The Free Shares Con: Don't Fall For It

[Postworker]

It seems some posties are still being seduced by the prospect of owning a miniscule smidgeon of Royal Mail, even after the farcical rip-off of Colleague Shares. So why not ask them to read this and think about what is going on, and what lies behind all the proaganda and headline-grabbing:

The Free Shares Con: Don’t Fall For It

Free shares are no substitute for a proper rate of basic pay, a decent pension scheme, job security, and high quality terms and conditions. These are all now under threat, whether Royal Mail is privatised or not.

Free Shares: a great deal?

We are told the free shares will be worth around £2000 per full-time employee. But they will be allocated on a ‘pro rata’ basis, so that part-time employees will get fewer shares, proportional to their average weekly paid work hours (including overtime).

The shares cannot be sold immediately. You will have to wait at least three years. As we know all too well from the experience of the Colleague Shares farce, any shares worth £2000 right now might not be worth that in three years’ time.

If you sell your shares after just the minimum three year period, you will have to pay income tax and national insurance. You have to wait a full five years before you could sell the shares without paying any tax.

What are these shares actually worth over this five-year timescale? £2000 is a sizeable chunk of cash, but if you have to wait five years before you can sell the shares, then it cannot really be said that they are worth £2000 right now, can it?

It would be more honest and realistic to say we are getting £400 worth of shares per year. But what does that boil down to? Just £7.69 per week! Less than one hour’s overtime pay!

Put another way, Royal Mail wants to give us shares worth the same as 2% of our basic pay. But we cannot touch them for five years. This shares give-away is a one-time-only bribe. Once you have sold the shares, it is gone. By contrast, a 2% rise in basic pay would continue beyond five years.

What about the prospect of sharing in Royal Mail’s future success in the form of a share dividend each year? On 12th September the Government announced that if the company had already been privatised, Royal Mail would have paid out £200m in dividends this year. This is half of Royal Mail’s annual profit of £400m.

Under the sell-off, Royal Mail employees would get 10% of the shares dividend. This would total £20m. But that £20m would then be divided amongst all 150,000 employees.

If everyone was full-time, then this would mean everyone would get a £133.33 annual dividend pay-out. But what does this work out at per week? Just £2.56 each! Working half an hour of overtime would pay more!

Free Shares: power and influence?

Free shares will give you absolutely zero power over the business. Even if every postman and postwoman share-holder in the country voted the same way, their combined 10% of votes would never be able to outvote the big investors with their 41%, never mind the government with the other 49%. All talk about ‘having a say’ in how ‘the business’ is run through owning a handful of shares is quite simply a con.

In the short term, free shares are a crude attempt to bribe members. In the long term, they are a propaganda gimmick to get people to think more about maximising profit for ‘the business’ and less about fighting for better basic pay.

Continuous cost-cutting to maximise profit will lead to more corner-cutting, pressure to work ever harder, to stop booking overtime, to be more and more ‘flexible’, and to never ‘cut-off’ on delivery.

It will encourage yet more of the bullying and harassment over ‘performance’ that people now see on a too regular basis in delivery offices. What we need is a fair and manageable workload for all, not chasing our tails ever faster to boost profits.

Bluntly, the free shares gimmick is meant to make us think that cuts in the service, job cuts or working for nothing are a good thing, because they all increase profits. Royal Mail and the Government would much rather we look to an end-of year share dividend pay-out rather than fight for a bigger annual pay rise, for instance.

Don’t Keep Calm! Get Angry and Vote ‘Yes’ to strike!

FreeSharesLeaflet_PW_V2.pdf

[Shambles]

100% Correct...remember the last shares?

That old saying springs to mind...

Fool me once, shame on You....Fool me twice, Shame on Me!

It's not just our futures, it's for our kids futures too! If we Don't fight, what will they have left, to fight for?

Camorons and Ossis the bornes, kids etc will be fine and Dandy, our kids will be lucky to get one square meal a day!

POOR OLD PEOPLE WHO FOUGHT A WAR BEING LEFT TO DIE, IN HOSPITALS... makes me so sad

How many food banks are there already? Free School dinners are being implemented on the back of their rotten guilty backsides....Scumbags!

Sorry to rant, apologies if I've offended anyone

[Chelseablue]

Will never trust Royal Mail after stealing £1500 worth of shares off us last time

[daveyp]

Will never trust Royal Mail after stealing £1500 worth of shares off us last time

Are royal mail that stupid that they think we will all forget about the shares fiasco last time. The shares were worth something when they gave them to us and just as we were ready to cash them in they said they were worthless. And then they go and make big profits so how were they worthless. And i have had more propaganda through the door today to vote no. Well i am sorry but i voted yes three days ago. Tough s**t.

[meweavy]

I find it insulting that they can even mention shares to all of us who got duped with the colleague share scheme.
Even when colleague shares though I do think a lot of people thought it was bogus even before we were due to cash them in.
And now we are offered "real shares".
And they expect us to think this is a good deal??

[Brain Fury]

Free shares are no substitute for a proper rate of basic pay, a decent pension scheme, job security, and high quality terms and conditions. These are all now under threat, whether Royal Mail is privatised or not.

I think that's absolutely correct. The free shares are intended to give workers "a stake in the business" or in other words make them think twice about striking in future. I don't think it will work. On the other hand you simply cannot equate the farce of colleague shares and the shares in the business being offered now. I don't see that there is anything to lose by accepting them.

[Son Of God]

Great post Postworker :)

[tonyhendrix]

and the word free shares is very misleading because if you leave before the three years are up you don't get your shares, can you imagine giving a mate a car for free and than two years down the line say you know that car i give you for free ,well i need it back . so in my eyes there not free

[mickeymacca]

and the word free shares is very misleading because if you leave before the three years are up you don't get your shares, can you imagine giving a mate a car for free and than two years down the line say you know that car i give you for free ,well i need it back . so in my eyes there not free

That point completely by-passed me, did n't realise that was the case. What is to stop a continuation of B & H, and a deterioration of t's and c's to drive more posties into finding alternative employment within 3 years? where do their shares go in that case?

[barrowc]

The free shares are intended to give workers "a stake in the business" or in other words make them think twice about striking in future. I don't think it will work

If they really want to get everyone (staff and managers) going in the same direction, don't give us a share of the business - give us a say in how it is run. And I don't mean a Have Your Say survey once a year that ends up getting swept under the carpet.

How much influence on the board will our 10% of shares get us? Zero.

It's obvious that there are going to be changes whether we like them or not due to things like the decline in letter traffic, packet automation etc. The pensions issue isn't going to magically go away either.

Trying to buy us off with a handful of shares is not going to transform the relationship between the workforce and the company. We already have a financial stake in the success of the company - i.e. our jobs

[foxyjarvis]

Has anyone counted the number of times the words 'free shares' highlighted in black are mentioned in the offer document. If you want to know what contempt the Board of Directors have for their workforce, this demeaning and patronising document illustrates it. The shares are not free, you cannot sell them on day 1, you have to wait 3 years(which is the phrase which should be highlighted in black). Why cannot I sell these shares when I want. Instead of being in a position to sell those shares to meet an upcoming financial commitment, someone in need of cash might turn to firms like Wonga and their usury rates of interest.
Moya Greene on her arrival was given a £250,000 perk to buy a house in London. Unfortunately it wasn't free in the way we have been offered free shares, meaning she had to wait 3 years before getting her grasping mitts on it, but fortunately when Vince Cable belatedly found out about it, he made her hand it back. Maybe she's just getting her own back now