Postal Strike

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It looks like private competitors are jumping on the bandwagon and helping out during this one day strike . It also sounds as if further one day strikes are also planned. The Royal Mail has lost about 40% of it's mail deliveries in the last 2 years to competitors and so would like to spend money on investing in modernisation and streamlining working hours etc.

Competition in this instance is healthy isn't it?
 
Royal Mail deserves to go out of business. Their services have gone seriously downhill in the last few years.

We used to get two deliveries a day. They said they were losing money and needed to add a penny to the cost of a 1st class stamp to recoup the losses. So they did. Then they cut the deliveries to one per day, which should have put them well into profit. Then they put up the price of stamps again. Then they claimed they were losing money again.

Now they're talking about scrapping all early deliveries.

Somebody somewhere has made serious money out of RM at our expense. Either that or it's been seriously mismanaged for some time.

It really bugs me that my Raceform subscription is supposed to cover first class delivery and the instalment should reach me on a Thursday. I can count on one hand the number of times in a year it arrives on a Thursday and almost as often as not it arrives on a Saturday. I've complained to Raceform but they say the fault lies with Royal Mail.
 
The workers are being offered 2.5%. they should be grateful that they get a payrise. Some people (myself included) don't get payrises unless our performance review is positive. I can just imagine what the review would say if I went on strike!!!
 
That's an attitude I find difficult to understand. People join companies on certain understandings. Anyone joining them would do so on the understanding that, as in most sectors, an annual pay rise is negotiated on their behalf by their union.

If people choose to join a company that doesn't allow unions or links rises to performance, they do so with their eyes open. Presumably the pay and conditions tempt people there in the first place.
 
My problem with that is that the company obviously want to give the workers the best pay it can while still remaining competitive, so where does the unio stirring up trouble come into this. I dont think unions have any place in modern workplaces.

What is wrong with 2.5% anyway?

DO - look in the retail sector, no-one who works in retail has index linked payrises, if all shop workers were unionised and all went on strike there would be much more inconvenience than a one day postal strike, the postal workers should be grateful for what they can get
 
Originally posted by ovverbruv@Jun 29 2007, 05:10 PM
the company obviously want to give the workers the best pay it can while still remaining competitive,
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With respect, ovverbruv, that seems very naïve. My view would be much more cynical: they want to give them as little as they can get away with.
 
I think we might be arguing the same point. I agree that they want to get away with paying them as little as possible, however they also know they have to pay relatively well or the staff will leave. The balance has to be found for the company to still make money but the workers to feel valued
 
ovverbruv, a boss of someone like the PO earns his money from bonuses. The more profit the bigger the bonus. Sometimes this means if he turns a £500,000,000 deficit into a £300,000,000 deficit then he gets paid a big bonus for whatever was written into his performance contract. So it is not the case of paying the workers the best but more likes DO says, and paying as little as possible.
 
Originally posted by ovverbruv@Jun 29 2007, 02:48 PM
The workers are being offered 2.5%. they should be grateful that they get a payrise. Some people (myself included) don't get payrises unless our performance review is positive. I can just imagine what the review would say if I went on strike!!!
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I half understand your sentiment Mike, but have to say I find it very disappointing . I fear you're falling into an old management trap based around division here, as they are very keen to show us the unhappy one's below us, and then try and turn worker against worker. It's possibly the word grateful that grates the most. You should never feeel grateful to any employer imo, unless you are one of the very lucky ones who genuinely works for a very good one, and even then, keep in context just what grateful means. They might treat you well, but they'll be taking a hell of a lot more for your labour.

Trade Unions have won us many advances in the working environment and I frankly dread to think what conditions some of us would be being sent out to work in were not for our collective sacrifice and resistance over the centuries. If you want to see evidence of what unfettered free market capitalist landscapes look like, then take a look at the Far East sweatshops. Do you not think for one second that if rabid capitalism could subject us to those same conditions they wouldn't fail to do so? They certainly did historically, and still do today when they can get away with it. That they can't by and large however, is no testimony to employers, but rather the result of workers struggles over the centuries.

Most Trade Unions are essentially conservative in nature, and a hell of alot of disputes are very often centred on preserving conditions as they are, rather than radically overhauling them. I can assure you that on the extreme left of politics Trade Unions are regarded with a level of mistrust precisely because they aren't radical organisations for change. One of Communisms foremost academic philosophers (Rosa Luxemburg) famously described Trade Unions as "they support the worker, like a noose supports a hanging man". It's a recognition of the restraints that they often plac eupon their members not to reach out and demand more. Mind you it's also a notion that has to be placed in a historical context
 
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