Limp or lame

[woofwoof]

Limp&lame.jpg

[Wolf91]

Yeah he’s very limp no doubt can’t get it up a complete brown-nosing bed-wetter. f**k right off, look in the mirror, look at the amount management get paid for doing predominantly next to nothing most days, most offices don’t even realise when the manager isn’t there, it works better without them frankly. Think about that before insulting your staff, lazy bastard.

[Flashman_]

Who is this limp dick anyway?

[ted_e_bear]

Presumably the article by Adam Scott whoever he is shown in this post is some sort of wind up

[Woody Guthrie]

What Adam fails to mention is that the biggest problem with taking any member to task over anything is a lack of consistency by those very managers.

They let their favourites, friends and in some cases family off with everything so as a rep I'm not going to stand by and allow them to apply a different set of standards to one group of people and not to another, piss taker or not.

As for the rest of it, not that it happens much these days but in the past managers allowed reps to allocate overtime in some offices out of sheer laziness, nothing else.

Basically man up Adam, COMs are getting paid over £40k pa so dry your eyes and start earning it...

[TopperGas]

So we've now moved on from a pay dispute/the change we need to attacks on the CWU, if that was the real issue then why wasn't that mentioned at the start of the dispute?

[einastronaut]

He's not really wrong though, is he. I'm sure most here would admit that their own office has a few staff who can't (and/or won't) do the job, so much so that they're willfully breaking the terms of their employment - refusing to abide by the conditions and expectations delineated in the contract they signed when they joined. Yet, because they've invariably become paying union members, the Union will defend them harder and longer than RM have the resources to devote to it. So, in the end, they stay; on preferential treatment; quietly warehoused on duties they don't have the seniority for because they "like" that duty but not any other; having other people pick up the work they refuse to do; and take 8 months off sick every 24 months in contrived illnesses that so conveniently always align with Christmas or the summer holidays. That's not to say the Union is to blame for exercising that power, given that they have it, but the fact that they have it is very probably overreach and it's clearly obstructive to the business. It allows dead wood to linger longer than they've a right to, burdening their office, and collectively, the business. Trade unions aren't there to keep the idle in jobs. They're there to make sure workers get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and to stand up for the rights of the employee. If an employee doesn't want to do the job but simply milk their employer while hiding behind the union, then they haven't earned those same rights to protection from dismissal. Our Union rep says his ethos with regards to work is to simply "get paid the most for doing the least" and thinks everyone else should think the same, yet they then expect the company to perform well enough to generate the generous salaries they seem to feel entitled to, without being willing to contribute in any way to generating the prosperity that will pay for them. Ultimately, in business, someone has to do the work, else no-one gets paid. If the whole company worked on that mentality, the company would fail to compete, lose its market, and simply go under. That reality seems at times to be lost on some.

[BigSacks]

He's not really wrong though, is he. I'm sure most here would admit that their own office has a few staff who can't (and/or won't) do the job, so much so that they're willfully breaking the terms of their employment - refusing to abide by the conditions and expectations delineated in the contract they signed when they joined. Yet, because they've invariably become paying union members, the Union will defend them harder and longer than RM have the resources to devote to it. So, in the end, they stay; on preferential treatment; quietly warehoused on duties they don't have the seniority for because they "like" that duty but not any other; having other people pick up the work they refuse to do; and take 8 months off sick every 24 months in contrived illnesses that so conveniently always align with Christmas or the summer holidays. That's not to say the Union is to blame for exercising that power, given that they have it, but the fact that they have it is very probably overreach and it's clearly obstructive to the business. It allows dead wood to linger longer than they've a right to, burdening their office, and collectively, the business. Trade unions aren't there to keep the idle in jobs. They're there to make sure workers get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and to stand up for the rights of the employee. If an employee doesn't want to do the job but simply milk their employer while hiding behind the union, then they haven't earned those same rights to protection from dismissal. Our Union rep says his ethos with regards to work is to simply "get paid the most for doing the least" and thinks everyone else should think the same, yet they then expect the company to perform well enough to generate the generous salaries they seem to feel entitled to, without being willing to contribute in any way to generating the prosperity that will pay for them. Ultimately, in business, someone has to do the work, else no-one gets paid. If the whole company worked on that mentality, the company would fail to compete, lose its market, and simply go under. That reality seems at times to be lost on some.

I’ve never had a day sick when I wasn’t genuinely ill.

I represent the company well and always strive to do well for my customers.

I do countless things on an annual basis through goodwill like helping out if someone has had an accident.


Yet your whole diatribe there will conclude that the business will be correct next year in ensuring any possible second illness absence will mean I get paid £98.
98 f***ing quid mate.
You have bought into and fell for their bollocks hook, line and sinker.

I AM THE MAJORITY of this workforce. 115000 people and the vast, vast, VAST number of them do what I do above.
Are good employees.
Who work harder in a more physically demanding job than most in this entire country.

And are going to get shafted by a load of greedy, self-serving w*****s who will fill their pockets and walk off into the sunset.
And believe me, they won’t give one second thought to you.

So don’t do their pathetic lying propaganda dirty work for them

[Woody Guthrie]

He's not really wrong though, is he

Yes he is.

By his own admission it's "5%" of the members.
That means that 95% of the members are again in his own words "superb".

If you walked into any large employer they would probably say exactly the same.

What they probably wouldn't do is use that 5% of employees as an excuse for poor management and an attack on the terms and conditions of the 95% of "superb" employees because they're smart enough to know that it's better to have 95% superb employees than 100% pissed off employees who no longer feel any motivation to be "superb".

Dumb as a box of rocks.

[Dorset Plodder]

He's not really wrong though, is he.

I can see what you're getting at. We all know some colleagues that take the Piss BIG Time.

I think we need to remember there's over a 1000 Delivery Offices out there and RM employ nearly 120,000 people. There's bound to be a few problems across the Business, be that Shirkers, Malingerers, Bullying Managers or Useless Lazy Union Reps.

Simple Simon's proposals may make some sense, in some aspects, but what I'd worry about is: It's the thin edge of the wedge. IF we'd agreeded it would be opening the door to sweeping changes. It would go from Performance Managing those Guilty Shirkers & Malingerers out of the Business to simply Performance Managing someone out of the Business because the DOM doesn't like him, or he's upset him! I DON'T TRUST THEM!

Please put a few spaces in next time it's difficult to read posts like that. Cheers.

[HTPostman]

There are a few shirkers here, out of about 170 staff there’s 5 I can name who are constantly walking around, have endless fag/coffee breaks, have had Covid about 8 times.

But we also have 6 COMS. Only 2 of them are actually able to manage situations, react to problems and plan the rota adequately, actually deal with annual leave and handle customer complaints.

Of the other 4 COMS, 2 are resigned to just picking up empty trays (seriously), one just walks round looking lost and any kind of question or problem you ask and he stares into space, shrugs his shoulders and says ‘I don’t know.’ And the remaining 1 tries to play the bad cop role but it really doesn’t suit her and people largely ignore her. Only the first 2 COMS stay past midday, apart from Saturday when only 1 is there when you get back.

We had one day last year when 5 of those COMS were off with Covid and we just had a tray stacking COM in, things ran like a dream.

I know what area of the business needs performance managing, and it’s not the foot soldiers.

[einastronaut]

I’ve never had a day sick when I wasn’t genuinely ill.

I represent the company well and always strive to do well for my customers.

I do countless things on an annual basis through goodwill like helping out if someone has had an accident.


Yet your whole diatribe there will conclude that the business will be correct next year in ensuring any possible second illness absence will mean I get paid £98.
98 f***ing quid mate.
You have bought into and fell for their bollocks hook, line and sinker.

I AM THE MAJORITY of this workforce. 115000 people and the vast, vast, VAST number of them do what I do above.
Are good employees.
Who work harder in a more physically demanding job than most in this entire country.

And are going to get shafted by a load of greedy, self-serving w*****s who will fill their pockets and walk off into the sunset.
And believe me, they won’t give one second thought to you.

So don’t do their pathetic lying propaganda dirty work for them

You seem to have concluded something from what I wrote which isn't there. I don't support an attack on sick pay. There simply has to be scope for the company to remove people who take advantage of that generous sick pay (and other provisions), because they're the ones who are about to ruin it for the the rest of us. If they're not ill, they should be working. If they don't want to work, they shouldn't be employed. It's fairly simple and no less egalitarian. Why should the rest of the employee base carry the load for those who don't want to carry themselves.

Yes, mission creep and thin end the wedge type arguments make sense, and I would hope some happy compromise could be found where everyone else could enjoy the same level of protections, but something needs to be done about the 5-10% who make a career of exploiting the company on which all our paychecks depend.

I'm no friend of RM management. But I'm also fairly unimpressed with the Union stance on all this. Certain things need to change, and regardless of IA, ultimately WILL change. Later start times and sunday working seem a done deal from the company's perspective. If not now, then next year, or soon thereafter. And if not with union consent, by edict and executive action. Ultimately it's the company's prerogative to make strategic decisions. The Union can ameliorate the damage but not block it completely. Making concessions on those to two things in order to secure a significant inflation-linked pay rise, while batting away the other attacks on our T&C's seems to me the best way for the Union to use the (finite) mandate it currently has. It cannot go on pretending like it'll win a huge pay rise while conceding nothing; that Royal Mail will simply plod along in much the same way that it did 50 years ago, even though the market and the consumer demand for products has changed. It's an unrealistic ask. Even less realistic (and probably even undesirable) is the Union executive pestering Labour to renationalize the business. That's never going to happen, and why would they want it? Public sector pay trails private sector pay by a huge margin. The public sector has had decades of real terms pay cuts. Why would they think renationalized postal workers would jump the queue above doctors and nurses and teachers? Just postal staff would get the generous pay rises under state ownership would they?

On the other side, Royal Mail are patronizing, condescending, incompetent and corrupt. They paid out to everyone but the staff last year when times were good, then turn around and plead poverty this year. That doesn't fly. The strikes are justified, but the union need to be using the strong mandate they have now before the membership starts to lose faith in getting a positive outcome. If it looks like no progress is being made, which it seemingly isn't, then people will start crossing the picket line. They've already started at our office and that snowball will only build and the Union's mandate will only weaken. The union need to be signaling that they're willing to make concessions in order to get around the table and negotiate the best deal. Refusing to talk to each other really isn't a solution. I know it's a glib and not so nuanced comparison, but the miners striked themselves out of a job. Striking is used best to strengthen a hand when you're already negotiating to get the best possible deal over the line. But not so much when no one's even willing to negotiate. The indifference from the company makes it clear that they're resolved to starve the workforce out if they don't get the core of what they want. Just my two cents.

[Woody Guthrie]

something needs to be done about the 5-10%

In my experience no matter what system is used to go after this 5% they will simply adapt to fit and abuse it.

Therefore what you've actually achieved is worsening terms for the other 95% which will anger some of them enough to join the 5%.

I think it's called quiet quitting now.

[Dorset Plodder]

something needs to be done about the 5-10%

In my experience no matter what system is used to go after this 5% they will simply adapt to fit and abuse it.

Therefore what you've actually achieved is worsening terms for the other 95% which will anger some of them enough to join the 5%.

I think it's called quiet quitting now.

I agree WG.

It's definitely the "Thin End of the Wedge" .... and I know were RM want to stick it!

[jagger]

Definitely far more than 5% in my office.