Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
So the CWU appear to have offered to provide a full update today. Let's get the popcorn ready!
This week I've spoken to 5 different Royal Mail staff across various deliveries/collections via our business and I can say with certainty that their spirit has been shattered. These same people less than a month ago were willing to go to war but now they just want it all to be over. The thing these people have going for them is they know they've not succeeded and they're willing to accept that and move on. The true problem is those who either do not accept they've been defeated or cannot move on. Those are the people who will continue to bring down the majority.
The CWU announced their post on twitter yesterday and many of the 'supporters' responses are telling - "time to look for another job." - The public couldn't agree more!
Another supporter wrote "Hope it's good news coz your members are fed up"
A third wrote "How many 10s of thousands of compulsory redundancies?"
A fourth writes "That doesn't soon too hopeful"
And a fifth "That's it lads and lasses. I think we are done."
A sixth "Don't get conned into putting out a meaningless joint statement like the one at the start of November. That turned out to be a waste of everyones time."
A seventh "So apart from losing 18 days pay, annoying your CUSTOMERS, whats been achieved"
An eighth "Ten jobs are gone from our office and three deliveries are being permanently lapsed starting Monday. We gave it a good go but it's the end as we know it."
A ninth "Where’s the strike fund? Also, how do I stop my weekly payment to the CWU?"
A tenth "Think we've been patient for too long nothing has changed since the 1st strike date just wages slips showing how much we've lost 4 nothing , but suppose your not bothered as you'll be getting full pay, not sure why I pay £2.60 a week now"
An eleventh "I really hope there's some good news from the cwu, but I just feel that its game over. Now that rishi is bringing in anti strike laws..they are the law makers and make laws to suit themselves. We're doomed ??"
A twelfth "Looks like the CWU have folded.
One of the most ill thought through pieces of industrial action in modern history.
Feel so sorry for normal posties.
Public opinion turned, lost wages, booming competition all created by their own union.
Heads should roll at the CWU…"
A thirteenth writes "Changes are being made regardless. They are happening now. Feels like we have lost a lot of money for nothing. My strike days are over."
A fourteenth "I think you’ve inflicted huge damage. Management will introduce redundancies this year because of your actions!"
This is just a small selection of many more comments of this nature from previous supporters of CWU action (evident from many of the historical posts of these users). The CWU have rumbled and have nothing left to fire. RM staff are losing money and rightly questioning why they've done this. Now is the time for change
@OliGarch - The public knew about strikes in advance. We don't disagree on that part. The point is, what did you expect them to do? If they order from a website that says standard delivery then do you think the customer is really going to go to the effort of trying to ensure it gets sent via another service. If you order something online a couple of weeks before you need it, you really expect to receive it no matter the circumstances or courier being used. The public are mostly fine with delays when in moderation. The problem is tracked 48 items taking 2-3 weeks. Large Letters taking 3-4 weeks. Is this reasonable for items that would normally take 2-4 days on average outside of strikes? Could customers expect to be aware that scattered days of strikes would add such a substantial delay to their deliveries? Like I said, delays were expected but it's the extent of the delays that are the issue.
Large Letter services - Yes, any courier will deliver a large letter sized item however again this is not the point. It's the cost they charge in doing so. Royal Mail charge less than £1 for doing so. Amazon don't offer that as part of an independent contract, neither does any other courier so which courier is it you think offers large letter rates? Amazon technically offer large letter rates as part of their FBA pricing but they have a variety of other fees that mean it's not actually Large Letter rates. If you wanted to fulfil an order placed outside of Amazon then you'd be subject to completely different rates and quickly find that Large Letter rates are not competed against by any other courier.
Regarding letters, Royal Mail have the monopoly on this and it's so low margin when scaled that any courier trying to compete would likely be loss incurring for some time plus potentially never be profitable as Royal Mail wouldn't exactly stop offering the service so the competition would be significant. You can't really blame other couriers for not challenging a declining segment of the market that's not known for profitability.
"our CEO is keen to remind us that RM UK is now a parcels business "
- I'm not sure you could make such a bold statement but they state to send more parcels than letters now. That doesn't exclusively make them a parcels business though. There are less obligations with letters/large letters (such as unable to claim for loss etc.). Although I don't agree with prioritising parcels, I can see the business case for doing so.
"who waits in for a letter anyway these days as we have email and social media "
- Who hasn't received a letter in the past week/month/year? We all still get them and probably will for quite some time. Admittedly in less volumes but they've got a long way to go before being extinct. This also overlooks large letters. Large letters are often used in the supply of goods. This size of mail is going absolutely nowhere and will continue to be a well used service that is currently exclusive to Royal Mail.
@Oligarch
So your suggestion is that nobody should have used Royal Mail as strikes were in place for some days across the months?
What would your suggestion be to those who use letter and large letter services? Are there economic alternatives available from the other courier services you mention? I'll save you the time searching as the answer is no, there's not. Further to this, many consumers don't have the option of selecting the courier. It's simply the standard option chosen by the business. Small businesses also can't just change couriers for a day or even a week. They also might not meet volume requirements or have appropriate systems in place. Different couriers have different software requirements and therefore training required. Do you think small businesses have the time and capabilities of doing all of this during their busiest quarter of the year. Then there's the issue of being aware of the impact. How can the average person know the scale of the delays which will be caused by a strike day here and there? The general public and even small businesses are largely in the dark about the impact of this. Hindsight is a great thing if you have a time machine but impractical and short sighted suggestions are permanently useless.
Have you also considered the delays from Royal Mail strikes impacting the other couriers you mention?
It's incredibly naive to think the UK can just avoid using the countries biggest courier and it would have no knock on effect in either delays or cost.
Let's hope these wonderful people who striked through greed are handled accordingly in the New Year. We all know the balance of power shifts back to Royal Mail as soon as we reach Christmas Day :)
@Wolvesposty - You sound absolutely brainwashed and deluded!
"its the CEO thats made your family member wait for their item not the posties that want a fair playing ground"
- No, let's call a spade a spade here. The CEO didn't request strikes or stop paying you. The CWU and it's members decided with greed that they want more money and if they don't get it, they'll strike to hurt the business and it's customers. Why should the business or it's customers care about these people who've taken such action? The CWU and it's members who voted for the strike action caused the backlog. Regardless if you think it was justifiable or not, that's what happened.
"3 years ago terry pullinger said he would rather smash the company into bits.... i absolutely disagreed with him then..... now i am tempted to agree with him"
- You try to sound decent but you say you're tempted to smash the company to pieces just because you didn't get what you want? What about the non-striking staff that have livelihoods and families to provide for. Are they unimportant to your quest for getting more money?
"my office is not miitlant"
- You've done a horrendous job of trying to prove that point. Ask yourself though, is it possible you're too far buried in your own bubble that you don't realise how you come across to those less emotionally attached than you. Have you considered that you might be in the wrong and not realise it? Have you considered things from the perspective of a different side than your own? This is extremely biased thinking.
"enough is enough to the top brass of the companies that get the profits from the workforce that produce them"
That's how investment works. You get an income for your labour and the investor gets either a return on investment or the consequences of a loss. Are you willing to fairly financially contribute to the £1 million loss per day?
"but me i have a conscious. maybe you do maybe you dont"
- So your conscience is to smash the company to pieces and put tens of thousands of people that didn't strike out of jobs at Christmas? I think you're deluded about what a conscience is. Not to mention the many CWU members that have been on strike but clearly still want to keep their jobs regardless of the outcome. Let's not forget those people as the number of them has grown massively upon failure of the CWU strike action to achieve the demands set out.
"bomber do not think for one minute our resolve is broken"
- Your resolve might not be broken (yet) however why don't you do the talking with your feet and leave the job? You're unhappy and clearly quite bitter towards your employer now. Why not do the best thing for you and everyone else and leave the job to work elsewhere? Is it perhaps the case that your job is not actually that bad and only greed and the belief of getting more money drove you to strike? Let's not keep singing the same song about how you're 'trying to save the service'. Nobody believes that rhetoric (if
@Angersharkz
"By ‘spirit’ do you mean the extremely disruptive belligerence and refusal to turn up to work unless the company pays them profits generated by not only itself but by another company at every given opportunity?
Some would argue a case for breaking that ‘spirit’"
I couldn't agree more with this statement! The workforce demanding a share of profits (which technically haven't been generated by the business they work for) whilst overlooking the risk and capital investment that's occurred from shareholders. Shareholders of a business invest capital for the purpose of generating further profits but they realise losses can also be incurred. These 115,000 CWU members seem to think they can invest nothing, take profits from another related business, get paid for their time regardless if the company is profitable or not and to top it off, harm the business through strike action if their demands aren't met.
The reality is that all these members could buy shares of IDS if they truly want to become investors in the business which their demands give the impression of them wanting to be. Well actually, it sounds like they want only the benefits of being an investor with absolutely no risk which is a case of CWU members living in cloud cuckoo land!
@Maximas1 - Looks like CWU have finally caved. Obviously not the way CWU will present it but they've essentially issued a letter saying CWU are available at the click of a finger to RM if they wish to negotiate further. Just say the magic words and we'll call off the strike action.
There's no harm for RM to enter into further negotiations regardless of their success. Perhaps RM staff and the CWU have started to realise the focus of the British Public's frustration has started to fall on the RM employees and the CWU.
Hopefully the CWU will stop their aggressive negotiation tactics which ultimately have only added fuel to the fire thus far.
@OliGarch
I'd say your metaphor is much too simplistic. Of course over time inflation historically only goes in one direction however recent inflation has been triggered by a combination of freak events and is at a much higher than usual rate. The odds are highly in favour of this current peak rate of inflation dropping.
One of the biggest reasons we're seeing so much strike action across a variety of industries is due to the current rate of inflation being so high but also the likelihood that it will reverse a significant portion of it's movement. I think most people realise it will come back down but are trying to negotiate a permanent pay rise off the back of a shorter term event. Employers understandably are unwilling to agree as various indications point to a reduction in inflation (when compared over the past 24 months).
In respect to increased costs for businesses, there are many ways of targeting this and it tends not to be a single method of approach. Price increases would be the most obvious and simplistic method but not necessarily the most utilized approach. Finding efficiencies, increasing productivity, investing in technology/software/equipment and cutting costs has been just as effective for many industries as increasing costs has been for others. There's no 'one size fits all' approach for all businesses but I think it's fairly obvious that Royal Mail are on a long term path to upgrade it's operations.
An important point to summarise is that increased costs are not necessarily a permanent event. Businesses are unlikely to commit to long term liabilities on the basis of short term events.
@Oligarch
"Would their stance on strike action make any difference to your viewpoint if they were still publicly owned?"
Absolutely! State owned organisations are often unprofitable and run quite differently to private companies. There's a variety of differences that makes it more justifiable (still not a great case for a low skilled job like a post man/woman) with a state owned organisation.
"The posties have their existing terms, which the employer wants to drastically change and reduce."
Like it or not, RM has competitors and these largely incorporate automation, gig economy labour and larger contractors. The landscape has also changed for delivery services where it has become a 7 day service. A company shouldn't be considered as unreasonable by it's employees simply as it wants to adapt. Would you rather the company failed before it adapted or adapted before failure? It has a falling market share and it's competitors are growing. Would you rather the competition achieved such a scale that Royal Mail no longer had such a USP?
"The recent VR exercise was oversubscribed."
Have you considered that VR is considered 'free money'? Many RM employees understand that they're low skilled workers which means they're not really sacrificing a great deal to have their contracts mutually terminated. It's also very easy for people at this level to find new roles in other companies. At this pay level, employees don't even need to be doing the same job as there are countless jobs out there which would pay a similar level and employees are not sacrificing a career or significant qualifications. There are also many couriers out there where a similar role could be identified if an individual truly wanted to stay in the same industry.
There are Royal Mail workers out there who even with statutory redundancy this is comfortably a 5 figure sum so to make this even higher with a redundancy package is potentially the true reason why the number of people 'willing to take the extra money' is so high. If you change the conditions into a higher skilled profession with much higher entry requirements (such as a degree) then I've no doubt the numbers would stack up a lot differently. It's easy to manipulate circumstances but using your comments on a third of posties being unhappy, then why don't they move onto a new employer? I've no doubt Royal Mail could replace a third of their posties and put people who are happier to work for the company into place so it's surely a win/win for everyone?
Deflective - But Amazon workers are another joke for strike action. It's 1 warehouse from what I last read (around 300 employees). They were offered 5% but basically wanted in the regions of 50% pay increase which is ridiculous. I think it goes without saying the workers won't win this one either :). Warehouse workers carrying out basic pick and pack duties will have a long way to go before they reach £15 hourly pay.
@Broch - People understand the disruption. The point you fail to see is that we do not agree with it. Your precious posties have went too far and disrupted people too greatly to the point where support is crashing. It never fails to surprise me that posties think they can impact the public with a dispute they have with the employer and somehow the public will support them. All you've managed to do is alienate a huge amount of people. And that list of people with a gripe is about to get a whole lot bigger as soon as people start realising they're not getting something they ordered online in time for Christmas.
Everyone agrees that RM is a valuable service to have and it clearly has the infrastructure to remain the most dominant courier in the UK for a long time but that doesn't come without challenge. That's not the issue here though is it. The staff of Royal Mail who are striking, are trying to hijack Christmas from the British public in their quest to get paid more money from their employer. That's the part that now has us all focusing our frustration at our 'local postie'.
I wonder if the local postie has any care or consideration towards the damage they've caused to businesses this year?
So at face value we have our 'local postie' striking excessively to disrupt all our lives to the greatest extent they're able to with the least amount of effort (from their perspective). In short, this means they've identified the busiest days of the year for postal services and strategically implemented strikes so they hit the public the hardest, with the fewest amount of strikes so it costs the posties less money to do so.
We as the general public are supposed to be thankful that they'll stop the UK's biggest courier from becoming more efficient and operating the way many other couriers already operate successfully. That certainly takes a moment to pause and reflect on. Who's really playing the game of manipulation here? Doesn't efficiency and increased productivity reduce costs thereby making the business more competitive and eventually reduce costs for customers? Perhaps we should just ban email as it suits these workers better to send letters rather than emails?
We all understand strike action is intended to be disruptive but to what scale can this be considered acceptable and disruptive to who? The posties have their dispute with their employer but the British public and small businesses alike have been hammered. For what purpose? So the CWU and RM staff can get more money and have contractual terms that do not require them to adapt with the industry they're working in. Why do customers deserve to be hit so badly for the dispute the posties have with their employer? More importantly, why don't these posties go and find a new job if they're so unhappy with their salary and terms of employment?
To add insult to injury, the posties want to blame their employer as their employer won't agree to the employees terms. Can you imagine the anarchy if the rest of the world took such a view on what their employer paid them? The mentality of "I want more so I'm going to hurt your business if you don't give me it". We'd have riots and economic meltdown in a matter of days but the posties want us all to sit back and "support your local postie". Perhaps our local postie should support the rest of us. We don't mind strikes when carried out in moderation. Have 2 strikes a month for the next 20 years if you like but ask yourselves, is it justified for employees of a private company and the UK's largest courier to disrupt the British public during the highest trading period of the year? A key event in most of our lives where we like to spend time with our families and share gifts with our loved ones where we can. This is being disrupted by your local postie who wants more money and does not want to adapt alongside the industry they're working within.
Royal Mail employees are employees of a private company and your dispute is with your employer. Not the British public or it's businesses but sadly you've dragged us into your dispute and tried to leverage us all as part of your greed. Let's hope the local postie reaps what they sow!
@DerekRocholl
I only said perishable so where did you get chilled items from?
RM clearly offer their services for perishable items as shown below (valid from April 2022):
https://www.royalmail.com/sites/royalmail.com/files/2022-04/royal-mail-prohibited-and-restricted-items-april-2022.pdf
"you deserve to lose business to your more reputable competitors"
So you mean to say that customers using a service exactly for what it's advertised for deserve to lose business simply as they chose Royal Mail?
What a poor attitude you have. For the avoidance of doubt, not all perishable items are chilled. Although if you check the above, you'll see RM advise (Including flowers, fresh fruit, vegetables and frozen or chilled foodstuffs).
It sounds like you might be a bit out of touch with what's permitted.
@OliGarch - HaHa!
We sell a variety of goods but thankfully nothing perishable. As to how time critical, that's almost a loaded question as most customers want everything yesterday regardless of which service they select. Upto 3 business days from dispatch is typical customer expectation for a standard delivery item (tracked 48). Thankfully we utilise Amazon FBA a lot so it's helped avoid a lot of the issues here but there are segments of our mail which are unavoidable to become caught up with RM.
We do have the ability to use other carriers but what is the point when they're hit just as hard as many other customers are doing the same thing? At one point Evri timescales exceeded RM. You can't disrupt the biggest player in a sector and have no knock on effect.
It's not quite so easy to give you a yes or no answer as it's partially both. Yes we could plan ahead to an extent but if for example we sent out large letter items (which we do), there is no economical alternative. Parcel services we technically can change however other couriers are hit in the same way and the ones which aren't typically are much more expensive. This comes back to the argument of being able to do things economically. Further to that, the extent of delays is often unknown until you're in the midst of it by which it is then too late. Most customers are fine if there's a couple of days delay but we still have items held in RM depots since November. How do we know the delays will be so excessive in some areas in advance? No item should take over 2 weeks to be delivered within the UK even in consideration of delays but we've seen it plenty of times and often we take the financial hit in refunding the customer and being unable to claim.
@IsleworthSpy - Your unwillingness to answer is also comical. It seems you don't have a clue about the impact these strikes have on those not part of the dispute between RM, CWU and RM Employees. Perhaps we're all just expected to ignore this as it doesn't suit your agenda to discuss the damage these strikes are causing to innocent people.
@DerekRocholl - The most laughable comment I've seem from you yet is "The people who deserve our support are the postal workers who are fighting against". Fighting against not getting paid as much as they want to be paid and destroying the livelihoods of people who are not part of the dispute. That doesn't deserve support, it deserves quite the opposite actually.
You seem to think everyone is sitting on their back side if they're not a postie or if they're ordering online. This might be news to you but it's not only posties that work hard but in keeping in context with your deluded thoughts, what about your overworked postie that doesn't have time to get to the shops or indeed the energy after doing a 12 hour shift and wanting to get home and see his family for a small amount of time. Is this the lazy individual that doesn't deserve the ability to order online? If he works for a business that experiences increased trade during the final quarter like many businesses do then is he somehow banned from ordering online and deemed lazy for doing so?
So an online food company that only sells perishable food deserves what it gets for being so stupid is your final response? Wow!
You have a narrow minded view on society.
@IsleworthSpy -
"Not everything is just about money."
So if RM offered to double everyone's salary so long as they agreed to their terms you're saying no one would agree? If they did then we could safely say it is then about money. We both know the answer to that regardless if you admit it or not. I understand the terms are supposedly a part of this but ultimately it's money related. If they were paid more they'd agree to it all so it's money related. I should say I speak to RM staff multiple times per week so I'm not as out of sync as you seem to think with your perspective on matters but I simply don't agree even in knowing what you state your position to be.
@DerekRocholl - Further exaggeration, this is known to be a defensive response. A statement in itself.
As for private research, that's what we all do to some extent but the bulk of my exposure here comes from the day to day working with people impacted by RM strike action. You obviously deem that irrelevant simply as it does not support the drivel you wan't to try and brainwash everyone with. Like I said before, you're part of a minority and clearly will remain there.
This is a sample of what businesses and the general public think of the industrial action being carried out by RM staff. I could pick these articles out all day but this is where a small number of deluded individuals seem to think the UK public supports their disruption. Most people wouldn't actually be against strikes if they were carried out in good faith but the CWU and RM staff shot themselves in the foot when they went from disrupting Royal Mail to disrupting the rest of the UK. It was possible to do one of those things without fully doing the other. This is why the message no longer matters as the action that goes alongside it has grabbed the headlines. Wait until after Christmas when the true cost and impact of the strike action has been determined. Then you might start to see an even greater negative response from the public than already exists.
Greedy RM staff seem to think they're more important than the rest of the country and have decided to hold us all to ransom to increase their own pay packet. They also want us to support them in this quest and criticise us when we challenge the damage they're causing to the rest of us.
Headline: Strikes Close Britain at Christmas
https://www.inentertainment.co.uk/strikes-close-britain-at-christmas-business-reveals-it-has-lost-1million-amid-royal-mail-action/
Royal Mail strikes and the impact they are having on small businesses
"If I’m going to stick with Royal Mail I just need them to stop striking
https://theglobalherald.com/news/royal-mail-strikes-and-the-impact-they-are-having-on-small-businesses-sophie-reaper-reports/
Headline: Traders fear loss of prime Christmas sales as Royal Mail moves cutoff dates
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/11/traders-lose-christmas-sales-royal-mail-moves-dates
Headline: Postal strikes costing Greenwich business ahead of Christmas
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/23182038.postal-strikes-costing-greenwich-business-ahead-christmas/
"They don't understand the upset and misery it causes': Families and small business owners describe the impact of strikes on their lives this Christmas"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11525283/Families-small-business-owners-impact-strikes-lives-Christmas.html
Royal Mail strikes ‘complete nightmare’ for small businesses
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/apprentice-star-kathryn-burn-royal-mail-strikes-complete-nightmare-for-small-businesses/ar-AA15jJ6W