Royal Mail prepared to weather strikes for 6 months!

[mailman71]

nopost person can afford not to strike if we lose this then every anti trade union practice will be thrown at us.
we are being protrayed as living in the past and against modernisation when this is lies,crozier only tells half the story yes wehave lost a lot of contracts but we are still delivering everything,tnt,business post the lot.
they must think we are pack mules

[gasandproud]

may i suggest agency work if need be to cover morgage payments ,etc.presuming t blair aint made that illegal.or rm policy dictates u cant do that.

[madelin4]

may i suggest agency work if need be to cover morgage payments ,etc.presuming t blair aint made that illegal.or rm policy dictates u cant do that.

gasandproud, agency work may be necessary if this is to continue, my mortgage has gone up and i dont want to resort to renting my spare room out!!! i am going to job market on wednesday to have a look.. this is awful.. do u think royal mail will offer us full-timers a handshake to buy our contracts to go part-time?? i wud be very happy with that!!!! i know they wanna try and sack as many of us b4 that, i.e. sick records etc and time keeping...

[gasandproud]

i can only comment on my office[and trust me it aint happy and has the usual favourites] believe me i have seen people turn up pissed,stoned as well. and still allowed to go out and deliver in there cars. but the way i see it they are just running the company in to the ground on purpose.[then Gordan can dismantle it ,privatise, then pay off the likes of Leighton and cozier with big fat cheques and take a autocratic stance and say f**k em its business. rent your room do what u gotta do friend.end of the day we r just a number they really dont give a flying f**k about the workforce.

[madelin4]

Cheers.. really, there dont seem to any happy ending here... u never know, we will try to stay positive a wee bit... just think that a lot of those men have been in that job 20 odd years, im 6 years but still young enough to do other things,b4 i want babies..lol... but really a lot of men they dont know anything else because they have done the job so long.. and there is a lot of decent guys working in the place, its a real shame that these a* h* can get away with this!!! we wont let them win!! stay strong...

[F0zziebear]

It's true that some of the senior mgmt want to privatise Royal Mail. However, the government rejected those proposals and rejected the employee share scheme, which is along the lines of John Lewis Partnership.

Privatisation is a long way off as poilitically and emotionally mail is still seen as a form of communication and therefore the USO needs to be maintained, which market forces wouldn't be able to justify if it was in private hands.

One day mail won't be seen as a form of communication anymore and full privatisation will take place. In the mean time it's not in anyone's interests to privatise including the competition as I hjave said on numerous occaisons in here.

The jobs that have gone over recent years arne't just postmen/women but across the business and managerial redundancies have delivered more savings than Single daily Delivery/Mail Centre Review & Transport Review combined. So before people in here start claiming the CWU's communications are the absolute truth think again. Their senior people have their own agenda and it's worth considering that as well.

The future job reductions whilst mainly postal grade are not exclusively. For every postie there are numerous support roles, in anything from payroll to IT support.

Also people going on about management delivering the mail is nonsense as well. Everyone know's that 7000 managers aren't going to deliver 150,000 posties work. They will deliver special deliveries and business mail. You the regular postie whoever you are will have to clear up when you come back. So businesses won't feel the pain, but the average domestic person will. don't you think there would have been an inquiry by now if 7000 people were able to do 150,000 peoples!

Leighton/Crozier and Tom Melvin have nothing to lose. Tom Melvin as past retirement age and if they don't get the backing from the government and have to back down he will take his retirement handshake. Leighton is highly regarded in business and is past caring. The only person who wants to move onto another large role will be Crozier. What about the senior CWU figures? Dave Ward etc... he's been around a while.... what next for him?

some of my old colleagues will be delivering on Friday, but me well..... I won't!

There won't be a happy ending as it's about saving face now. Crozier & Leighton won't get everything they want, and the CWU will have to spin the fact that some of the changes will come in. The question is how much and over what period of time.

F0zz

[norbet colon]

One way or another Geighton is determined to ruin this company. :lfo

That's an old trick run it down, I've seen a trickle of people come back, some had genuine hardships, but a couple of RMT reps were threatened in 96, it's like going back 11 years with these adversarial relations

[Durden]

It's true that some of the senior mgmt want to privatise Royal Mail. However, the government rejected those proposals and rejected the employee share scheme, which is along the lines of John Lewis Partnership.

Privatisation is a long way off as poilitically and emotionally mail is still seen as a form of communication and therefore the USO needs to be maintained, which market forces wouldn't be able to justify if it was in private hands.

One day mail won't be seen as a form of communication anymore and full privatisation will take place. In the mean time it's not in anyone's interests to privatise including the competition as I hjave said on numerous occaisons in here.

The only stumbling block in the way of privatization is the pension deficit. Any company taking over us would be legally bound to clear the deficit.

[BB brother]

Holdfast people !

Dont be spooked !

[cwurep1]

The problem that RM have is the regulator. If they feel that the strike could have been avoided they can seek compensation for all the companies using DSA. If its six months its six months. A lot of propaganda from RM spokes-people but no names. The TUC should urge all unions to pull all funding from the Labour party, as they have been nothing but a disgrace when dealing with trade unions. Lets hope that more and more unions decide that they have had enough of this government and show their discontent. As the late great Bob Marley sang: You can fool some people sometimes But you can't fool all the people all the time.

[F0zziebear]

I saw in the press somehwere that Brown is trying to position Labour so that their funding is not relient on union influence. However, Harman seems to be looking in a different direction.

Royal Mail is unlikely to be bought for a long time. Both TNT and Deutschepost were invited and looked at buying Royal Mail severalk years ago, but neither were interested. Neither would be interested in buying the incumbent in this country unless the company was broken up. That could be a possibility, but collections would have to be seriously rationalised. Deliveries could be privatised or franchised, but again this won't happen for a long time.

Personally RM are rubbish at creating new products that customers want and are restricted by the size of the operation to change it to fit what they want. RM are also dreadful at implementing IT solutions, which is another possibility to help companies see and understand how their campaigns fall to ground and whether they are getting value for money on their return. Private companies implementing new sorting machinery and IT systems are far better placed to bring new products to market and inventive and useful IT data.

RM competitive advantage is it's postmen/women who can reach the whole country. They are also the only company that can seriously offer a next day deliver 1st class mail, but more companies that need next day will either send it by email or by courier and use 2nd class or Downstream Access for other products.

However this competitive advantage is being challenged by improved computer programmes and GPS, which wil help new companies plan routes to the majority of addresses. A posties local knowledge is still the best source of info, but over time this will eroded and then RM are really up against it.

RM's network is designed aorund train stations, and is therefore in many cases in the wrong places, which increases transportation costs, whereas the new companies are basing their operations aorund road hubs in the middle of the country. RM needs to close done about another 40% of it's mail centres and open up larger one storey centres at key junctions across the country.

There has been a lot of nonsnese written on here about products and shows RM's inability to educate it's own staff about it's products.

Anyway there's plenty more that they know they need to do, but I'm working so need to get back to it

F0zz

[jafferpants]

Don't worry about anyone buying royal mail. With a 6 billion pound pension debt no one is going to touch it with a barge pole, and as its government owned they can't turn a blind eye to it either.

[dogfood]

The only stumbling block in the way of privatization is the pension deficit. Any company taking over us would be legally bound to clear the deficit.

That is where the so called government investment is heading... into the pension fund in order to make the company more appealing to the private sector.

[johno47]

Leighton and Crozier know that if they let this dispute drag on there wont be a business left to revive, the CWU and all of us need to put pressure on goverment and our local MPs, these two s**ts are masters at spin and will try to frighten us into submission, youve only got to look at their comments over the last few months, like comparing this to the miners strike, and saying they are prepared for this to go on for months, i dont think the customers will though do you...
UNITY IS STRENGTH.

[norbet colon]

I'm not quite sure about offices being too near to the railway. A propaganda plant on a centre-right bickering forum was talking about opening the railways due to the EEC 56mph limit.
I suspect Brown is building up a defensive flank or a out-flank? against old labour with all these unelected Lib Dems like Paddy Pantsdown.
RM seem to have changed style one article for the Liberal Posh paper & another for the Torygraph. Usually it's the Times or The Rant on Sunday :cfo