to be getting a leeeetle bit hacked off with the postal strike...

[AtheneNoctua]

Today I have to take a 2 hour lunch to sort out a Halloween costume because I can't rely on the mail to deliver one if I order it online. That is 2 hours of my work which I will have to make up if I want to be paid for it.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8327158.stm

I selfishly hope they hire the contract workers.

What about the public who relies on this service? Where is our compensation?

I will add I don't know the details of the reasons for the strike (because they aren't reported and not because I haven't looked). So I don't have an opinion on whether the strike is justified.

But I am starting to feel they have made their bloody point and I want my mail service back.

erm - I meant Conditions, clearly

But this is why no-one knows what to make of it. I was under the impression that a large part of this was to do with pensions. No-one has confimed that or otherwise.

I have pointed out that if it is true that the vast majority are on money purchase/stakeholder then it is nonsense about a defecit. Defecits occur when pensions are guaranteed by the employer.

The response "Or because the government underestimated that they might just need the money and pissed it away on other sectors of the government (and no, I don?t have all the details, I?m not a fucking encyclopaedia of where the government has screwed up over and over again (and not just the current one either because apparently they only ?inherited? the problems and can?t do anything else except make it worse hmm )"

doesn't really help.

It sounds to me like you're not entirely sure what the strike is about either. If you can't confirm or otherwise whether the pensions issue is a major bone of contention, or even confirm what sort of pensions the people are on etc.

IF they are on final salary which I think a significant number MUST be is defecit is an issue THEN they are being unreasonable in trying to cling onto this benefit.

x-post bb99; and I agree completely.

I'm just speculating here, but is it possible that it is the senior management still on final salary who are due to retire in the reasonably near future who are at risk of not getting their full pensions?

And I still have not seen a compelling argument as to why we need RM to be a service and not a private company. If privatising it settles the penion defeceit than perhaps it is the way to go.

I have just had a quick surf round the web and it seems every private courier / postal service company around is capitalising on this strike. It does seem the strikes are cutting off noses to spite faces.

It is not fair to automatically assume that people who want to know what the strike is about before deciding whether they support it or not, also disagree with the principle of industrial action.

bb99 I understood that one of the strike reasons was to oppose the introduction of new technology ie modernisation. If people don't want it now, why would they have wanted it 20 years ago?

Athene it is possible, although if a few senios execs have pensions worth enough to make a defecit of billions then they are even more well paid than the bankers. I suspect that a lot of people on the ground on older contracts are on final salary too and suspect they are upset about being moved onto money purchase.

That's just a guess though as no-one seems able to say

Have no experience of working at Royal Mail, but seems to me it must be a job that has got easier over the years due to:

1. Abolition of second daily delivery

1. Fact that daily post delivery now happens much later in the morning, and sometimes after noon (at least at my house)

1. Fact that a great deal of personal and business correspondence now goes via email, rather than Royal Mail - especially in this era of faster-paced business - so RM are not handling a significant quantity of the nation's correspondence.

1. Fact that many (most?) truly important business papers are sent via courier, bike or recorded delivery (so not 'regular' post), again reducing volume.

1. Fact that there are regular (annual?) rate increases to cover increased cost of doing business.

1. Fact that we can now no longer count on 'next day' delivery of a first class letter, so quality of service has slipped markedly.

1. Fact that virtually everyone who is employed has a far less generous benefits and pension package than what was 'the norm' in past years. Unfortunately, it is a business fact-of-life that we all wish was different.

Based on the above, I have difficulty thinking of RM employees as 'hard done by', and can't drum up much (any) sympathy. Think you'll find many people feel the same way, so RM employees won't find much public support for their 'cause', IMO.

have not waded through the entire thread before posting.

I would never order an urgent Halloween costume by post at such short notice outside of a postal strike. The likelihood of the parcel being delivered to me in time and when I'm in and not getting a card through the door referring me to the Post Office more than a mile away is too minimal, and with a 48 hour wait to collect. I think that's happened because of the way the RM is being run down with posties expected to take on huge rounds, lack of regular posties on many rounds etc.

I support the strikes and I'd like to see a postal service run as a service not trying to be a profit making enterprise (though I understand RM made huge profits last year).

EB, I think while the nation's correspondance has gone down, the volume that the RM handles has gone up due to catalogs and advertisements.

I haven't received an actual letter, addressed to me, for MONTHS. However, there is something put through my letterbox every day.

I know they are doing it for revenue, but it seems like they would be far better off if people were allowed to opt IN to advertisements rather than have to opt OUT.

This may also explain why, if you read the postie viewpoints, the supposedly-same-number-of-items has gotten markedly heavier. It's all those damn mailers!

earlybird, by the timing of the shifts now, it's actually the first post that was abolished.
the shift used to start at 5 o'clock, and any post that was brought into the delivery office whilst the posties were doing their first round was sorted and put onto their second round. they were also allowed to leave the DO earlier (they now have to leave at 9:15 at the earliest) so they could do the first round and get it to people before they left for work.
now there are more boxes coming onto the DO at the saem time and they start work at 6. they have to have all of the sorting done before they leave the office. any post that arrives in the DO after the shift is on their rounds has to wait till the next day.
anywaym the reason it's so late to your house is that they have to bring all of that day's mail in one go, not 2 smaller goes like before.
there is more work to be done, just in a smaller length of time.

pension quesitons: i think it's a percentage of the final salary pension, but that's actually not the issue. the issue is that they've all paid into their pension for years and now they're not even guaranteed to get out what they paid in. that because the government diverted their payments into other sectors, as well as the RM contributions. if you pay into a company pensio nscheme, the company promises so many ££ to however many you put in. this money has been disappeared, so the workers might lose the money they saved and the money they were promised.

have to say, though, the junk mail is called door-to-door and they get paid on a per item basis. but! they have to do that on top of their normal hours, and if you add it up it's less than minimum wage. that's because the companies who send the stuff in assume (area allowed to assume) that some of the work is absorbed into the posties' normal day. it's not.

TheDevilEatsBabies -

You say that the pensions deficit occurred

"...because the government diverted their payments into other sectors, as well as the RM contributions."

The government seems to be saying the deficit is entirely the fault and responsibility of the company. In other words, they say that while the employee contributions were made and the state contributions were made, the employer (that is, the company) contributions were not sufficent.

Are you able to link (anywhere, the CWU if you like) to somewhere that will explain why the government are responsible for the deficit rather than the company?

I am waiting for a £4000 chq! My son's birthday is on Sunday and no cards. Birthday presents coming from Australia not going to arrive! And Halloween outfits that have been ordered, who knows where they are?!! AARrggghh

ImSoNotTelling said that:

"It sounds to me like you're not entirely sure what the strike is about either. If you can't confirm or otherwise whether the pensions issue is a major bone of contention, or even confirm what sort of pensions the people are on etc."

I agree. In my opinion, this is the real crux of the problem concerning the public perception of the strike.

I'd make a quick analagy here, to demonstrate how it it starting to appear to me as someone who has no direct involvement in the strike but is trying to obtan information about it.

I'm a teacher, so a public sector worker on a final salary pension. I don't like the biscuits in my staffroom at work. They are the nasty value custard creams that smell of sick. It drives me mad because I pay into the tea fund and want decent biscuits like hobnobs.

Now lets say that my union proposes strike action about another issue. This issue is about whether part-time teachers should be required to attend on their non-working days without additional pay.

I am a full time teacher and so don't really understand or am engaged with the issue of unpaid inset, but you know, the union are making it sound really bad, and anyway I'm really hacked off with the custard cream situation, so yes I will support strike action.

Please forgive the deliberatly ridiculous analagy. I do understand that most of the striking staff have far more serious concerns on their mind than biscuits, and it is not my intention to belittle their grievances.

I simply wanted to illustrate that it seems as though (from what I've read on this thread anyway) that even the striking staff seem to very vague about exactly what they are striking for.

So far, all I can gather is that:

It is about pensions, but they are very sketchy about what the problem is, who caused it and how it is to be resolved. In fact, the rationale is "the bloody government messed up and wants to steal our pensions".

It's about having to work unpaid overtime, but no-one seems able to demonstrate the processes that the union went through previous to strike action(or at least, no-one on this thread has described them). Was there 'work to rule'? Was there a week when everyone agreed to stay late and physically count every single item in their bag and collate these figures to present as evidence that their work has increased?

It's about bullying and harrassment by management. No-one has given clear examples of what this involved and how they have attempted to address the issues previous to the strike action.

If you're striking, first of all all the striking workers need to be absolutely clear as to why they are striking and what they think it will achieve.

Secondly, the public need to informed clearly and succinctly and then have this information repeated to them regularly about why the strike is happening and what the union hopes it will achive.

If these two things don't happen, what you get is (to return to my analogy) some people striking about biscuits, some people striking because they've been told that A Bad Thing is going on with inset, and a load of very upset parents and their children who are missing a day of their education.

This is what Royal Mail themselves are saying about the pensions deficit.

I understand that the workers have issues with some of the information is presented, but it does lay out what the problem is (from their perspective, anyway) and how they propose to resolve it.

I have to say, I could not find anywhere in there an indication that the company feels that the deficit is the government's responsibilty or fault.

Firstly many employers do not make any contributions to employee pensions (like mine). The only contributions are the ones I make myself. For an employer to contribute into a money purchase (ie non guarateed) pension is extremely generous to start with.

Secondly (and here I am making guestimates) i do not believe that people will not get back the money they have put in for a minute.

Say postman earns £20K (it may be less than this but it's an easy figure) and contributes 5% a year over 20 years. That's £20,000. Say employer matches this (generous) that's 40,000. Are you saying that this person will not be given £40,000 on retirement? On the market that would buy a pretty feeble annuity. I do not believe that that can possibly be the case.

I am absolutely sure that we are talking about guaranteed pensions here. If you are saying that the government has stolen individual pension contributions and now will not give them back then clearly that is theft, goes against pension legislation, and is illegal. I can believe that they have a defecit on final salary pensions. I can believe that on money purchase schemes people's pensions have been clobbered by the recession due to what's happened to the stock market. I can't believe that people have had their pen conts stolen.

I am absolutely sure that we are talking guaranteed pensions, that the company cannot afford to pay them. No companies can afford to pay them. Which is why in the private sector, apart from top managers they are so rare as to be non-existant.

I find it strange that no-one can say exactly what the beef is with the pensions, and yet are hot keen on them being one of the reasons for the strike.

Good link notanumber.

From that document:

"We fully recognise how important the final salary pension scheme is to all of us
? However, the deficit now stands at £6.6 billion and this is costing us around £730 million per year and this clearly affects our competitiveness because we need to price our products and services higher to pay for it? which causes more customers to go to the competition
What are we doing to solve this?
What has been agreed with the Government?
?Will it invest in the business?
What kind of difficult decisions do we need to take?
What does this mean for my pension?
? It costs the company, on average, around 30 per cent of a person?s salary to keep the pension going, versus around six per cent for the competition. This puts us at a huge disadvantage
? What we must ensure is that the problem does not get any worse and, therefore, we must take steps to de-risk this for the company and all our pension members. The key thing is to protect people?s pensions by ensuring that the pension fund is robustly funded
? We have therefore decided to do three things:

1. To begin a consultation on the closure of the existing final salary scheme to new recruits and replace it with a defined contribution scheme
2. We want to keep a final salary scheme for existing employees but will begin a consultation with all parties (our members/unions/Trustees) to examine how we can de-risk the cost of the pension scheme in the future and protect everyone?s pension
3. There are very few arrangements where deficits are allowed to be paid off over more than ten years but the company has agreed with the Trustees a payment schedule over 17 years of around £730 million per year to fund the existing pensions deficit

? We would stress that all consultation will be over a six-month period, beginning 1 April 2007, with the full involvement of all parties (members, Trustees, CWU, CMA) and that any changes will apply to all members from the Board to frontline employees ? As you will all know, this is something that many companies in the UK are having to do but we do intend to do everything possible to keep open the final salary scheme for existing members ? It is in everyone?s interest to have a robust, affordable final salary scheme which can survive and prosper for the future."

What the above post means, briefly, is:

That people who are in the final salary scheme are not prepared to move to money purchase. They want to keep their out of step with the market, extremely generous and extremely expensive pensions, at all costs.

Even though this means that there is no money whatsoever left over to do things like modernise the business, or pay overtime, or employ people full time etc.

And that putting all the money to the pensions means that the RM cannot be competitive.

For crying out loud. When private companies closed the final salary schemes, service to the date of closure was protected/remains in the final salary scheme and new contributions go to money purchase. This is normal. It is not tight or mean or destroying peoples pensions. It is what all but the very lucky few get.

So the RM insists that they must have taxpayer money to pay for pensions that no private company would be able to afford. And then expects sympathy?

"Say postman earns £20K (it may be less than this but it's an easy figure) and contributes 5% a year over 20 years. That's £20,000. Say employer matches this (generous) that's 40,000. Are you saying that this person will not be given £40,000 on retirement? On the market that would buy a pretty feeble annuity. I do not believe that that can possibly be the case."

but that's only £40,000 once: it's not £40,000 per year.

anyway, to my perception the pensions bit isn't the main argument. which is why i'm kind of sketchy on the exact details and yes, maybe i have misunderstood it a bit.
i know that the working conditions of the everyday and bullying and harrassment of the workers by the bosses is forefront to the argument.
i think the pensions is more like the biscuit in your analogy and the working conditions and modernization effects are the rest of it (part-time teachers etc)

I cant quite put my finger on why ,but this whole thread makes me feel very depressed

Yes you were saying that people wouldn't get back what they had paid in ie £40,000 once.

The pensions is not like the biscuit - to me it is the reason for all the other problems - as per my post above.

If RM would give up their gold-plated pensions, and move into line with private industry, then they would have the money to modernise, pay overtime etc. At the moment all and any spare money is being sucked into this enormous black hole of a pension scheme, which is totally finacially insupportable.

When final salary schemes close people retain what they have already accrued. So people wouldn't be losing anything they had already earnt. That would be protected.

aww, bumpsoon.

i think i agree with you though.
not sure what your reasons would be, but i'm kind of upset that it's all going to the wall and all people can say is "tough, get used to it"

i'll get oh to bring in his leaflet that explains the pension.

devileatsbabies I think the point is that almost everyone in the private sector, and many in the public sector, have already been through this. It is an old argument, and one which people have already come round to accepting.

Obviously it would be great if final salary schemes were affordable for everyone, but they just aren't. That is something to be sad about.

But I can't feel sad that people are striking to keep something, and insist that I (taxpayer) pay for it, when it is in modern terms an impossibly huge perk.

I also feel the same about MP pensions BTW. And other final salary schemes including my DHs. If they said they were going to close his, I would not be at all surprised. I would shrug and suck it up. However they are unlikely to close his due to part of public sector he is, where strike action is still very effective. But if they did, I would understand.