Elizabeth Windsor favours DHL over Royal Mail

[pintsofguinness]

It's scare nonsense because you were talking about it costing £3.50 to send a letter

The point is that there is work for a lot of them to do, management are driven by one thing, bonuses for efficiency savings (job losses). If you trust someone who is getting paid to get rid of jobs to make unbiased decisions about those job losses then more fool you.

You have to ask yourself what sort of management would deny an independent investigation into alleged management bullying (do you think they have something to hide perhaps).

What sort of management manages to alienate the workers so badly that over 2/3 of the workforce choose to forgo pay just to make a stand.

What sort of management pretends to have negotiated with the union only to then have the top dog (Crozier) return the verbally agreed document back to the union the next day with the words 'NOTHING WILL CHANGE' (ie we'll do what we want) and tell them to sign it (this was the thing that copperfastened the strike).

What sort of managements idea of local agreement is to hold a meeting and tell the workers that 8 walks need to go (8 jobs to be lost and the workload shared out) if they agree and twelve if they don't (real example of the shit going on).

What sort of management issues a writing warning to a young man in his mid twenties for being unable to get round his walk in time, a walk that was dreamed up by a computer program (commisioned by the management of course), that has never been walked by anything other than a virtual postman and certainly not by a member of the management (to put this into perspective the guy is a marathon runner and he still can't do it).

1. If that's true it's hardly going to be in a managers interest to get rid of people and then find their work can't be covered, if they do then they've got a problem on their hands and it needs sorted. 

2. No idea but hasn't much to do with the strike

3. A workforce worried about job cuts, hardly a big surprise they'll go on strike to see if jobs can be saved.  I would too.

4. I dont know maybe one sick of the union interfering?

5. You'll have to give some background, I'm guessing 8 was a compromise and if it wasn't agreed with they may as well push on and get rid of what they actually felt could be got rid of, 12?

6.  Heard about problems with that and agree it's a bit daft.

Look, I'm not trying to paint the management as being wonderful, maybe they're a pack of c***ts I don't know, but what I am saying that that it's idiotic to expect them not to get rid of jobs. The deliverys are going down, makes sense, new machines are being introduced and of course you are going to expect them to get rid of people.  They should not be expected to pay people if the work isn't there!

[delboy]

Again POG its not scare nonsense, you show me one private courier that will garuntee to send a letter from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else for anywhere near what RM will do it for and i'll concede the point that im a scaremongering full of shit nonsense spouter. Personally i don't think you'll manage to dig up anything much better than the £3.50 i quoted, surprise me.

Your rebuttals unfortunately fall down on one key element, you are assuming that RM management are trying to run the business in a sensible way. They aren't the remit is to sell the RM, the RM must become a lean mean shit postal machine (profitable though) to make it attractive to the private sector.

If you have any evidence to the contrary that RM is not to be sold off, i'll be glad to hear it.

2) So bullying by the management has nothing to do with the strike  despite that being one of the key issues that was being negotiated 

3 ) If you would do it yourself way have you so little sympathy with them 

4) You don't find it strange that RM management would appear to enter negotiations with the union only to veto all the things that the negotiating team had verbally agreed with the union (there was a settlement, i've seen it, crozier/mandelson vetoed it).

5. It wasn't a compromise, and it harps back to the point about management bullying as does the following one about the young guy with the written warning.
I'll say it again the management is getting bonuses for job losses/cutting hours, would you trust someone getting an xmas bonus for cutting jobs to safeguard yours??   

6. see 5, to be honest, i can't go into much more detail on here it would need to be by pm if you want any more evidence of management bullying.

[Lecale2]

What would be so wrong with selling the Royal Mail off to someone who may be able to run it properly? Maybe the German or Dutch Post Offices for example?

The sale contract would build in conditions such as costs and coverage of the service. The tax payer will get a wind fall from the sale. We won't get all the recent profits but we will still get the corporation tax and won't have to worry about the massive losses that were common for 20 years.

The workers would be better off working for a more enlightened management even if there are less of them required. The Germans and Dutch postal services don't appear to have the problems Royal Mail have.

With volumes falling fast (and faster now due to the industrial relations problems) there will soon be no need for a daily post anyway.
3-4 times a week will do the job and no matter who owns the operation there will be less people needed to run it.

[delboy]

Lecale, you are making the mistake of believing the management spin, is the mail falling as fast as some would have us believe, are the workers just lazy buggers that need to work harder.
Crozier was on the telly this morning spinning his usual lies, 10 % drop in volume year on year, lets look at the actual figures in 2005 the RM delivered a record 85 million letters a day in 2009 that has dropped to 75 million, thats about 11 % over four years and not the 36 % as would be the case if i was falling at 10 % a year.
The management have ignored the real figure 11 % of four years and instead give us a figure over three times as high, a complete lie.

The workers are lazy, lets look at that one, the workforce used to be 184100 at the peak, but 63000 jobs have been lost due to recent modernisation, thats a fall in the workforce of over a third.

So the posties have got 11 % less volume to deal with but they are managing it with 2 thirds of the staff, not bad by anyones estimations (especially for such a large organisation).

Crozier tells us that the strike is about workers not wanting to work their time, if thats the case why is he refusing to allow an independent assessment ot what constitues a days work, something the union is fully prepared to allow.

Lecale you would trust the government to get us a good deal on RM  thats a good one right enough, the are going to saddle us with the pension deficit, which as it happens was brought about largely by the company taking a 17 year, holiday from paying into the pension pot, all so the executives could post a paper profit (got to have those bonuses) and which the government was happy to take (in the order of several billion).

Now that the company is making (whilst servicing the pension deficit also) you think its a good time to hand it over to the money men  .

Do you really believe that commercial organisation will run non profitable services  thats another corker.

The only reason they even dabble in letter delivering at the moment is because they are able to exploit the 'FINAL MILE SERVICE' which is a licence to print money (and was negotiated by RM management  ).

I'll be happy to explain the sheer lunacy of it if you want 
If you don'   

[Lecale2]

Fair enough mate. I don't know much about the mails service but could the German or Dutch Postal Service take it on and run the business efficiently? I'm assuming they know something about postal services.

[dillinger]

[/quote Unions are the enemies of progress.
If it wasnt for unions, employers whould still be shoving kids up chimneys. What have employers vol. gave away? In the main, sod all.