Solidarity and Empathy also to our Agency Colleagues

[seesred]

When I was with Angard, my hourly rate of pay was higher than when I was given a Royal Mail contract. It was £13 per hour six years ago, I don't know what it would be now. Angard workers have their own pension scheme. The downside is that you can't pick and choose when to work because the shifts can be few and far between, and the competition for them so intense, that to refuse them makes no sense of you rely on Angard for all or most of your income, and turning down shifts can put you on the wrong side with the agency, cutting your chances of getting anything in the future. Agencies can play favourites, just like mangers do. It was a big source of contention, and you were forver comparing notes with colleagues to figure out who was getting what, and which ones were lying to you.

Would you go back...redlen sugests we are all going to be agency in 10 years or even 5.

It sometimes happened that colleagues who had retired, or left RM for some other reason, would come back with Angard, so it wouldn't surprise me if some got made redundant and then joined the agency. I don't see myself doing that because I've had enough of working for Royal Mail in any capacity. But, outside of the strikes, hours for agency staff have been massively cut at the MC I work at, and I don't see those hours coming back once a deal on pay and terms is reached. The question might be around overtime in the future, and how much the company wants to rely on overtime hours in the future to resource the shifts, because that will determine who they want to keep, and how contracts will look in the future.