No doubt it will be weeks before it's back to normal though.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7038899.stm

It's a joke...

"Royal Mail says staff should be available to help with other jobs if their work is done - so-called flexible working.

But the union has argued that will lead to staff working rigidly to the rules, which will lead to less work getting done."

Steve

I wish they would hurry up and sort this out I have an elephant to post to Jon Ison

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=487412&in_page_id=1770

Now can someone get them back to work in Merseyside? I won something on ebay over a week ago but with the postal strike the seller hasn't posted it yet! He and I agreed it was likely to go missing if he tried to send it while the strikes were on. Not a problem I thought, but now the posties in Liverpool are having wildcat strikes I'm getting pissed off.

Mike

Imagine if you were in this position - maybe you are; lucky you...

1. You start your 8 hour shift at 06:00 you carry-out your normal duties and are finished by 12:00 i.e. two hours early.
   
2. So, you've got two hours spare. What do you do? I guess most of us would either see the gaffer and say "I'm done, give me something else" or find your mate who's struggling and help him.
   
3. Not Postman Pat - he expects to finish early (possibly every day) and get paid for the two hours that he doesn't work. If he has to stay-on to do other duties or help his mate, that's OVERTIME.
   
4. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME - GET BACK TO WORK AND GET ON WITH IT.
   

Depends on the contract, if you're contracted to do a 'job' and if by finishing early you're rewarded by going home so you do the work quickly - then fair enough.

But it does seem like you're taking the absolute piddle to me. Then again what's to stop people going "I've got 8 hours to do this, I'll do it in 8 hours, why rush?!"

Someone should make a formula for size of round vs number of packages and expect people to take 'x' amount of time. Then again, if you've had someone doing the round for the last 6 months you'd hope it would be pretty easy to know those figures.

British Leyland all over again? Soon there won't be a post office!

It seems that they are paid for a timed shift, but actually work as kind of piece work, where the piece is a round.

Either is fine IMO but not the current nonsense. Working as pure piece work rate would be very hard to get fair (different numbers of houses, distances and number of mail items on each round).

So IMO they should work a timed shift 7.5 hours and do whatever they are asked to do (within reason) during that time - just like the rest of the uk workforce.

Thats what I was saying above... It's a blinking Joke!

Steve

quote:

---

Originally posted by TimC
Imagine if you were in this position - maybe you are; lucky you...

1. You start your 8 hour shift at 06:00 you carry-out your normal duties and are finished by 12:00 i.e. two hours early.
   
2. So, you've got two hours spare. What do you do? I guess most of us would either see the gaffer and say "I'm done, give me something else" or find your mate who's struggling and help him.
   
3. Not Postman Pat - he expects to finish early (possibly every day) and get paid for the two hours that he doesn't work. If he has to stay-on to do other duties or help his mate, that's OVERTIME.
   
4. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME - GET BACK TO WORK AND GET ON WITH IT.
   

---

If you actually read between the lines, what the union is actually saying is:

"our members are lazy, if you dont pay them an incentive to finish early and help elsewhere, they will just take longer on their round so they finish it at clocking off time"

They dont seem to understand that while royal mail still has a partial monopoly, there are competitors out there and they will get stronger. By hurting the company they work for, they are putting their own jobs at risk in the long term.

What incentive do they have?? How many of you take home less than £225 per week, getting uo at 5am including Saturday.
Its less than an incentive also when Mr Crozier and his band of buddies are on Mega salaries with million pound bonuses(and they dont even attend every day!!)
I used to work for them but dont any longer, if you knew the internal politics you wouldnt slag off the average walking postman!!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr Clive
If you actually read between the lines, what the union is actually saying is:

"our members are lazy, if you dont pay them an incentive to finish early and help elsewhere, they will just take longer on their round so they finish it at clocking off time"

They dont seem to understand that while royal mail still has a partial monopoly, there are competitors out there and they will get stronger. By hurting the company they work for, they are putting their own jobs at risk in the long term.

---

quote:

---

"our members are lazy, if you dont pay them an incentive to finish early and help elsewhere, they will just take longer on their round so they finish it at clocking off time"

---

what a wast of time and effort. Dont these plonkers realise they're striking their "industry" out of existance? For communications there are so many more alternatives out there. The only things at the moment that need to go by post are those that need original signatures i.e legal doc's etc, anything else can be sent electronically.
That being said I dont think SHMBO would take kindly to a E-card for her birthday or anniversary