Hmmm Smooth, how exactly do you figure this one out, what parameters do you use to measure how much harder the newbies work or you in particular work than legacy posties. By the way i hate the whole"Legacy" thing as you are all posties.
Your need to create a divide because you have a bugbear with posties is a concern, i understand why you believe it, but seeing as how most of your gripes are things outside the control of normal posties, i don't know what you want them to do.
In delivery you all do essentially the same job, how you go about it, what training you get etc etc all varies office to office and what you experience has always gone on from long before your time. So you aren't really treated different it just feels like it to you.
I know you will continue on your quest to bash posties/union every chance you get and under the guise of being a newbie use it to push your agenda, says more about you than it does about the rest of them.
I use the “outdoor span” as the primary parameter to measure how much harder the newbies work. Whereas lots of staff, both legacy-contract and new-entrant colleagues, have the luxury of spending a large proportion of their shift time doing indoor, less arduous and less physical work, then doing a four-hour or so at most delivery, most 40-hr new entrants are doing seven hours or more of outdoor work each day.
Speaking for me personally, i found the indoor mentally tiring, which then leads to physically being under pressure from the get go. It all is still work which somebody has to do, trying to split it off as a freebie for the people who do it isn't true no matter how you try to swing it.
RM as a company are the ones who decide how to fill your day and have decided this form of working, so why blame "Legacy" why not those who are responsible. Or is that a bridge to far.
I think there is so much to learn now as a new starter. Things were a lot simpler years ago because you never had collections, box collections, hardly any parcels, tracked were never a priority and you never scanned anything in on a morning, it was probably how you would expect a posties job to be from an outsider.
40% of our day is now based indoors because there is so much to do, only 2 years ago I was going out on duty at 9am, now it's 10am. I trained a new starter last year and although he's doing fine now there were still lots for him to learn and take in weeks after I trained him.
I do feel sorry for the fact they get s**t on quite a lot and tend to be treated differently by managers.
So much has changed even from when I started four or so years ago. A lot of what we do now wouldn’t have been taught then and has been picked up along the way. Most of it down to Royal Mail trying to complicate a fairly straightforward job.
I think there is so much to learn now as a new starter. Things were a lot simpler years ago because you never had collections, box collections, hardly any parcels, tracked were never a priority and you never scanned anything in on a morning, it was probably how you would expect a posties job to be from an outsider.
40% of our day is now based indoors because there is so much to do, only 2 years ago I was going out on duty at 9am, now it's 10am. I trained a new starter last year and although he's doing fine now there were still lots for him to learn and take in weeks after I trained him.
I do feel sorry for the fact they get s**t on quite a lot and tend to be treated differently by managers.
And yet there is still people who believe that all you do is put pieces of paper through a door and the money you earn is more than enough for what the job entails, plus a lot of this comes from people on here claiming to be posties.
You couldn't make it up.
So much has changed even from when I started four or so years ago. A lot of what we do now wouldn’t have been taught then and has been picked up along the way. Most of it down to Royal Mail trying to complicate a fairly straightforward job.
I doubt it's RM demanding to know precisely where a Tracked item is in the system, without the numerous scans a customer wouldn't know where the parcel is, the fact over 50% where out on the duty I covered today those make you wonder why the customer does want to know where their items is in the system!!
As far as fire drills they always seem to take place first thing in the morning well before any DPR or collection drivers start work, I doubt the company appreciates a fire could break out at anytime during the day or night!
As far as fire drills they always seem to take place first thing in the morning well before any DPR or collection drivers start work, I doubt the company appreciates a fire could break out at anytime during the day or night!
I start at 6.30 am so doubt I have missed a fire drill.
Ah but Lou how does working more hours mean you work "harder" than anyone else, it just means you work for longer than someone on less hours not that you physically work harder.
I have no doubt they are given a hard time or "shat" on as you like to call it, but aren't we all at times, until you decide to stand your ground and put up some resistance that's the way it has always been in any job.
Job equalisation should be a priority on anybodys list, blaming someone for something they have no control over shouldn't.
Many newer entrants are on lower pay and longer hours but that is not proof of greater effort - it's proof of worse conditions!! RM and the CWU have allowed a two-tier system to persist that has created that inequality in the first place and instead of slipping into moral comparisons over who works hardest, it is a fact that newer staff are expected to do the same work for less. It's an injustice but certainly not one that has been created by "legacy" posties and we should really be pointing the blame upwards for that, not sideways. It is RM's corporate strategy that drives understaffing, bad training and uneven conditions which has pitted staff against each other. Rather than attacking the symptoms we should be addressing the cause.
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
Agree with lots you say, mate. But we definitely do work harder!
Training at your place sounds a bit of a shitshow, frankly, as the training at our gaff is top notch (yes, really), and there are no shenanigans like the ones you outline. New starters are given a posting peg on their first day in the office, usually when they do the dog awareness module with the WPC. We have very clear delivery and safeplace training, and there is def no doorstepping allowed (except for perishable goods such as flowers on a second attempt — very rare in itself).
Yes, the bank holiday credit situation has proven to be a nightmare. Earlier this year I told our lead COM that whenever my rest day falls on a BH, I will be automatically having Wednesday in that week off in lieu, which they really don’t like (but had no choice to agree to given the deliberate cockups by our most unhelpful bookroom PHG in processing over a year’s worth of BH credits for the entire cohort of new starters). This has sorted the problem once and for all.
Unfortunately we suffer from the same lack of equipment. I use my old Amazon trolley, which when on firms duties, DPR, etc I couldn’t do without. It is a vital tool — yet I have to provide my own because we have only two trolleys for the whole office. Don’t begrudge using my own equipment if I already own it, as otherwise my trolley would be sat idle, but others don’t have their own kit. The business needs to provide enough equipment.
No fire drill at our place in the 30 months I’ve been there. I was shown the fire exits on my first day there as a proper employee — though I hadn’t been shown them at all during the three months prior thereto that I worked there as an agency member of staff. The public and employers’ liability insurance certificate on display on the noticeboard is also out of date — I think there is a legal requirement for the current certificate to be prominently displayed.
Hmmm Smooth, how exactly do you figure this one out, what parameters do you use to measure how much harder the newbies work or you in particular work than legacy posties.
I can’t speak for Smooth but in our office it is just a fact that they work harder as they do more hours. 40 vs 37. Given they work longer days and some sundays it is a pretty fair comment to make. Considering every other way they are shat on I have every sympathy for them and the sooner contracts are equalised the better for everyone.
Ah but Lou how does working more hours mean you work "harder" than anyone else, it just means you work for longer than someone on less hours not that you physically work harder.
I’m not sure how else you could measure it. Unless you maybe hook everyone up to an ECG and work out their heart rates for the day. Yes, we may all be shat on, as I put it, but they are so with less of the perks that we receive to compensate.
Speaking for me personally, i found the indoor mentally tiring,
Yet we have a rota of about 15 people wanting to be considered for extra indoor overtime (early IPS and parcel sorting, prep and CSP in the afternoon etc) and precisely nobody who wants to do extra delivery.
The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.
I think there is so much to learn now as a new starter. Things were a lot simpler years ago because you never had collections, box collections, hardly any parcels, tracked were never a priority and you never scanned anything in on a morning, it was probably how you would expect a posties job to be from an outsider.
Yes, I mention this to new starts. It was a pretty simple job: take the letter and stick it through the corresponding letterbox. Then go home for lunch.
I don't know what they think when they walk into the office for the first time and see endless rammed frames. Some, especially the late 50s cohort which seem to comprise most of our intake (pushing the average age up even higher), have a media-derived expectation they're going to be sent off with a big bag full of letters to deliver. Oh no, you're Amazon/Evri/Yodel/DPD/DHL/UPS wearing a Royal Mail skinsuit!
