Is the Royal Mail worth saving?
We'll know the result of a ballot of 120,000 Royal Mail workers today. And it looks like there'll be a strike - or strikes - in the run-up to Christmas. The company's management says it's 'immensely worried' by the potential loss of business that industrial action could cause.
With post undelivered, anger over modernisation and competitors taking away customers, is the Royal Mail worth saving? And, what would your plan be to get the company back on track?
That's the phone-in with Nicky at 9.
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5LNPI: Where would you make the cuts? 07 Dec 09
10:40 Mon, 7 Dec 09
Gordon Brown is starting to set out Labour's plans for slashing public spending. It could see civil servant jobs go and new NHS computer systems shelved. Nicky asks where would you make the savings?
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So Nicky has met his match. A performance poet so full of herself she says she just can't help it when her poetry just keeps coming out of her. It is unlistenable.
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Nicky ... With all the mobile red delivery carts strapped to lamp posts the Post Office should be paying local authorites for cart parking, or be clamped!
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Nicky
As an EBAY business which spends £1000 a week on postage its a disgrace that the Royal Mail unions are being allowed to put at risk our business.
Lets face reality if Royal Mail is not privatised it will simply die. Amazon are already looking at ways to move its business away from Royal Mail.
The last strike cost us hundreds of pounds. This one will cost us thousands.
To start with we will lose about £500 a month in lost discounts on EBAY when we fail to meet the strict delivery times used as a measure of performance.
Mail volumes are falling due to email... staff sneed to reflect that.. and the government should step in to prevent industrial action without arbitration. After all we are in a recession.
Paul
Sanctuary Beads Ltd
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I play golf with an ex postman. He managed to complete his and another round EVERY DAY and still finish at 2pm (although he did start at 5 am) and play golf afterwards 33 times a week. He was doing 2 peoples jobs and being paid overtime for it - how could this be possible? He said it was no problem. He retired at 55 and has a great pension and a villa in spain and travels between the two. He says the overtime perks and pay was unbelievable - How can this be - clearly easy jobs for the union boys whislt I slog my socks off running my own company in the real world - I can only dream. Bring back Thatcher and smash the union not the service. Call me 01923 284450
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Yes. I am not unoptimistic. All it needs is a completely different Management and Union structure. There is obviously a Cool Hand Luke situation going on in those so called peace talks that go on seemingly forever.
What we have here is a failure to Communicate - allegedly.
Why does the Union of Communication Workers name come to my mind?
Subject: The view from the summit will be worth it - from Russia with love
Anagram: WWW BH use mother leitmotiv hitter film - film Wuss Hive Orator
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Why did the postman complain about having to deliver one piece of junk mail to a rural address? Don't they get it! The junk mail companies PAY the post office to deliver, therefore contribute to HIS wage. No wonder management were not happy when it was returned undelivered! His attitude that it was just a nuisance to deliver shows just how out of touch and blinkered his views are. Talk about shoot yourself in the foot!
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Bee a bee is quite correct, when discussing direct marketing mail (which some call junk mail) you must remember the customer isn't the addressee, as with all mail it's the person paying the postage that is the customer. Someone will have put a lot of effort and money into creating a mailshot, usually to try and get more customers for their business. If the pmn then don't deliver it thinking of it as junk they are failing Royal Mail and it's customers. If organisations large and small did not market via mailshots then quite frankly the business would collapse as this mail contributes so much to Royal Mails income. Deliberately failing to deliver any mail regardless of content should be taken very seriously.
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Q4 the green eyed monsters out with you i think, Q5 you've got a point . my only issue is managment in general are now taking the attitude in the current climate of and i quote from experience "if you dont like it jog on" and if you think doing 20+ hours per month free is ok then thats up to you but i bet the chancellor wouldnt mind getting the tax revenue back on those 20 hours. good luck to the posties i hope you get what you are after. your hours work for an hours pay it aint much to ask an employer to do is it
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I am furious about all these negative comments my husband is a postman and he works extremely hard, all of you who have left negative comments, ask yourself in your job if your boss told you they are cutting your pension and they want you to work longer hours but you won't get paid for it! Would you do it? I don't think so!!!!!!! Also those that have mentioned about the perks, that's only if you are a manager!
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The government is destroying the quality of service in the Mail industry following EU directives to liberalise the Mail industry across Europe.
With a decline in volumes of letters comes an increase in overall revenues because packet-volumes are up (indeed Richard Hooper stated this in his report), and they are of higher value, so it is wrong for the company to say there is no money - it could be more if RM was able to charge realistic prices for its services e.g. Royal Mail cannot compete on a level playing field under the directive, and taxpayers money, and customers money is being transferred into private hands via false, cheap prices of bulk postings made by large business users. This incudes the "competition" which largely comprises mail-handlers who sort mail, the cheapest part of the process, and take it to delivery offices for RM to deliver (this is called Downstream Access) which is the most costly element of the process. For this, prices can be as low as 11p per item, as opposed to regular first-class prices, a saving of around 65-70% .
So revenues are not coming into the business. Meanwhile no-one but RM is obliged, much less interested in, delivering to every property in the country (The Universal Service Obligation), which is fairly obviously not a profitable enterprise. This, and public opposition to privatisation of RM, stops competitors such as TNT and Deutsche-Post from buying into Royal Mail - they just don't want to uphold the USO- it isn't where profit lies.
Meanwhile, RM has little choice but to cut costs to keep its head abvove water; as such, the management can't negotiate with the CWU because they know what they are doing IS unreasonable- they have no options, though. Consequently, changes are implemented arbitrarily without consultation, and the workforce is bullied, manipulated, cajoled, and browbeaten, into doing whats been decided.
This has meant a lessening of earnings potential, harder work, longer deliveries, and later working- some properties now don't receive their mail until 5pm.
They also have lost their pension-values from a change to career-average instead of final-salary values.
Conditions have also worsened- we now have little time for any flexibility- every second of work-time is accounted for - on the face of it, efficient- but in the real world it means that if something goes wrong, everything goes wrong, because there is no slack in the system to correct any upset. The result is that management chooses to fail on targets rather than spend money upfront- trading-off the risk of having to pay comepensation to customers against labour and equipment costs to provide a smooth service.
Pressures on deliver officers are now immense- there is no training for new entrants, nor for people transferring to other work. Nobody knows how the job should properly be done, and when things go wrong, as surely they will under such circumstances, it is blamed on the employee for not doing a good job.
The whole thing is a shambles, and the root cause is the EU directive.
What needs to happen, to restore Britain's world-leading mail SERVICE is to abandon this directive, and restore RM to a monopoly able to charge realistic prices for its services. No-one ever used to complain that mail was expensive- because it wasn't.
The status quo is untenable for most in the industry. It may suit a handful of companies which cream off public money whilst abdicating any responsibility to their customers- for example, a bank contracts a privateer, the privateer charges less than RM on the basis of cheap Downstream Access, but will not guarantee any service standard comaparable to Royal Mail, thus exonerating it whilst enabling it to make a healthy profit.
Moves toward privatisation have led to this sitaution. The public must decide whether to have this type of service, or whether, ultimately, they will be satisfied with perhaps a two deliveries per week scenario, or a mail-collection-based operation where they come to a mail-holding office and collect their mail in person rather than have it delivered, or pay a premium for a delivery.
Lord Mandelson has shelved plans to introduce private capital to Royal Mail, but by doing so has precipitated this current unrest.
Whether that's by accident or design itself remains open to question. A man of such experience would surely realise what he's doing- and that means suspicion falls on him that he is out to reduce labour and delivery costs in RM precisely to facilitate a private buyer.
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Bankrupt UK, winter is on its way along with the strikes - postal, rubbish uncollected. Oh and Labour in charge.
It's all got a deja vous 1979 fell to it.
As for the postal workers well they are basically voting for the sack as they will lose even more business.
Privatise Royal Mail I say.
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So! according to one guy on Nicky's phone in this morning people are supposed to work extra for nothing LOL! I'm sorry but I go to work to earn a living and to try and support my family, not to act as some kind of charity to boost Royal Mails profits and senior managers vast bonuses / pay packets. If people like that guy have their way, we will all return to the times of mill owners totally exploiting their workers.
Some people state that the UCW are not up for modernisation and are being deliberately obstructive etc. Really! just one example off the top of my head. Not that long ago our so called enlightened management wanted to close Parcel Force down completely when it was bleeding money and making massive loses, it was the UNION! that came up with he plan of making Parcel Force an express parcel carrier only, and returning ordinary posted parcels into the Royal Mail Letters business. Result, Parcel Force is now one of the leading express carriers in the UK and is making good profits once again. Does the UCW get any credit for this? Of course it doesn't!!!!
People say Royal Mail workers don't work hard? I work for the Royal Mail Logistics Haulage side, I regularly work shift patterns that can change up to 3 times within a week often with 12 hours attendance and up to 10 hours driving all with different start and finish times across the 24 hr day, I often have to work Saturday nights until 2 / 3 o'clock in the morning plus Sunday day shifts, and Royal Mail call these shifts family friendly? yeah right! It wouldn't be so bad if I got a decent wage for the anti social and very long hours that I do, but I don't, and I have just been given a wage cut of £115 a week plus a wage freeze under the excuse of this so called recession and Royal Mail modernisation plan, even though Royal Mail posted profits of over 3 million pounds. If anyone reckons I don't work hard, then by all means give my job a try and see how your body clock and family finance copes with it all.
Of course it's the done thing isn't it for some people to knock all Royal Mail employees by calling us work shy, lazy and dinosaur union members because we are finding ourselves in a position of having no alternative but to take strike action in order to save our jobs, save the services to the public that Royal Mail are offering, and whats more to save YOUR! yes YOUR! Royal Mail! it's not ours, it's yours! the British public's. By all means if we are so bad, go and post your mail with our so called competitors who are getting a leg up everyday because of unfair competition rules levied against Royal Mail by government and the clueless postal regulator. Just don't start doing the usual British public thing of whinging about how good we were and how you wish you had us back when private postal operators have the postal market to themselves and screw everyone on price and are giving you all a proper rubbish service.
I'm currently lost a vast amount of money that I certainly can not afford, because both myself and colleagues are prepared to stand up and fight, and not just lay down and be bullied and totally exploited like the majority of other workers in the UK today it would seem, yet according to some I'm losing this kind of money because I think striking is some sort of a jolly!
The ignorance of some commentators on programs like the 5 Live radio phone in, beggars belief! not to mention they are basing their opinions on Royal Mail management spin, media fabrication, and general hear say.
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richlittlelorrie wrote:
I am furious about all these negative comments my husband is a postman and he works extremely hard, all of you who have left negative comments, ask yourself in your job if your boss told you they are cutting your pension and they want you to work longer hours but you won't get paid for it! Would you do it? I don't think so!!!!!!! Also those that have mentioned about the perks, that's only if you are a manager!
Errrr....like the song " If you don't like it leave it!" There's unemployed out there that are deperate for work.
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Belchard Farticus wrote:
Errrr....like the song " If you don't like it leave it!" There's unemployed out there that are deperate for work.
Now there is a typical answer of the ignorant.
So everyone! you have to go to work these days in 2009 and work extra hours for nothing, in fact lets all go to work for nothing full stop! You have to accept being bullied by your managers, suffer personal injury or exhaustion in the pursuit of vast profits for your company and its owners due to unreasonable work loads and time frames demanded of you. You have to happily pay your pension contributions faithfully (in my case for thirty years ) but not accept a proper payout ( if you indeed get one at all! ) that you were promised because of the inadequacy of a previous government like Thatchers and today's Labour government. You have to be content to sit back and just watch a clueless management who haven't the first idea of how to run your place of work and who are intent on running your business into the ground, etc, etc, because as some people say..........,
If you don't like it leave it!???
The future isn't orange it's BLACK!
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Royal Mail remains the only service that guarantees to deliver an item anywhere in Great Britain. It is the right of any worker to withold their labour. Until another organisation can deliver the same service as R.M. I will support them.
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It was interesting that one caller said that if postman finish early they go home retaining their full pay, yet if it goes the other way.....
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When you want to send a letter to Aberdeen, do you really think a private courier will do it for 30p. And I doubt there will be such a convenient collection method as popping it in to the nearest post box.
Do you see any of the other civilised Western European countries taking this action? It is just more asset stripping, and cost cutting from the worst set of politicians in the worst parliament in Western Europe.
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TheRealMagicalTrevor wrote:
Belchard Farticus wrote:
Errrr....like the song " If you don't like it leave it!" There's unemployed out there that are deperate for work.
Now there is a typical answer of the ignorant.
So everyone! you have to go to work these days in 2009 and work extra hours for nothing, in fact lets all go to work for nothing full stop! You have to accept being bullied by your managers, suffer personal injury or exhaustion in the pursuit of vast profits for your company and its owners due to unreasonable work loads and time frames demanded of you. You have to happily pay your pension contributions faithfully (in my case for thirty years ) but not accept a proper payout ( if you indeed get one at all! ) that you were promised because of the inadequacy of a previous government like Thatchers and today's Labour government. You have to be content to sit back and just watch a clueless management who haven't the first idea of how to run your place of work and who are intent on running your business into the ground, etc, etc, because as some people say..........,
If you don't like it leave it!???
The future isn't orange it's BLACK!
Bee_A_Bee wrote:
It was interesting that one caller said that if postman finish early they go home retaining their full pay, yet if it goes the other way.....
"So everyone! you have to go to work these days in 2009 and work extra hours for nothing, "
Bee A Bee - Answered your post for me!
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18. Belchard Farticus wrote:
"...If you don't like it leave it!.."
Yes. Do you think the world owes you a living?
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rg wrote:
Yes. Do you think the world owes you a living?
No! but a company who posts massive profits owes me a fair days wage for a fair days work, and for the flexible work practices that both myself and my colleagues have already delivered, not to mention a fair and proper amount of time should be given in order to do the job.
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20. TheRealMagicalTrevor wrote:
"…a company who posts massive profits…"
"With today's results confirming that the pensions deficit has doubled this year and that mail volumes are expected to fall by as much as 10% every year, the need for urgent modernisation and fundamental reform is crystal clear." said Business Secretary Lord Mandelson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8049808.stm
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rg wrote:
"With today's results confirming that the pensions deficit has doubled this year and that mail volumes are expected to fall by as much as 10% every year, the need for urgent modernisation and fundamental reform is crystal clear." said Business Secretary Lord Mandelson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8049808.stm
Alas the ignorance isn't mine it's yours my friend. As for the pension deficit, read your history books specifically the Thatcher era of power to find out exactly why there is such a massive deficit within the Royal Mail pension fund today.
http://www.cwu.org/
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22. TheRealMagicalTrevor
"…Alas the ignorance isn't mine it's yours my friend…"
I'll feed it you milk it.
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n18.Your words didn't make it clear to me whether you were criticising what I said or not. But I suspect you were making a point about something that I didn't actually say in an attempt to try and prove a point.
The point I was actually making is for a case of it goes both ways. The postmen I listened to just swept away the fact that they can also go home an hour or two early.
One of the issues that still intrigues me is how a job can be so bad when the vast majority of their day is spent on their own out on the road? Pray tell.
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RFF,
I'll go along with privatising Royal Mail if the Royal Family are also privatised. As that's unlikely to happen, RM should stay in the public sector. The bosses are saying that revenue is down. (Tears).
Apparently, there is 20m + pieces of undelivered mail laying around and we're told that people aren't using the service.
The problem began with the introduction of 1st and 2nd Class post. It's been a mess since then, not because of the postal workers but because of the stupidity of mamagement. The private sector will not improve it. The only way to improve the RM is for the workers in the industry to take it over whilst remaining nationalised.
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