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In view of the fact that many now communicate via the internet, or ue faster and better parcel delivery firms, are postal workers setting themselve up to receive their P45's ?

Surely with The Royal Mail losing £ 1M per day (memory quote here), the company must modernise, or die. Time was when I could get my post before I left for work - now itarrives after I get home at lunch time.

Is this the sort of service we pay 37p a stamp for?

Novo

I'm not impressed. I ordered some jeans on Monday, giving them plenty of time to arrive before I go out on Friday night. Now there's no chance of me getting them in time.

A lot of the problem is that the CWU wishes it was representing miners in the 80s... the solution to everything that doesn't go their way is 'strike!'

However, things are not quite as simple as Auntie would have us beleive... did you know, for example, that even with the competition around nowadays the Royal Mail is the *only* service that is answerable to the industry regulator?

And don't even start complaining about spending 37p on a stamp. That 37p will get a letter anywhere from down the road to John O' Groats. How many other mailing companies offer that?

You ordered your jeans? To be honest I'd be more worried about the very real chance they won't fit!

With my inside leg I have two choices, pay 50 quid in town, or pay 20 quid online and take that chance!

Anyway, back to the postal strike...

Well to be fair when it works it works well. I've ordered stuff from Amazon in the afternoon and it's arrived next morning and I live a rather remote part of GB. I also agree that the competition doesn't come anywhere near universal delivery.

But, I've watched a pretty incompetent managment not manage change while awarding themselves big salaries and bonuses and unfortunately the result is a massive shot to both feet. It's time Leighton and particularly Crozier walked.

Morning all,

I actually agree that when it works as it should it works well. Also that 37p is not a huge price. But it often doesn't work. I need another eye op and my optometrist wrote to the specialist unit the day of the examination. I waited for an appointment, gave it two weeks, rung hospital - never received the letter. Optometrist faxed it. Bloody site cheaper than 37p and 'instant'

That is between two establishments 6 miles apart. I could have walked with the first letter!

That is my beef. In important (eye damage) situations, the Mail is unreliable. That is what the management and unions should be sorting out otherwise fax and email will take over small item delivery.

I thought we had got past the age when the Bowmakers Union wanted to keep making bows after everyone else had a flintlock pistol.

Novo

I don't know... I tend to find that letters that go missing in the post tend to be ones from organisations who are less than efficient themselves or from people for whom it is somehow convenient for the letter to have gone missing. What are the odds?

The coverage of the strike is interesting, and rather one-sided. The BBC article says that the strike is about pay and job cuts. But a lot of media outlets (including BBC radio this morning) said it was about 'pay and modernisation'. This 'modernisation' is a strange, loaded word - for who could be against modernisation? Actually, what it means is job cuts and changes to working patterns and organisation, which may or may not be necessary. But the details are never revealed, and the plans are generally uncritically called 'modernisation' and therefore you'd have to be a dinosaur to oppose it. It's management-correctness gone made, I tell you.

“Surely with The Royal Mail losing £ 1M per day (memory quote here), the company must modernise, or die.”

Firstly we are not losing 1 million a day and we never were. That was a “three card trick” blatantly false accounting to make things look worse than they were in order to show a remarkable management led turn around. The year in which Allan Leighton claimed we were losing a million a day the Royal Mail paid up front for a three year redundancy package.

But yes absolutely we must modernise and change no CWU reps are saying otherwise. What we are saying is Royal Mails plans are setting up a demonstrably false dichotomy. Either this plan happens in full and this way or Royal Mail goes bust. Absolute balderdash. There a different ways to modernise and the best way to do it is to come to a negotiated solution in which you take the workforce with you.

The best example is that something like 65% of the savings RM want to make are coming from the proposal to move to monthly pay. Now how exactly does that in any way affect how we sort mail and our competitiveness? It doesn’t and is just a lie it is about profiteering pure and simple. And as a CWU rep I don’t in principle have a problem with that insofar as it is up front and we do a deal on it.

“A lot of the problem is that the CWU wishes it was representing miners in the 80s... the solution to everything that doesn't go their way is 'strike!'”

One national strike in 10 years would beg to differ. There is a huge culture of management bolshness which goes a long way to causing this. My side ain always whiter than white I know that, but in truth the Lord Sawyer report into industrial Relations at Royal Mail found most problems were cause by management using “executive action” in the first instances and not attempting a negotiated settlement.

“That is what the management and unions should be sorting out otherwise fax and email will take over small item delivery.”

The problem Novo though is delivering mail on this basis is un-economic. Before Royal Mail had to compete with other companies we had something called “The Cross Subsidy”. Basically what that meant was that the profitable mail subsidsed things like your eye appointment and rural post offices. Postcomms changes have allowed our competitors to cherry pick the good bits of our business whilst whilst having none of our public service obligations.

In truth that is really what this strike is actually about, it really isn’t about pay at all. The question is what type of Post Office do we want. As a country do we want a Post Office with public service at its heart, or is it just another company that exists solely to make a profit and pay a dividend. What we are fighting is a proposed change to deliver mail even later and to stop collecting on Sundays.

The real truth is if you value the 37p service and daily deliveries and you want to get the Royal Mail back to where it is then you ought to be getting behind my colleagues not castigating them. Because if Royal Mail management gets its way then all Royal Mail will do is offer profitable services, everything else will be dropped.

How odd, just listened to this on the radio, and at the same time heard a pile of mail come through the letterbox

I think the important thing to bear in mind is that my jeans have been delivered. Thanks posties!

Having implemented big, complex payroll systems the move to monthly pay makes lots of sense. Having to process weekly payrolls restricts the ammount of time you have available for system maintenance. Big complicated payrolls need big chunky computing grunt and they need maintaining. Also, and this could be a sore point, a good coputerised payroll system provides lots of good management information. It shines torches into long forgotten dark corners. Never popular. <\informed aside>

Lots of mail order companies are changing delivery methods to what they consider a more reliable service. Unfortunately even if people do support Royal Mail, if they depend on reliable post for their business, a strike is only going to encourage them to move to alternative services.

Things must be difficult for Royal Mail with all the available alternatives competeing, but not on equal terms (like when BT lost their telephone monopoly).

I'm really anxious about all these proposed post office closures. I want to use my PO, but too many services are being taken away from them.

As I said ealier Royal Mail takes some beating when it works well. I ordered something for a friend's birthday on-line, on Saturday, 2-3 working days delivery. If it had come by Royal Mail I'm pretty sure it would be here. Still waiting for the Courier to deliver.

There was an article on today's Radio 4, You and Yours. A sub post office is being closed because it is too successful. The Post Masters salary depends on turnover and because he has lots of old and infirm customers who can't make the one mile journey to the main post office they will shut him down because he earns too much. Ludicrous when we are trying to extend the independence of the elderley to take the strain off health and social services.

Don't mention centralisation or funding or targets or Treasury or local accountabilty <\sealed lips>

I know for the organisation monthly pay makes sense. My division of the business is already salaried and on monthly pay.

But the point is all it does is save money, it does not actuually change the way our operation works and the management are just lying. The union for example will happily do a deal on monthly pay providing a proportion of the permanant savings flow through into basic pay. Surely that is not unreasonable

I would imagine the tatic would be a one off payment or some help over say six months to let people adjust to monthly pay. I don't see why cost savings stemming from a change of or improvement in management process should go to the employees. Where's the rational in that?

Assuming you mean any of the employees, including management etc, then I agree.

Who else should the savings go to? We don't have shareholders. Why on earth should we accept changes to our terms and conditions we odnt want and feel are less favourable?

If you want your workforce to accept change the best way is to incetivise them to want the change.

Have the workers improved their productivity, do they work in worse conditions, longer hours? Surely there has to be some reason for paying them more, rather than just 'Hey lads there's more money in the pot because monthly pay costs less to process so we'll have it'

I would imagine with increased competiton increased investment in machinery would be needed. Or do you go cap in hand to the tax payer. If you just fund it out of the cost of stamps you risk pricing yourself out of the market.

"Have the workers improved their productivity,"

Yes - you said so you yourself - monthly payroll is more efficient. Unless it's some magical fairy that is going to be running the monthly payroll, and not workers?