To think Royal Mail workers should not be striking

[Hitthehighseastoday]

They’ve already been offered a 9% pay raise and declined. Royal Mail is already making a loss. It’s a national service for the public which is now being severely disrupted by strikes, it’s appalling.

They absolutely should be striking and have my support.

The money paid out to the shareholders (£2 billion) in comparison to the wages posties are on is a disgrace and the fact their CEO (Simon Thompson) on a salary in excess of £700k won't even show up to negotiations says everything about how committed he is to coming to a resolution. Thank god they're unionised.

As someone whose DH has worked for RM for 30+ years doing deliveries previously and as a collection driver for the second half of his employment he was always proud to work for RM but the way he has been treated the last 12 months has been disgusting. Having lived through a corrupt disciplinary process where no evidence was provided nor any questions asked were responded to resulting in dismissal I can confirm that the staff are demoralised and the managers are out for themselves persecuting their staff to justify their own existence. DH was one of the very rare cases where he ‘won’ his appeal and was reinstated but all that proved from the appeal report was that HR are just as corrupt as the managers. Where training and/or words of advice could be given they throw the book at them and get them dismissed for gross misconduct. He brought a letter home from RM last week for expressions of interest in VR, I just hope he gets it which would give us a buffer financially while DH looks for another job.

9%? The current rate of inflation is 9.6%. So all they are asking is for enough money to afford to live and they are not being offered that.

All this “9% is reasonable and “train drivers are on £42,000} a year crap is just to divide us all and make you think they’re better off than you.

My OH works for Network Rail. My friend’s OH works for Tescos as a warehouse manager. They were arguing the other day about how my OH earns more, so therefore should be grateful he’s not on “Tesco money”. My OH pointed out that he is literally responsible for hundreds of lives every single minute of his shift (because if he doesn’t do his job probably, trains will crash), as well as being very specifically trained. He has also had seven people kill themselves, one right in front of him, in the last 12 years (three in the last 2 years).

To give him his due, my friend’s husband acknowledged that, actually, none of us really know what another job involves unless we’ve done it, and your wages should reflect the level of responsibility, as well as the qualifications.

In a nutshell, it’s not a race to the bottom and if workers say they aren’t earning enough, it’s not for us to decide they are.

Literally NO-ONE would go unpaid at the moment unless they really, really felt they needed to.

This is what I think about all strikes I absolutely agree. People are not striking for the sake of it

I am surprised the workers think they have so much clout. I barely need Royal Mail these days, I should think most people are the same. It’s archaic and will get smaller imo.

It not like the old day when letters were very important, the only thing that comes by post from the bank is the occasional new bank card. The only other post I seem to receive are birthday cards and junk mail. There are plenty of other couriers for online shopping

op Would you vote for a pay cut ? Would you be willing to take a household income cut so you boss can have a salary 5x yours and not be affected?

i doubt you would but are upset when other will not

This.

My ex is a postman. The place is full of raging dinosaur Marxists who only turn up to make the management's life a misery by the sounds of it.

Hes LTFT and gets about 28k pa, (which is still paid weekly!) including overtime, which is the collections from postboxes and some businesses, with about a 4 hour break between delivery and collection. Its not hard work. Its a 5 day working week. The job requires zero qualifications except a driving licence. It's basically a glorified paper round. Being a good Marxist, he was disgusted when RM was floated and he was given free shares in the company, but hasn't sold them.

Hes been doing the same job for over 30 years and has never been offered nor sought a promotion or looked elsewhere for another job even once in all that time (probably because he knows the only stuff that would be open to him would mean being indoors all day working for an evil Capitalist which the delicate little treasure couldn't cope with). Most of his colleagues were the same - adult men with zero transferable skills for anything else and a passion for making management's job difficult.

I cant actually remember the last time I posted a letter and for parcels I use DPD or UPS. Bills and bank statements are online so I don't get them through the post anymore. Any correspondence is sent by email.

We have very little incoming or outgoing post where I work. At least 2 days a week there's none. Parcels are sent by DPD.

The RM management know what's happening and are trying to modernise. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the people they rely on to deliver are stuck firmly in the past.

MIL worked for RM for decades, she eventually quit because she said there was too much management/ bureaucracy, nobody seemed to know what they were doing or how to run an actual business, and there were lots of staff at operational level like her who weren't willing to consider doing anything in any way they hadn't done for thirty years. She took early retirement and set up her own business which is very successful. 9% is a very good pay offer in the current climate. I work in the public sector, we got 3% and that's the first payrise we've had in nearly a decade

This. I support them too.

I swear some ppl will see employers drive remuneration down to a bowl of rice and a beating and still say ‘ it at least they got fed’.

We are all losing out due to this race-to-bottom mindset while the top brass are taking the piss - privatising & reducing our services, extracting every last penny in profit which is then hoarded untaxed elsewhere.

We lose the tax take, the extra cash flowing through the local economy and happy service providers. HTF do you naysayers think the working poor are created?

I’m not a rail worker, postie, nurse or anyone else who is striking but I support them.

solidarity to you all. We need a general strike (or do we? There are so many strikes the country must be slowing down?)

It’s not a monopoly so they will lose service more and more

Other ways to send something - eg packages

Demand will fall and squeeze ability to pay even more

If you're saying that they provide too valuable a service to strike then surely logic would dictate that they should be paid a fair wage and treated properly. It just doesn't make sense that anyone providing a vital service should have crap pay and conditions. This is why I support all the strikes, including the NHS one which I am hoping to be a part of soon.
We clapped our key workers in covid. Not just the NHS, but our postal workers, our supermarket staff, delivery drivers, train drivers, etc. What happened?

I agree and I'm not sure exactly how much money they expect to be paid for putting an envelope through a letterbox. It's hardly a skilled profession.

They can be easily replaced by temp / agency workers who will be delighted with 22k for unskilled work.

Royal Mail has paid out over £884 million to shareholders in the last three years. In the last year alone, three of the top bosses were paid nearly £4 million between them, with company profits of more than £750m. Meanwhile in work poverty is rising, with workers paid an average of £11.89 per hour.

OP are you making stuff up about these losses or you just support greedy bosses & shareholders

Profits for royal mail

Profit on the back of covid online shopping

"There for everyone during the pandemic"😂

By putting envelopes through doors? You weren't exactly manning ventilators. Let's get some perspective here

Not half as glad as I am 😊

They can be easily replaced by temp / agency workers who will be delighted with 22k for unskilled work.

😂 you’ve not been following the mass exodus of employees

Employee shortages

Funny how the ones I know are whining about agency staff crossing the picket line to work then eh?

Royal Mail needs to modernise or it'll die.
And then all the dinosaur employees who've been there since they left school at 15 will have to find a job in the real world, good luck to them!

Funny how the ones I know are whining about agency staff crossing the picket line to work then eh?

shouldnt be cross a picket line - of course they’ll moan, not like they’ll be jumping for joy

Heavily unionised, private sector and drop in demand makes it harder for a company to build demand atm

Other private companies will take the market and drive down sales

RM is up against it, rail has a drop in demand too

Some people can't afford to strike. Could argue that it's invalidating their claims they don't get paid enough when they can happily lose so much money from strike days?

Very odd that everything is online and nobody does anything in person anymore, no one wants cash or ever visits a bank but they want to keep Royal Mail and the Railways in the 70s

Of course, it's just putting a letter through a door!

Why should a unskilled worker earn a living wage and be treated decently!

Should be lucky they're paid at all and are not whipped daily! Why would different hours have any effect on their lives, they should just suck it up and be grateful for every penny they get.

You do realise the country actually needs unskilled workers?

I bet you're the sort of person that's also vile to retail staff, waiters etc, we've all come across people like you.

What do you work as, out of interest?

Let's run that down!