady) are truly fabulous. But it's precisely because the dishonest ones are in the minority that Royal Mail needs to concentrate on them. It needs to admit theft is a problem and make complaining easier, more effective and customer friendly. If it really costs 50p to deliver a first-class letter safely, I'd gladly pay.

 

Royal Mail needs to stop referring sniffily to "social mail" (which is not profitable and makes up only 7% of its business) and realise that getting a present from Aunt Edith matters just as much as getting our bank balances. It needs to concentrate on post that's been tampered with or never turns up. Because, sadly guys, that is the post you will be judged by.

 

 

 

 

Hey I don't like seeing anyone losing their jobs to progress, or technology but it happens. It has happened for 50 years one industry by one, it will happen to every place we work eventually. :(