Ex employee piece in The Guardian today

[Smoothbackground]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ling-apart

[ted_e_bear]

Haha enjoyed reading that, no surprises regarding the stuff we all know, I like his sense of humour.

Oh yeah noticed the Yorkie full of old uniform, presumably from all the folk who've left

[BenacreNick]

I don't really think the general public actually realise what our day involves, so hopefully many readers will now understand things a little better.

I think doing some Christmas shifts as a casual is also an eye-opener for the general public as well.

[R5001]

Just a shame how few will read it, they'll just complain on twitter and never investigate.

[Ozzvaldo]

That isn't my office, but it doesn't half sound like it. RM's propaganda/lies department are going to have their work cut out dealing with this if it manages to gain traction.

[WalkerX]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ling-apart

Thank you Gareth Roberts

[ANDREW CROCOMBE]

Goodbye Davey Ward - here's the new head of cwu , talking straight and telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Print that in every newspaper (RM will pay £thousands to stop it) The imagination of the job versus the reality. to the Guardian.

[postslippete]

The irony of the article is that working for Royal Mail used to be a relatively stress free job! There was always plenty of time to complete deliveries and posties rarely ever used to employ the "over-running procedure". Outdoor rounds that used to be three and half hours long ten years ago are now five and half hours plus and the biggest reason for this are larger walks and the explosion of parcels. Anyone who remembers when daily parcels used to fit into one grey sack rather than nearly 2 full Yorks of packets will know this. Park and loop was one of the worst ideas that RM came up with. They would have been better off keeping the bikes and bag boxes and employing more dedicated parcel drivers to handle the larger stuff. I'm sure it would have saved RM more money in the long run as they wouldn't need as many vans on the road spewing out carbon emissions.

[Mr Rush]

The irony of the article is that working for Royal Mail used to be a relatively stress free job! There was always plenty of time to complete deliveries and posties rarely ever used to employ the "over-running procedure". Outdoor rounds that used to be three and half hours long ten years ago are now five and half hours plus and the biggest reason for this are larger walks and the explosion of parcels. Anyone who remembers when daily parcels used to fit into one grey sack rather than nearly 2 full Yorks of packets will know this. Park and loop was one of the worst ideas that RM came up with. They would have been better off keeping the bikes and bag boxes and employing more dedicated parcel drivers to handle the larger stuff. I'm sure it would have saved RM more money in the long run as they wouldn't need as many vans on the road spewing out carbon emissions.

Devil's Advocate here: P&L was rolled out in full co-operation with the union and made sense at the time. Dedicated parcel drivers would have introduced a two-tier workforce a decade in advance of what we have now. One way or the other, with indoor time being eliminated the walks had to get longer and four or more hours on the street purely on foot was neither practical to the company nor acceptable to the union.

Supposedly supposedly there's recognition that the walks just can't keep getting longer and longer until they occupy the entirity of a full time shift. Walks being returned to pre-P&L duration and practices would of course mean trying to make ends meet on PT wages. Then again, the company might find itself better poised to clear offices if plenty of willing/desperate OPGs aren't knackered every single day.

[postslippete]

Devil's Advocate here: P&L was rolled out in full co-operation with the union and made sense at the time. Dedicated parcel drivers would have introduced a two-tier workforce a decade in advance of what we have now. One way or the other, with indoor time being eliminated the walks had to get longer and four or more hours on the street purely on foot was neither practical to the company nor acceptable to the union.

Supposedly supposedly there's recognition that the walks just can't keep getting longer and longer until they occupy the entirity of a full time shift. Walks being returned to pre-P&L duration and practices would of course mean trying to make ends meet on PT wages. Then again, the company might find itself better poised to clear offices if plenty of willing/desperate OPGs aren't knackered every single day.

Royal Mail have always wanted a part-time workforce but many of them have been working full-time for years so something clearly isn’t working? The company have trialled all sorts of methods to reduce our indoor workload yet we are still putting sequenced mech and D2Ds into sequenced frames and there often isn’t the indoor time to do all of this and complete the outdoor spans. It’s Royal Mail’s wet dream that our mail will just arrive in one wave and only a few letters to be bundled in with it thereby doing away with frames somehow.

But there seems to be a strong element that RM are trying to run before they can walk with some of their proposals as COMs from orders above seem to be deliberately failing duties on a daily basis and telling posties to just deliver the parcels on set days and then expect them to come in early on overtime to try and clear 2 days worth of mail. On Saturday, for example, at least a dozen walks in our office 'failed'. I don’t think it is ever Royal Mail’s intention to have a clear office in the long run. The business has created a model that is heavily reliant on delivering parcels over letters and because it all needs to be delivered anyway, that is the reason why most OPGs are knackered every single day.

[SpacePhoenix]

It’s Royal Mail’s wet dream that our mail will just arrive in one wave

For mech letters, I think it'll likely happen by the end of the year. Since the 2C extract started to be done on the inward sort plans, the size of the wave 2 batches has dropped by over half. I occasionally get batches now where I'm running less than 100 items.