POLL:Would you strike against privatisation?

[Martin Walsh]

Well Daf tell me what you lost other than pay when you were on strike and how it was the fault of the CWU rather than Royal Mail ?

[Eric]

I'd strike against DSA tomorrow but not privatisation.

[DAF85]

Well Daf tell me what you lost other than pay when you were on strike and how it was the fault of the CWU rather than Royal Mail ?

edit: not worth discussing with you really Dingo, lets just say that you may be the mutts nuts for representing your members in your area and getting them a good deal locally but that is nowhere near the picture across all of the country which is why there are so many disgruntled CWU members at present. There is far too much "Local Agreement" going on and not enough National Agreement. It does appear at times we work for totally different companies and are represented by different unions.

[bitterpill]

well said daf i agree whole heartedly

[AnotherLimey]

Well Daf tell me what you lost other than pay when you were on strike and how it was the fault of the CWU rather than Royal Mail ?

edit: not worth discussing with you really Dingo, lets just say that you may be the mutts nuts for representing your members in your area and getting them a good deal locally but that is nowhere near the picture across all of the country which is why there are so many disgruntled CWU members at present. There is far too much "Local Agreement" going on and not enough National Agreement. It does appear at times we work for totally different companies and are represented by different unions.

Spot on mate, although any fault will because you are weak unlike London, weak i tell you!!

[DAF85]

Spot on mate, although any fault will because you are weak unlike London, weak i tell you!!

Yep and this is why London Drivers crossed our picket lines with a "letter from their union rep" (probably written by Dingo stating that as it was our local disagreement then they could cross......) ?
yep weak like London - sell your NATIONAL colleagues out ?

I stood every day on our picket lines only to see my terms and conditions eroded by "Union members" because at the time it was not a national strike even though when I went into London (and other places) and did not cross their picket lines and was stopped a days pay because of it......... yep - CWU one rule for some............ I would like to say though = many thanks to the North West drivers that did the same as me and did not cross our picket line and also lost their days pay - cheers guys some of us know what National Union means.

edit : and this is why some London drivers did not even slow down or stop at the picket line and in fact sped up so endangering those on the picket line. And before anyone responds that we should not have been in the way all lawful conditions for picketing were met as enforced by the plethora of managers and Police around at the time.

[DAF85]

well said daf i agree whole heartedly

Thank you bitterpill that is appreciated

[Martin Walsh]

Hold up DAF the London VOC drivers employed at Thurrock , PRDC , Greenford and Nine Elms were out on 20 days strike action and sometimes were out with the rest of London rather than all the other VOC workers and vice versa so it was not a case that they were not on strike it was the case that they did not want to cross picket line in London by being out on strike on a different day.

Where ever possible we attempted to arrange the strikes with out VOCs who were taking action. However as you know some VOCs choose not to ballot.

Now there were just as many of your members with letters crossing our lines. Now in terms of people doing our work when we were on strike well they diverted work out to loads of different mail centres and we have a list of those mail centres and shame on some of them doing our work on overtime whilst we were out on strike fighting to stop Royal Mail plans to impose their business plan.

Now you complain that you want less local agreements but how do you do this , we have 1500 delivery units and SPDOs , we have 63 mail centres , we have 12 RDCs and we have over 20 vocs.

So you want a national agreement which details all these offices revisons , resigns , levels of jobs, earnings , how you deal with surplus, start times , attendance patterns , and a whole range of other issues. Well tell me how would you do that as if the union suddenly said that everyone has to start at 7 or 6 there would be up roar or had to have a fixed level of part timers or earnings , or job losses.


It might be popular to say that there should be no local agreements as some get better deals than others but the alternative would be for CWU HQs to stanardise all offices without knowing the actual information within each office which would be plan stupid. Thats why the detail needs to worked up by the people working in the offices as they know the details best rather than the union agreeing the duty set for all offices in the UK.

[pickaname]

The union is close to dead. People need to get their head out of their arses and realise this.

For example:

Once RM is privatised the CWU will cease to hold any real sway over the direction of the business.

The Postal service will be carved up into smaller pieces making it impossible for 120,000 workers to strike in unison.

Its no good reps like dingo coming on here and spouting mantra about an agreement that is over a year old and still not implemented in the majority of the country.

For the record d2d into workload has made the quality of the product poorer. Now if a postman cant get thenitems delivered due to time contraints, the product is left whereas before someone would deliver them as there was a payment.

[dvbuk55]

Well as you know I am not one to support the CWU but the non delivery of D2D is a management problem not a union one. You are of course quite right to say that they would have been delivered for a payment and still could if RM was prepared to make deliveries a reasonable size. The payment would not of course be for D2D directly but would fund more deliveries and more staff................which I am sure was the original intention with putting them into workload but the best laid plans of mice and men.....................

[DAF85]

Now there were just as many of your members with letters crossing our lines. Now in terms of people doing our work when we were on strike well they diverted work out to loads of different mail centres and we have a list of those mail centres and shame on some of them doing our work on overtime whilst we were out on strike fighting to stop Royal Mail plans to impose their business plan.

No, there was no letter issued by our branch to wave at a picket line of fellow CWU members. We were astonished that other branches would even consider using such a sham. Either support the CWU or do not. The majority of our drivers either refused a run to a striking depot or turned around at their gate, same as the majority of NW drivers did for us.

If you care to re-read my previous post you will see I said

"There is far too much "Local Agreement" going on and not enough National Agreement. It does appear at times we work for totally different companies and are represented by different unions."

Of course local agreements are needed in some circumstances but there should not be any disparity where a local agreement in force in one area is prohibited in another which is the case now.

CWU HQs to stanardise all offices without knowing the actual information within each office which would be plan stupid. Thats why the detail needs to worked up by the people working in the offices as they know the details best rather than the union agreeing the duty set for all offices in the UK.

Is it not the job of CWU HQ to be the ones who KNOW the information for each office after all they are the NATIONAL HQ. Sure, duty sets need local input for the detail but as we have at present, duty content has been assigned to offices that should in no way be covering that content. Rather than have a National agreement where every office is covered by the same terms, conditions and rules which they can then tweak with local agreement, what you seem to be advocating is the many small offices should make their own agreements and rules then pass that up to their collective areas who then pass it up to National level -which is why we have such disparity between offices. Now that is just plain stupid

[Spedley]

That looks like 2/3rds against striking which is almost a total swing from previous industrial action.

[jack straw]

What a depressing, defeatest attitude you have. Faint heart never won anything!

You obviously haven't been a postman long have you? If you had, you'd know how many times we've been left high and dry, and out of pocket by striking.
The CWU aren't a proper union anymore. They are working hand in hand with management. That isn't what unions were set up for. These two bozos are particularly useless, believe me.

[Cut Off King]

Norwich dont worry Daf is just another postman who lives in denial that door to door would have continue to be delievered by a stint payment where quality was ppoor , and that indivuduals could choose to deliver not only their own walk but a number of others in the office. A system where Royal Mail could not grow the product and where they often paid out in certain areas more than they recieved as if yo failed to deliver the product you not only paid for the companys printing and any call centre in some cases lack of profit they were due.

Royal Mail made it very clear it would be included in workload and the cap would be lifted. They also started from a postion that they would withdraw from the previous national agreement and not pay anything for the delivery of door to door as they pay you a basic wage to deliver mail and providing you could deliver within the hours of your contract then you would recieve no extra money.

The union knew Door to Door was not popular. In the most complained about product from Postman to CWU HQs was prior to the National Agreement was that postman did not want to deliver Door to Door at all regardless of the remuneration.

However sometimes a union has to show leadership and door to door is a growing product and once in workload will help in mantaining hours within an office. The union than sercured the full money for door to door with a review clause when the product grows. This resulted in the £20.60 which is contrary to some on here a permenant addition to basic pay. It is paid 52 weeks per year when your on leave and sick leave ( something door to door never was ) and will increase in line with pay rises.

Some say well it is not pensionable well there are two reasons for this one is including it in pensionable would obviously mean that the money you recieve will decrease as you have to pay part contributions and secondly the pension defcit risk.

However in the past we have had UPAP which was a unconsolidated permenant addtion to pay and staying our wages for over 10 years before being put into basic pensionable pay as a part of the way forward.

Now in terms of the unfairness to part timers well once you put it into a basic pay ( unpensionable ) then you have a hourly rate and a part time worker is paid that hourly rate up to his condtioned hours. If you then do not pay pro rata you will have part timers on a higher hourly rate than full timers which would cause just as many arguements.

So some of you need to stop living in some fantasy island where you believe it is the union`s fault that Royal Mail have a bussiness plan which meant the union had to deal with this plan. Of course the union did not want to but a union has to weigh up the employers aims and then get the best deal they could and then put that deal to the members for them to have their say. Sometimes this followed a long dispute in places like London , Bristol , Plymouth and some areas in Scotland which led to the national dispute and then the interim deal and then the full deal which was than backed by the members who voted.

All of the above may ( or may not ) be true, but the simple fact is that the average union member feels that the last agreement that the CWU negotiated has left them personally worse off

Take home pay has gone DOWN
Workload has gone UP

[Big Daz]

When members go out on strike the expect HQ to get them a bloddy good deal as they are being asked to lose wages.

Therefore expectations CWU mbrs have of CWU HQ are increased.

Losing 2 days wages and ending up with less money and more DTD is not what CWU mbrs expected. Enough of the basic pay increase should have been frontloaded into year one to eradicate loss of earnings. As it is somembrs have to wait untill April 2011 or even 2012 to get back to previous earning levels. Some are not DTD barons but simply had a high number of calls and had high paying DTDs on a regular basis. Barons would have been a small minority in terms of voting numbers, so all talk of them should be eradicated at once.