no letters delivered

[LouBarlow]

Nah, I definitely won’t give the forum a miss. It is actually too much of a good laugh to see the sense of superiority and self entitlement oozing from some contributors, e.g. “Those of us who have done so much for the business over the years” and the ilk. I will continue to correct gross exaggerations like “barely NMW” even if at the risk of incurring the wrath of a few narrow-minded contributors. As MWalker is belatedly discovering, the grass is definitely not greener on the other side, and RM is very well paid for what the work entails, with reasonably good benefits and a very generous pension when compared to working elsewhere (though not as generous as yours, of course!, as your union created an apartheid where you get better pay and benefits than us on “shitey” contracts). I will continue to give a fairminded view to matters, thanks.

Brief reality check: the thousands of new recruits on these new “shitey contracts” are the future of the Royal Mail workforce. They are a great bunch of people. Some will stay, some will decide it’s not for them. And be under no illusion, if they leave, RM will continue to recruit until they have the requisite number of people in post. Although not for me, in time, some of these new recruits will climb the ladder and become the next generation of Royal Mail managers, becoming my manager – and yours! Ponder on that…

Don’t be bullied off by the usual suspects on here. They have done it before. As someone on a legacy contract, I honestly have every sympathy with new starters nowadays. I wouldn’t want to do the job with lesser terms. That said, it is still a well paid job that *is* way above minimum wage, which is why all those moaners who say this, still persist in a job they clearly hate. Ask yourself why, if the pay was comparable, they aren’t taking one of these minimum wage jobs? You know why, I know why and they do really.

I did notice though that you managed to earn the double-bill - being accused of being a manager and having an alternate account in the same reply. You are upsetting the right people with that honour.

[Smoothbackground]

And just to clarify a minor point: my contract already is — like all other new recruits’ contracts — on the basis of annualised hours. As I’m on a 40-hour contract, my annualised hours are 2080 per annum.

[Smoothbackground]

Thank you for calling it out for what it is, Lou, and for speaking sense - and you are spot on in all you say. And I certainly won’t be put off posting by hostility and at times blatant bullying by a certain number of contributors. There have been posts on other threads where people with contrary views have managed to exchange views without personal insults, in a good-mannered, respectful yet humorous way, and I’m sure the site admin would expect that as a basic ground rule?

[scotchy1962]

Nah, I definitely won’t give the forum a miss. It is actually too much of a good laugh to see the sense of superiority and self entitlement oozing from some contributors, e.g. “Those of us who have done so much for the business over the years” and the ilk. I will continue to correct gross exaggerations like “barely NMW” even if at the risk of incurring the wrath of a few narrow-minded contributors. As MWalker is belatedly discovering, the grass is definitely not greener on the other side, and RM is very well paid for what the work entails, with reasonably good benefits and a very generous pension when compared to working elsewhere (though not as generous as yours, of course!, as your union created an apartheid where you get better pay and benefits than us on “shitey” contracts). I will continue to give a fairminded view to matters, thanks.

Brief reality check: the thousands of new recruits on these new “shitey contracts” are the future of the Royal Mail workforce. They are a great bunch of people. Some will stay, some will decide it’s not for them. And be under no illusion, if they leave, RM will continue to recruit until they have the requisite number of people in post. Although not for me, some of these new recruits will, in time, climb the ladder and become the next generation of Royal Mail managers, becoming my manager – and yours! Ponder on that…

You will find a lot of self entitlement on here. I know you think we are all dinosaurs but we have something you don't have.... experience, and not just in RM, a lot of us have worked elsewhere and we can see whats coming. I have been around a lot of different jobs and as i near retirement fear for the future of this once flagship company, as it transforms into some sort of delivery hybrid monster.
I am afraid what you consider to be a "very generous pension" may not be what you think it is. 16yrs in RM and i can tell you my retirement pension pot is crap. I worked in aerospace for less than 6yrs as a cnc operator and my pension from there is worth 3 times what is in my pot at the moment.
As you are a newbie you wouldn't know that the new recruits who join and climb the ladder to become your boss thingy has been going on since i started so nobody on here needs to ponder on it.

[postslippete]

£14.60 is my hourly rate, with overtime paid at £18.25 per hour (x1.25). Nothing delusional about it — the money has been going into the bank at that rate and I have payslips to boot. It equates to circa £39,248 per annum assuming one rest day each week worked. What is delusional?

As someone pointed out you would have to work more hours than just your day off to earn that amount.


RM have what is known as London weighting for posties and they typically earn more than posties who reside outside of the London area. Believe it or not you actually mentioned that you worked in various offices in London on one of your first posts and now you've just said on this thread that you don't work in London??

What is delusional is that you will be guaranteed all this overtime anyway. RM have been well known to cut back on overtime although at this time of year they are likely to give anything to anyone who wants it! RM obviously won't want to be paying you the higher rate of overtime every week. But the other thing is that working all these hours is really not good for the body year on year and you will burn out sooner rather than later. Maybe it's sustainable to work all these hours in the 'corporate world' in the legal sphere, but not outdoors doing our work.

[SpacePhoenix]

I know that one office in sussex, a big one at that did not deliver one letter on saturday, only parcels .
On the managers sayso

So what?
If you don't have the resources available to deliver everything what do you do?

I bet they delivered Special Delivery letters.

IM sorry but people have paid to have their 1st class letters delivered in a time specified too buy a regulator which is law by the way ,all items paid for should be treated the same or this means they are breaking the law ,now if its said like you do they haven't enough resources then on alternative days all letters should go out and not parcels,royal mail are in breach of the law everyday and should be fined accordingly until as of such time the company stops paying shareholders millions of pounds out of a company which is failing to work within the law.These companies should be brought to book and made an example of ,the water companies too ,the trouble we have is they are all the mates of the Tories.

Packets and Tracked have had priority in MCs for many years. If the packets or Tracked sections are in the s**t, flats and manual letters will get sacrificed to free up enough staff to clear the packets and Tracked

Still illegal to prioritise parcels over letters until government change the law doesn't matter how they dress it up.

Many small packets are technically large letters which are covered by the USO

[Smoothbackground]

Pete, what is the point you’re trying to make there? Until May this year I was indeed working in London offices as agency, because at that time I lived in London, earning £16.58 per hour for doing so. My permanent role with RM, however, is not in a London office. I joined my current DO as agency in June, becoming permanent there in September.

[Smoothbackground]

And sorry to reply piecemeal. Maybe you and others are being deliberately obtuse with the figures. Nine hours of overtime on a rest day equates to £7,884 extra per year. The odd hour here and there of additional overtime makes £40,000 easily attainable.

[Smoothbackground]

Why can’t you accept that it is still a very decent job offering? Does it pain you to do so?

Do you really think you could get away with being so workshy or belligerent or unhelpful anywhere else other than RM? Do you, really, honestly, think they are traits and attitudes in demand by prospective employers? Get real, chum! Can you imagine an Amazon yard marshal allowing you to swear at him over how many totes and oversized you’ve got on a particular day and you refusing to take them out? You’d be booted out there and then, never to return. There is a big, bad world out there, and believe me, RM is a cosy little number in comparison. Go try for it yourself, for at least a year, and then let us resume this debate in a more respectful and meaningful way, not least because you will have come to appreciate, and sorely miss, the benefits of your previous cushty number with RM — just as our “ex Royal Mail” contributor now does (the one who misses it so much that she spends every waking hour on this site, presumably waiting for the time when she can reapply to join RM, as she now sorely regrets ever leaving - you know who I’m talking about )

[postslippete]

Pete, what is the point you’re trying to make there? Until May this year I was indeed working in London offices as agency, because at that time I lived in London, earning £16.58 per hour for doing so. My permanent role with RM, however, is not in a London office. I joined my current DO as agency in June, becoming permanent there in September.

Ok, lets just rewind back to a previous post on this thread

£14.60 is my hourly rate, with overtime paid at £18.25 per hour (x1.25). Nothing delusional about it — the money has been going into the bank at that rate and I have payslips to boot. It equates to circa £39,248 per annum assuming one rest day each week worked. What is delusional?

How are you earning £14.60 an hour if you are a newish to this job?. That’s a London rate, nobody outside will earn that an hour as a newbie.

How are you earning £14.60 an hour (or is it £16.58 an hour?) if you're newish to the job? Because that's more than what many posties on the older contracts are on.

[mwalker88]

As MWalker is belatedly discovering, the grass is definitely not greener on the other side...

Care to elaborate on where you happened to pull that utter nonsense, nay, lies from?

[Smoothbackground]

Pete, £16.58 is the Manpower agency rate for London DOs. £14.60 is the Royal Mail permanent rate for me, somewhere in the South of England – I don’t want to elaborate or be more specific as to location than that, thanks very much.

I will reply separately with figure breakdown from a payslip and see if you can pick that apart too.

[Nickvilla20]

Pete, £16.58 is the Manpower agency rate for London DOs. £14.60 is the Royal Mail permanent rate for me, somewhere in the South of England – I don’t want to elaborate or be more specific as to location than that, thanks very much.

I will reply separately with figure breakdown from a payslip and see if you can pick that apart too.

You’re definitely getting a London weighting allowance in your wage.

London living wage is £13.15 P/H

Agency guy at my place has turned down the offer of a full time job as he would be technically worse off and would have to work every Sunday.

I copied this from a job ad in Epsom


• Pay that’s 10% above the market average in our sector, paid monthly with an hourly rate of £12.29p/hr
• Overtime 1.25x the normal hourly rate
• 22.5 days holiday, rising with length of service (pro-rata)
• Contributory pension scheme
• Lots of opportunity to develop a career
• Full uniform provided if you’re on a contract of longer than three months
• Excellent parental leave policy
• Various discounts including high street vouchers, travel and attraction discounts, and savings on beauty products and gym membership

[Smoothbackground]

So here is October’s payslip:

Basic pay: 173:56 hours, £2535.92
Overtime Premium Oct 2023: 22:35 hours, £411.82
Overtime Premium Sep 2023: 16:20 hours, £297.70
Gross pay: £3245.44
Less tax paid: £439.40
Less Employee NIC: £263.69
Net takehome pay: £2,542.35

Doing some very simple maths, we can see that multiplying the gross pay figure (£3,245.44) by 12 (there are 12 months in a year, unless that has been changed by the CWU) equates to a gross salary of £38,945.28.

Do these figures stack up when subjected to your forensic scrutinyy?

[Valentina@1]

Something not right about this smoothbackground chap
Cant put my finger on it.