R2OK!

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

The High Court has blocked official strike action planned by the postal workers' union for Monday and Tuesday.

The Royal Mail was granted an injunction to stop Communication Workers' Union members at sorting and delivery offices from striking.

Royal Mail argued that the union had not given accurate figures for the number of staff affected by the strike, a legal requirement.

The union insisted the strike was legitimate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7038899.stm

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This is what it has to come too?

firewirefred · Guest

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

Briant · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:22 am Post subject:

Mark, you are always good for a laugh! The one delivery 'job and finish' policy was something that Royal Mail and the CWU both agreed upon to sell the idea to the staff. Now the Royal Mail wish to renege on this agreement, hence the propaganda wars.
Using agency workers is the economics of the madhouse, and yet Royal Mail persists in the practice instead of employing full trained staff. No wonder mail is often 'dumped'. The next day the regular staff have to deal not only with that day's mail, but the previous day's too.

gfloyd · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:47 am Post subject:

firewirefred · Guest

Briant · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject:

Here in the real world ernie, that is known as a 'perk'. You know, like bosses having two hour 'liquid lunches' to discuss their golf handicap. Rolling Eyes

iwarburton · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 2133 Location: Northumberland

So it looks as if the strike may be on the way out. I know the draft deal still has to be accepted by the membership but the prospects of this happening seem to be getting talked up.

But, thinking back to the injunction granted yesterday, I do ask if management by court action is the way to conduct industrial relations.

Ian.

gfloyd · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:04 pm Post subject:

Briant · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject:

ernie, it is very obvious that you are a conservative thinker and think that workers should be kept in their place. Some of us aim for a fairer society.

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

gfloyd · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 6:25 pm Post subject:

Briant · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 7:40 pm Post subject:

ernie, I hope you read the comments attached to the article you highlighted for me. The fact is that the Royal Mail is being readied for privatisation with 'shares' for the workers which they do not want and as seen with all the other Thatcherite ideas they end up in the hands of the big institutions anyway. The staff are being asked to make up for the fifteen year hiatus that Royal Mail took from the pension fund (staff still paid in) by working another five years to obtain the same pension as now. By the way, I get a state pension and my PO pension. They are added together and I pay tax accordingly. When I joined back in the sixties, I worked up to eighteen hours a day and also Sundays (six hours) as there was no mechanisation and all the work was done by hand. The flat week wage was so poor that the FIS (Family Income Supplement) was eventually introduced. So the Brave New World you talk about is probably not as tough as the one I spent my working life in.

firewirefred · Guest

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

gfloyd · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 8:27 pm Post subject:

Briant · Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:17 am Post subject:

Hello ernie. There is no real competition for the Royal Mail on the letters side. All that has happened is that the business mail is collected and processed by others and then is delivered by the Royal Mail. The Government took £300M each year when we were making a profit before a penny was paid in wages to the staff. So the workers were subsidising their own industry with low pay and paying for the mechanisation that followed. Now that there are some increases in the cost of posting letters, profitability is likely to return, though the service has been reduced to one delivery a day.

Remember the Elvis song 'Why can't every day be like Christmas?' Well go to a major sorting office and see the postie going out laden like a donkey and with more bags waiting en route for him to deliver and then say these people don't work hard.