first class disaster

[borders]

First-class disaster
Sunday 23 December 2012 by Louise Raw http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news ... ull/127600" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"WERE there postmen then, too?""With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses On frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully.They were just ordinary postmen, fond of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow..."(Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales)
That, dear reader, is your complimentary helping of festive culture courtesy of the Star - so don't say we never give you nothing.

It's also one of countless, generally affectionate, references to postmen and women in literature down the centuries.

And no wonder that these often have a Christmassy theme - at this time of year, the "postie" is virtually Santa.

We've managed to keep a General Post Office going since 1660, governments' best efforts notwithstanding - Margaret Thatcher's, for example, made a fortune from postal profits in the 1970s and '80s and showed its gratitude by stopping payments to post workers' pensions, leaving a deficit of billions.

But this Christmas, postmen and women predict, could well be their last. The service is speeding towards a potentially disastrous privatisation that could destroy it forever.

Previous attempts to privatise the Mail have failed. But Moya Greene, CEO since 2010, is going full steam ahead.

She has already committed millions to lining up a team of City advisers to broker the deal. I'm sure we can rely on them to put the best interests of workers and customers first...

Greene's CV tells its own story. As assistant deputy minister for transport in Canada she oversaw the privatisation of the national railway and the deregulation of the Canadian airline industry.

She became president and chief executive officer of the Canadian postal service in 2005. Before she left the president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said: "If you compare the four years before Greene with the four years under Greene's management… injuries have gone up 15.4 per cent and grievances have gone up 59.3 per cent."

Justifications for privatisation of the service in Britain were outlined in the 2010 Hooper report.

Four main factors were detailed - falling mail volumes due to competition from electronic media, the inefficiency of Royal Mail compared with its competitors, the need for modernisation to counteract this and the pensions deficit.

However, while letter-mail volume has undoubtedly fallen parcel post has in fact increased with online shopping - taking revenue up by 13 per cent.

Group operating profits have also massively improved - £144 million from March to September compared with £12m in the same period in 2011.

As for modernisation, Royal Mail's approach to this has been eccentric to say the least - scrapping bikes and bringing in unwieldy golf trolleys, for example.

But it seems privatisation will not only go ahead but emulate a model which has become a European laughing stock.

Sources tell me that Greene is keen to follow the example of privatisation in the Netherlands. Unfortunately this is generally agreed to have been a catastrophe - and Holland's postal woes have become front-page news across the country.

The Dutch state-owned postal service went private in 1989. Six years later, the state had sold 55 per cent of its shares in the new company, currently known as TNT, shedding its majority holding.

Since privatisation around 90 per cent of the country's post offices have closed. The magnificent, architecturally celebrated 19th-century post office in Amsterdam is now the Magna Plaza shopping mall.

Dutch post boxes are emptied only once a day - it's still up to three times in this country - and complaints about unreliability and missing mail are widespread.

In a letter to workers TNT recently admitted: "As a company we are not in a position to deliver the post on time, particularly on Saturday and Monday."

Competition, that great god of our own beloved government, was supposed to lead to better services.

Instead, new firms are paying workers below the minimum wage to compete with TNT, hitting the company's profits and leading to further staffing cuts.

Gerard van Os, a postman for 37 years, told Radio Netherlands: "I'm 57 years old. Our company has an ageing workforce. These older workers won't stand a chance in the labour market, and there is no alternative."

Back in Britain four postal workers with nearly 90 years' work experience between them were concerned enough to talk to me at their busiest time of year about the chaos behind the scenes at Royal Mail.

They all spoke about a toxic work environment, impossible targets, and workers under pressure from intimidation by management so severe it was akin to psychological warfare.

Carl has worked for the Mail on and off since the 1980s.

Married with two children, he is a "walking man" - a postman with a regular beat, customers he knows well and a store of local knowledge.

A cheerful, funny man, he says he's "realistic" about the economic pressures the Royal Mail is under.

But he also admits he now "lives" for his days off and struggles not to become depressed, as he has seen happen to colleagues, by the work overload and uncertainty.

"Some people just hate it now, every minute. I don't want to be like that - I don't want to let them make me bitter, because your kids will see it."

He has seen the job change beyond recognition - and with it the attitude of managers to staff.

Since 2002 an astonishing 50,000 jobs have been shed in a constant, ongoing process.

"What they (management) will do is, if five jobs need to go in one area they take away 10.

"Then they sit back and see what you're going to do about it and who will sweat even harder to cover the extra.

"Once it's caused enough chaos and the whole service is going under they put back two jobs and say 'you see, we listen to staff concerns.'

"With the job losses and cutbacks it's an impossible job now. You have a round you know you can't possibly complete even if you don't stop for a second. People are buckling under the strain.

"The new tier of managers are straight from uni and don't know what the work is like. To be fair they must be under pressure from the top, but they seem to despise us. The old-school ones came up through the ranks so they'd done your job. They were tough on you but there was respect on both sides.

"Now the atmosphere is toxic - threats, rumours, verbal abuse. They treat you like you're nothing.

"I heard of one postie who went for a management job. He was experienced and well-liked but he was told he didn't get it specifically because he was 'too sympathetic to the workforce.'

"We sometimes think: 'Have they been told not to get on with us? Is it part of driving us out?' They'll say to your face that they'd be happy to see the back of you, especially those of us who are on older contracts when the terms were better."

The Communication Workers' Union (CWU) has announced plans for a wide-scale survey on bullying and harassment from next month.

Sue, with 31 years' experience, is not surprised.

"I heard they call it 'management by fear.' It sometimes feels like a kind of psychological warfare being aimed at you - and why? You're just trying to do your job."

Both the huge scale of job losses and the introductions of unworkable new systems have piled on additional pressure.

The Pegasus computer programme has been making posties' lives a misery since its introduction in 2005.

It calculates exactly how long each worker's "walk" should take, which was once done by the ludicrously old-fashioned method of actually walking it.

The flaws of Pegasus were apparent even before it was introduced, but introduced it was.

Sue says: "I was one of those who trialed Pegasus. I had to do a walk which the machine said took three hours and 12 minutes.

"I honestly walked it as fast as I could and it took four hours 15. Everyone who did the trials said the same - it's getting it wrong, and not in our favour, it's going to be a nightmare. And here we are seven years later.

"A postie who usually did six streets now might have eight or nine and no more time to do them.

"The way addresses are divvied up now might make sense to a computer but not a real person - you might find yourself finishing a walk right next to another load of addresses you could do in minutes, but you can't because they've been tacked on the end of someone else's walk, streets away. My five-year old grandson could tell you it's daft, but you're stuck with it.

"So you know from the minute you get into work you're not going to be able to get all your post out. It's depressing.

"Posties who start work at 6am are supposed to finish by 2.30pm, but it's often nearer 5pm and at Christmas it could be seven o'clock."

I heard from several sources that many workers don't eat for the whole of their working day in their desperation to get finished.

"You start at 6am, going through your mechanically sorted mail for your route," says Sue.

"You put it in your frame to get ready for your walk and you might try to eat with one hand while you're doing that.

"Our canteen's long gone and if you even grab a coffee they'll stop you 20 minutes for it even if you drink it on the go.

"Managers are threatening us that they're going to ban eating while you work next, but you never know if they mean it. They're always threatening this and that and it's obvious they do it just to keep everybody anxious and uncertain.

"So you've got this enormous mountain of post. We used to take photos on our mobiles and send them to each other - competing on who had the most impossible workload. Now they've banned us doing that.

"Because they've got rid of all the night-sorting staff, you can't even get out and get on with it because you have to do their job too, and stop to help with the regular sorting. That takes as long as it takes - it could be more than two hours - so you feel edgy, knowing it's more time out of your walk.

"Then you have to go to your manager and tell them how much you reckon you'll be bringing back. They know you can't do anything about it but they don't like it and you hear people arguing. It's humiliating - you feel like a naughty schoolkid."

Once out on the streets most post workers still enjoy the freedom and community feel of the job.

They might work the same streets for years and get to know their customers well.

Jim is 41 and has worked for the Mail for 15 years. He tells me: "The public are great - on the whole they appreciate you and they see how hard you work."

Postmen and women's invaluable local knowledge and presence on the street have actually saved numerous lives in the last year alone.

Postman Eugene Whelan in Bexleyheath heard the screams of a mother whose baby had apparently drowned in the bath. Whelan cleared the child's airways and called an ambulance. The baby was saved. As soon as Whelan knew that, he carried on with his round.

Priya Ponton of Gravesend heard a fire alarm from a block of flats while on her round and although she was already worried about running late that day went to investigate.

Hearing screams, she found an elderly man in a wheelchair stuck in a burning flat, rescued him and evacuated the block.

Mike Izzard was delivering in Hertfordshire when he noticed an elderly customer's curtains had caught fire and saved the situation by dragging the blazing material outside.

The list of stories like this go on and on. Royal Mail, not surprisingly, loves them and trumpets them on its website.

This is not to say that all postal workers are superheroes, and nor would they want me to portray them as such.

But everyone I spoke to took obvious pride in their work and seemed genuinely puzzled by management hostility.

As one postal worker wrote in an open letter to the media: "Working for Royal Mail has become a bewildering experience.

"Depot managers pressure and harass us to comply to rigidly fixed unworkable schedules. They insist we take out full loads of mail which they know and we know cannot be delivered in the allotted time.

"We therefore constantly bring back the undelivered surplus and waste time the following day getting it ready to take out again.

"Meanwhile the depot managers can report the walk as cleared to their superiors, who are obviously putting them under pressure too.

"It's evident that some depot managers are just as unhappy with this state of affairs. Their orders are to push out as much mail every day as possible, regardless of the amount that comes back at the end of each shift."

At 30, Sam has been in the job 10 years.

Despite being one of the younger workers I spoke to and in good health he tells me he's all but given up trying to have a life outside work.

"I used to go and see bands all the time, or just out with my mates.

"Now I don't go out even at weekends - it's not worth it. You can't afford to be tired on duty because if you make a mistake, put a foot wrong, you could be sacked.

"After my shift I just come straight home and I'm strict with myself - I allow myself a bit of TV and maybe an hour on the computer, do some housework, eat and go to bed early every night. It's the only way you can cope with the next day.

"You have to work your socks off all day, every day or you could be next for the chop.

"Even if you just ask for what you're entitled to, like overtime and meal breaks, the managers have a go at you. They have to let you have it, but your card is marked."

Sue confirms: "People are scared and on edge the whole time. They change the rules all the time so suddenly something that was OK for 30 years now isn't. Your head is spinning with what you can do and what you can't, and everyone's worried about messing up and getting the boot."

Has all this set staff at each other's throats?

"We still mostly get on and try to look out for each other. But management seem to just hate you now.

"My manager told me: 'I don't want to hear you moaning, you're only a postie' when I went to him with a problem. That's nothing to the way I've heard other people spoken to, guys that have been there 40 years.

"We don't know why. We work hard and most of us care a lot about doing a good job despite everything.

"A colleague of mine worked with us for 39 years. When he left the manager didn't even shake his hand or say goodbye.

"It broke him - he left two years ago and he's still upset. He wasn't after a gold watch, just a thank you.

"We're working our guts out. Your partners get fed up too. They're used to you working funny hours but now you're too tired to do stuff at home like you used to.

"More and more people come in early on their own time, maybe an hour or more every day, they're so desperate to get through their post and keep their jobs.

"The union (the CWU) says you shouldn't do that and I agree, but I understand it.

"You get new people who had posh jobs and lost them in the recession. They were on huge salaries before, so you assume they must have worked hard, but they come back from one shift and they're in a state.

"You feel sorry for them - one bloke was white as a sheet and he said to me: 'I just had no idea. I don't know how you do it'."

None of the workers I spoke to held out hope that privatisation would be averted or minimised.

Sam says: "It's too big a payday for the big boys in the City, isn't it? The government's friends are the kind of people who will benefit so why would they stop it?

"Our jobs are as good as gone. There won't be any more regular posties on the beat. We'll be pushed out, or - best-case scenario - into part-time jobs sorting or something. That's not what we joined for."

The service is already awash with part time and agency workers, none of whom can join the union. Sue tells me that agencies are paid around £12 an hour while the workers get half of that.

Moya Greene's basic salary is around £500,000.

But before you think about having a whip-round for her, she also received a bonus of £371,000 last year, plus "benefits" of £38,000 including two return first-class flights to her home country of Canada each year, a company car, private medical insurance and financial advice.

Greene also gets a £200,000 pension payment, when the workers' pension fund deficit sits at around £9 billion.

She did not reply to my requests for comment.

So, happy holidays to postmen and women everywhere.

We can only hope that a Christmas miracle - or at least some concerted political action - sees you still on the beat this time next year.

•Readers can write to their MP about Royal Mail privatisation and contact Moya Greene at moya.greene@royalmail.com
•Louise Raw is the author of Striking a Light: the Bryant & May Matchwomen (Continuum Press), and director of the forthcoming Matchwomen's Festival on Saturday July 6 2013. Visit http://www.matchwomensfestival.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; or http://www.facebook.com/Matchwomen" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

[borders]

makes you sick reading that. deliveries seem a nightmare these days.

[fishtank]

makes you sick reading that.

It's a difficult read for us because we know it's true.
It should be even more difficult for Dave,Bob and the rest at CWU HQ,i certainly hope it is.
It should be impossible for managers at every level in Royal Mail to read without feeling deep embarrassment and shame but i somehow doubt it.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

A frighteningly honest article that should be read by everyone.

[Tman]

Sunday 23 December 2012 by Louise Raw http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news ... ull/127600" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- so don't say we never give you nothing.

Good old Morning Star. Not only garbage, but badly-written garbage. You know things are really bleak when the Chelsea Comrades start writing articles in support.

[fishtank]

Not only garbage, but badly-written garbage.

Exactly what part of it is garbage?
Bearing in mind most of the article deals with delivery issues,an area in which you have absolutely no first hand experience it might be wise not to step too far out of your comfort zone...but feel free to jump right in if you wish.

[Tman]

What, you're saying only delivery office staff can voice an opinion on the Morning Star, now?

[DGP1]

What, you're saying only delivery office staff can voice an opinion on the Morning Star, now?

Yep, especially when you're attacking a story about delivery staff...........of course, being an engineer you only have to talk to the machines.

[Tman]

Actually I was criticising the Morning Star as a whole rather than this article specifically, but you're right about the machines though. Relatively simple they may be, but they still think more logically than many RM staff..

Fair enough I suppose, they do have to work and think much harder than many RM staff, too.

[DGP1]

Actually I was criticising the Morning Star as a whole rather than this article specifically, but you're right about the machines though. Relatively simple they may be, but they still think more logically than many RM staff..

Fair enough I suppose, they do have to work and think much harder than many RM staff, too.

As a manager once told me...........I'm not paid to think, just to walk and read

[coolasluck]

Not only garbage, but badly-written garbage.

Exactly what part of it is garbage?
Bearing in mind most of the article deals with delivery issues,an area in which you have absolutely no first hand experience it might be wise not to step too far out of your comfort zone...but feel free to jump right in if you wish.

Merry xmas tman or should i say moya
I wonder what the T stands for

[fishtank]

Your personal opinion of the Morning Star is noted Tman although a little off topic and banal.
Did you find this particular piece "not only garbage, but badly-written garbage" or was it an exception to your generalisation?

[TheCobra]

Excellent article, basically the truth laid out bare, which you don't get to read a lot of the time anymore.

It's comforting to read about the tiredness thing, as I also have many days/weeks where I am so shattered by the job that I can actually do little else, other than go to work, go home, rest, eat, sleep and go again.

My social life has absolutely gone out of the window since I got this job a year ago, it takes a lot away from people in terms of quality of life in your free time.

So it's always annoying to hear the general public on those odd nice sunny days saying "Oooh I wish I had your job" - I'm always like, "Erm, no you don't, NO honestly you DON'T!!"

[borders]

Actually I was criticising the Morning Star as a whole rather than this article specifically, but you're right about the machines though. Relatively simple they may be, but they still think more logically than many RM staff..

Fair enough I suppose, they do have to work and think much harder than many RM staff, too.

who gives a toss who wrote the article if the content is largely correct. i dont work in deliveries at present just like your good self, but i have done so when i first started and it is easily the hardest physical work in Royal Mail. you cant even offer some sympathy to your fellow workers, rather choosing to play on words - same old , same old ......

[mojothefishmo]

The only way we can fight back on the issues in this article as true as it is ,is too do your job properly and kick any problems back to your manager ,it will get you bullying and harassment but try to stay strong and involve your union
And i can honestly see in some cases management being physically attacked for the way they talk and treat some members of staff its disgraceful