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Post by The Doctor on Oct 21, 2009 10:22:20 GMT
So, what do people think of the Royal Mail strike now it looks likely it's going ahead?
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I do strongly support the right of workers to join a union to represent their rights and to withold their labour when an employer is being unreasonable to a severe degree, ie affecting their livelihood. If such, I don't mind being inconvenienced.
On the other hand, I'm really not terribly clear as to what the exact issue is. Both the union and the management haven't really stated their case very clearly.
Hmmmm.
-Ralph
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Nigel
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Post by Nigel on Oct 21, 2009 10:36:35 GMT
Considering I have already seen my trade increase this month, in advance of Christmas, my thoughts are probably not hard to guess.  |
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Post by grahamthomson on Oct 21, 2009 10:59:50 GMT
To my mind, striking is the professional equivalent of throwing a tantrum in the supermarket because your parent (or legal guardian) won't buy you Poptarts. There are other ways of negotiating work conditions/pay/etc without holding people to ransom.
Employment is precious. Companies in this country are swimming too close to the drain as it is, and many rely on Royal Mail for their survival.
I think striking is woefully short-sighted. A collapse in Royal Mail's structure and ability to service its customers will have terrible consequences both for the people who work for RM's clients and the strikers themselves.
On a related note, at work we've closed our account with Royal Mail and are moving over to City-link. It's not a huge dent, but we spend around £3K each month with RM. We've got no choice as we can't afford to let our own customers down!
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Nigel
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Post by Nigel on Oct 21, 2009 11:19:11 GMT
I wish I had that option, but a courier isn't really viable for me. The vast majority of my parcels and packets have a Royal Mail postage cost between £1.08 and £1.85. Parcels2Go are currently offering a cheap rate of, I think, £3.70 because of the strike whilst a more typical rate is £6.00-£7.00. I can't afford to absorb those costs and most customers wouldn't pay them. I've got no choice but to weather the storm.
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Post by grahamthomson on Oct 21, 2009 11:26:15 GMT
That's a shame.
Mind you, I haven't trusted Royal Mail/Parcelforce with much since they lost an entire print run of "Last Odyssey" books in 2004! (Sorry for bringing it up!!)
But City-link (who we use for parcels anyway) came it at 23p for a second class letter so we're moving to them for letters.
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 21, 2009 11:26:46 GMT
To my mind, striking is the professional equivalent of throwing a tantrum in the supermarket because your parent (or legal guardian) won't buy you Poptarts. There are other ways of negotiating work conditions/pay/etc without holding people to ransom. In an ideal world, yes. Alas, not all employers are reasonable and indeed some employers can hold their employees to 'ransom'. I have been in a situation with colleagues in a former workplace where the only way to get sane and reasonable points across was to threaten industrial action. If we hadn't, we were due to be screwed over for certain stuff, despite putting our points across in a calm, reasonable and business orientated manner. I really don't wish to go into any more detail on a public forum, for what I hope are obvious reasons. Striking should be an absolute last resort but sometimes it is required. -Ralph |
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Post by grahamthomson on Oct 21, 2009 11:37:46 GMT
Striking should be an absolute last resort but sometimes it is required. I do agree and empathise, of course. But in the case of postal workers striking, I get all selfish and grumpy because it directly affects me! It's not just the [Royal Mail] bosses feeling the consequences of strike action when so much of the country is reliant. |
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Post by bertie on Oct 21, 2009 12:23:32 GMT
They're striking to get public recognition and support for their plight. I think it's backfired.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2009 12:26:47 GMT
my work tends to use UPS for deliveries, so it wont affect us professionally really, but I do have 2 things coming in the mail shortly, so *meep*
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Oct 21, 2009 13:31:20 GMT
Like Ralph I think unions are a good idea, sadly they do seem to attract self centred douchebags to the role. Currently liasing with one due to some unfortunate changes at work. I know a few royal mail employeess who say that they have an easy life and are often finished work more than a few hours before their shift ends and as a result can go home and still get paid. I imagine this is one of the practises to be changed.
My sympathy for them is pretty low and the strike is backfiring on them.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Oct 21, 2009 17:38:59 GMT
Well, I got my ScotCon train tickets from the FastTicket machine at the station today because TheTrainLine recommended me not to trust the postal option. I also bought X-Men Origins: Wolverine in Sainsbury's rather than pre-ordering it on the Internet, because of the Royal Mail dispute. So the postmen are losing business from me.
Personally, I've never been won over by the concept of job security. I mean, it's scandalously hard to make people redundant in the civil service which I work closely with. I'm not a civil servant, but job security in the EA is pretty good too. I think you should only have a job for as long as they want you doing it and you are prepared to work for the terms that they offer. If they don't need me doing what I do any more, or they think they can get someone else to do it as well as me for less money, they should be able to get rid of me as easily as I can leave the job if I get a better offer. And when there are so many unemployed people at the moment, employers should be able to drop poor employees and pick up better ones at will. Then customers will get a better service, slackers will have reason to work harder, good people will have a better chance at getting jobs they are qualified for and crap people won't be able to sit secure in jobs they aren't contributing to. I think the tax-payer deserves that from its public services, anyway.
The fact that there are over 100,000 unemployed people jumping at the 30,000 temporary posts being created to cover the strike says to me that if the postal workers don't like their terms and conditions there are plenty of people who will gladly take their place.
On the other hand, I have no special knowledge of the competence of the management which may also be at fault, and there needs to be someone independent scrutinising what they are doing. We entrust private and precious things to postal delivery services, so whether they are in the public or private sector they need close inspection and oversight so we can have confidence in them. Can't leave it to the survival of the fittest, since the customer can't afford to have its things in the hands of cowboys.
Martin
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chrisl
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Post by chrisl on Oct 21, 2009 18:07:20 GMT
That's a shame. Mind you, I haven't trusted Royal Mail/Parcelforce with much since they lost an entire print run of "Last Odyssey" books in 2004! (Sorry for bringing it up!!) But City-link (who we use for parcels anyway) came it at 23p for a second class letter so we're moving to them for letters. G - City-link are on the verge of receivership. Laura's dad used to work for them in the fraud dept and they have ENORMOUS theft rates. They also lost the Carphone Warehouse contract recently which was propping up the rest of their business. DHL is the way forward as most of it is franchised. |
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Post by jameso on Oct 21, 2009 18:10:16 GMT
I'm all for unions, and I'm all for job security. I can understand the idea that if your employer doesn't want you then they should be able to remove you, but our society doesn't work like that - we all need jobs to contribute and if we don't have them we have to be supported by the state (in most cases) so I think it's for the benefit of UK society that we can't sack people that easily.
Obviously there's going to be negative elements to this, but I think the positives outweigh it.
But for the Royal Mail workers, when their main basis for protesting seems to be what Andy says about being made to work until the end of their scheduled shift, I don't think they're going to get, or deserve, much sympathy.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Oct 21, 2009 18:13:21 GMT
Yeah, I suppose my view was a bit on the harsh side, and easy for me to say as I think my own job would be very secure even if there was nothing contractual to protect me. But it still strikes me as unfair that a less good worker can keep a better, keener unemployed person out of a job just because he was in it first. I dunno the answer really. I sense an epic essay from Pete is about due...  Martin |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2009 21:02:27 GMT
Unions stick up for the workers in such places where the management are fatcats. My workplace is one such place as I've mentioned many times here. The managers are only interested in one thing - money and making lots of it and they don't care who they hurt as long as they get their hands on several grands worth of bonuses. The current situation with Royal Mail is similar to the problems we had at my workplace not so long back and the only way to teach the management a lesson is to not do anything for them until they decide to be reasonable to their staff. After all, if it wasn't for their workers they wouldn't be able to make business in order to get their grubby hands on all of the money they so much crave but they don't seem to realise that.
Earlier this year we had a Union ballot to decide if a union should be in the factory. The gaffers got worried that the union would threaten their greed for money and went on the offensive. They lied to all of the workers by calling them into a meeting and telling them that the union is only interested in making money and making people redundant. Sadly, most of the workers at the factory believed that and voted against the union. The result: the union was kicked out of the door and within two weeks the gaffers showed their true colours and made several people redundant including some of the people that voted against the union. This is why there are such things as strikes and so on because the gaffers have no respect for their workers whatsoever and literally see them as slaves who do their job for a low wage so that the people sitting in the offices can get their bonuses at the end of the year.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Oct 23, 2009 6:40:45 GMT
I've heard representatives of both the management and the unions arguing on the radio, and they always both come across as pretty narrow-sighted, inflexible and childish. If one side is in they right they need someone else doing their PR.
It's difficult to see how workers can put pressure on their bosses - whether in a union or as individuals - in an economic climate where there are more willing workers ready to step into anyone's shoes. It is up to managers to judge (as far as the law allows) whether their companies are better off overall paying more for better people or paying less for less good people. At one extreme you get the bankers with their bonuses, because their bosses think they can only compete if they pay massive salaries, and at the other end you get the bosses who think it is in their interest in terms of profits to offer their workers no more than the minimum wage. It must be a complicated calculation to make. The best worker in the world can only be worth a finite amount, and the worst worker in the world isn't worth anything to any employer, so whatever the job, however skilled or unskilled, there must be a balance point to find.
My heart says that the minimum wage should be raised and minimum legal terms and conditions improved. But I'm sure some people would say that that would result in jobs being lost and more unemployed, and people in general being worse off as a result. What is the answer???
When there are more people than there are jobs, and feedback from profits into number of jobs, what is the definition of a fair wage?
I don't think anyone has the complete answer. It's probably too complicated for even the most knowledgeable expert.
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on Nov 6, 2009 11:20:46 GMT
I see the strikes are over. Good. An extremely important peice of correspondance just took 7 days to reach me via 1st class which was vitally important to my employment status.
Neither the union nor management have been able to clarify exactly what the issues were so to be honest I had run out of empathy for the workforce a while ago, especially when the situation began to affect my life.
-Ralph
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 6, 2010 17:01:09 GMT
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 6, 2010 19:40:44 GMT
Definitely Amazon. I checked through Amazon's track your package feature.
-Ralph
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Post by grahamthomson on Jan 6, 2010 20:42:41 GMT
I've told City Link to send Hubris back to Graham? No, no. The City Link letters actually get delivered by Royal Mail. I think they just sort it first and then pass to Royal Mail to distribute. Regardless, I still have to use Royal Mail for Hubris as City Link need a few hundred letters at a time to let you use their service. In conclusion, it won't be a Hubris causing these problems! |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 6, 2010 20:45:46 GMT
Forgive my moment of doubt!
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 10, 2010 17:42:23 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2010 0:54:56 GMT
Let's hope the universal service obligation is intact. It's possible that it won't, considering how strongly ideological the current government is, but I'm sure most of us would be angry about having to pay a subscription to a private mail company in order to get any postal deliveries at all!
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Post by blueshift on Sept 16, 2010 8:00:51 GMT
Let's hope the universal service obligation is intact. It's possible that it won't, considering how strongly ideological the current government is, but I'm sure most of us would be angry about having to pay a subscription to a private mail company in order to get any postal deliveries at all! You wouldn't have to pay to recieve mail, that's why you have to pay to send mail! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2010 17:02:02 GMT
Let's hope the universal service obligation is intact. It's possible that it won't, considering how strongly ideological the current government is, but I'm sure most of us would be angry about having to pay a subscription to a private mail company in order to get any postal deliveries at all! You wouldn't have to pay to recieve mail, that's why you have to pay to send mail! You would have to pay to receive mail if the universal service obligation went. The LibDems seem to be claiming that they'll block any attempt by the Tories to end the USO, but, honestly, I personally don't trust either of the right-wing parties on this issue. www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/19/lib-dems-universal-postal-guarantee |
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