Strike threat at Royal Mail/Letter to members.

[NEWS]

Guardian Unlimited and most others

Union leaders today raised the threat of industrial action among tens of thousands of postal workers in a row over pay.

Talks will be held over the next two days between the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union in a bid to avert a dispute.

According to the union, Royal Mail is proposing a freeze on basic pay and officials warned that unless there was a "dramatic change" in the Royal Mail's attitude there was no prospect of a deal being made.

In a letter to its members, the union warned that a "major dispute" was inevitable unless a better offer was made in the next few days.

According to the union, Royal Mail has offered lump sums ranging between £250 and £550 but conditional on the union agreeing new working practices and £350m worth of cuts.

The letter said: "These savings amount to pay reductions and major operational change even before the introduction of new automation."

Engineering administration workers are being offered nothing on basic pay or in lump sums according to the union.

The letter continued: "We are now witnessing Royal Mail stepping up their slash and burn approach, deliberately exploiting competition as a stick to beat down your basic pay and conditions.

"Even if Royal Mail's pay comparisons were true we would still be insisting CWU members deserve more and that pay in Royal Mail should always set the benchmark across the industry."

The union accused Royal Mail of "abandoning" an agreed approach on growing the business and accused the organisation of being panicked into a "cost cutting frenzy" in every workplace.

The letter continued: "Royal Mail are now displaying a defeatist attitude towards competition. The union will continue to reject Royal Mail's short-sighted policies and insist that the company returns to our jointly agreed strategy for dealing with pay and the future.

"Our priority is to reach an agreement but we are left with no alternative other than to also prepare for a national industrial action ballot."

The letter was sent by Deputy General Secretary Dave Ward.

A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: "We are continuing to talk privately to the unions about how to achieve a sensible, fair and affordable deal for our people at a time when we need to pay £730m into our pension fund every year and when our rivals are already handling one mail item in every eight.

"It is no secret that Royal Mail needs to be more efficient both to compete effectively and to allow our people a share in our success.

"We are still just as committed to maintaining our current target-beating levels for our customers."

[POSTMAN]

Got my letter i'm presumeing EVERYONE got one?

[johno47]

GOT MINE APPARANTLY WE ARE OVERPAID AND UNDERWORKED, THATS F*****G RICH COMING FROM 2 BOSSES WHO EARN £500,000 A YEAR FOR WORKING ONE DAY A WEEK, CHEEKY B***ARDS..

[Mr. Auburger]

At WTL (or should I say propaganda sessions ) RM keeps telling us that they are skint....How can they be so skint when we have only lost less than 4% of the mail to the competition, even though we still get paid for the final mile (50% of the cost).

4% ! thats 1/25 th of the mail.....but we have lost 40,000 postmen over the last 3 years---THATS ABOUT 20% (1/5 th of the workforce )---thats 40,000 less wages RM has had to pay---40,000 less pension conts. to pay out------40,000 less NI conts. to pay out....etc.

This, on top of the numerous local / national savings that we have made, BUT HAVEN'T BEEN PAID FOR !

RM are fiddling the figures so that they can push throught the changes our two leaders--HINGE & BRACKET want.....Then they'll leave....with smiles and bags of cash !

JOB DONE !

[L Tommo]

SPOT ON!!! mmmmmmm pass the mustard!! Yeh and onions on mine ta!!

OUT

DONT LET THE CREATIVE BOOKEEPING HOOD WINK US!!!

[de-coded]

All I can say is that they want CWU to agree to no payrises before they annouce there end of year report. Being sceptical they say theres no money at the moment but wouldn't be surprised is they annouce a good profit after pay agreed.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Royal Mail says it is in a tough position and has to be comPetitive as well as efficient. It also denies making comments that Royal Mail workers are overpaid. The propsosed changes put forward by Royal Mail include:

1 Stricter Air Mail deadlines

2 Empty post boxes maximum of twice a day

3 Only process 1st Class mail on Sundays.

4 Scrap all night shifts

5 Get drivers to part-sort some mail

6 Move 2nd Class mail sorting to the most efficient offices

7 Cut number of drivers

8 Lower grade sorting of mail during backlogs

9 No weekend sorting

10 Make drivers more flexible

11 Make drivers sort some business mail

12 Five posties to do work of six in summer

13 End to guaranteed overtime

14 Ditch Sunday and Bank Holiday collections

15 Merge 1st and 2nd Class sorting

16 Move from weekly to monthly pay

17 Three posties to split current work of four on Saturdays

18 Scrap option of extra time off instead of bonus

19 End payments for delivering election leaflets

20 Scrap bonus payments for delivering junk mail < They proably mean D2D , but notice they are now calling it a Bonus payment.>

21 Workers to cover for posties on short-term sick leave

22 Cut time taken off for illness

[POSTMAN]

Some of these are new,where'd you get this from tbt?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Some of these are new,where'd you get this from tbt?

My local rep, who I am trying to get on the board but as Rocky said hes more policitcal than perhaps he should be.

[johno47]

When these two idiots took over RM, the company was loosing money, or so they say, i heard that the CWU was going to show figures that RM was not as in a bad a way as they were making out, and that RM threatened them with legal action if they did. So i dont think they are short of creative bookeepers.
And as for what RM are asking for, thats part of the game, its so that after all the negotiations are over and weve come away with only letting a few of their demands in, we can think that weve won, same old story...