Member Info for OliGarch

Sid, I'm a little confused about the points that you are trying to make in your post so I will start at the top.
Last year, there were approximately 115,000 CWU members working for Royal Mail. It is known that a small percentage have left the union however there was also a small percentage that joined the CWU last year following a kneejerk reaction but let's use a net -5000 as a guesstimate and use a figure of 110,000 so a majority would mean 55,000. Those members that have now left the CWU would possibly have voted against the motion but are now ineligible which works in the union's favour?
You are correct that a lot have lost a fair amount of income however the feedback locally is that "we've come this far" plus (this will require fact checking) some may have found that their incomes have dropped to a level where they now become eligible for some type of income support or supplement as some were only just above the threshold to start with?
You are correct that now Christmas is over then a certain amount of leverage has been lost.
You are correct that executive action has been already used to impose a 2% pay deal and I'm sure that the BoD will try to utilise executive action again but it's not a great look for a company of this size and it does not go unnoticed by certain elements within Parliament.
I'm fairly confident that all RM UK employees realise that the 2020 and 2021 bumper profits were due to the pandemic.
Thompson has told the Select Committee last week that there never was a "War Chest" however I'm not sure that anyone in the room believed a word.
The special dividend and share buyback scheme was taken from the previous year's profits and was done to give the shareholders value which in turn met the requirements of Thompson's £142k bonus. It was never going to be used for "weathering a dispute" as there was no dispute at the time of payment.
The vast majority of posties that are against the dispute have probably left the CWU and will not be included in the next vote which will probably be helpful going forward to achieve the threshold.
It's also worth remembering that "the union can only call on members to take action if a majority of members who VOTED were in favour of that particular action.
The ballot vote that failed to achieve 50% recently was one of the teaching unions so nothing to do with RM UK or the CWU.
I hope that this was useful.

Hounddog, "the reduction in hours was meant to be funded by greater efficiency".
My understanding of the situation was that this meant the last set of revision exercises, which according to Thompson was that over a thousand went very well, however around two hundred did not go well. Given that revision activity is a joint exercise between management and the union reps then the question should be raised as to why the failed revisions were not revisited and sorted out?

Hounddog, from an employee perspective, refusing to do overtime in manual functions would be fairly pointless as managers would use that as an excuse to bring in agency staff? I'm not sure what the difference in costs are between an OPG on overtime versus agency thought?
It would possibly only make a difference in the more specialist fields such as machine operators, fork lift operators, HGV drivers and the engineers that repair the parcel machinery and the buildings?

Sid, "a complete (overtime) ban should easily get rid of the 1 million daily loss".
Given that the daily wage bill for RM UK is around £10m per day, I think it highly unlikely that a 10% daily saving could be made? Plus don't forget that most of the work being performed today will be done on overtime as there are very few contracts for CWU represented grades that included Sunday as part of the normal working week and even then they are paid a "Sunday Supplement" which I believe is around £80"?
It is cheaper for the business to offer ad-hoc overtime than to employ the correct number of staff believe it or not.

Sid, you are absolutely correct. It is down to the company to determine whether overtime is necessary however the business recognises that a certain amount of overtime is needed to give the business flexibility at certain times of the year such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter etc...

.....is a busy bunny these days. I wonder if he has had a big influence on "mail on rail" over the last couple of years?
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/rail-review

As an employee, I have never seen a connection between ownership of RMG/IDS shares as anything other than a personal venture. The mantra that share ownership would make an employee more loyal/hard working/obedient to the company is complete tosh in my opinion.
I took out a personal loan in 2013 and purchased the maximum allocation of £10k selling some at just over 575p in order to pay back my loan and leave me with just under 1200 "free" shares to add to my SIP allocation and hold purely for the dividend payments.
I have repeated the same trick on a few occasions albeit with small "gamblings" of under £6k each time based upon my 'gut feeling' as an employee but usually making no more than 15% on each occasion - enough to keep me happy but not enough to trouble HMRC.
It certainly does not change my work ethic or indeed my line manager's expectation of my work performance and not should it.

AngerSharkz, we are clearly talking at cross purposes here?
The value of the shares in the case of IDS quite clearly does not reflect the current valuation of the business even in basic terms of property portfolio let alone customer database and all the other things that make a business up. As has been posted here before, GLS is worth more than the current SP in it's own right?
The point that I am trying to make is that if I purchased shares today through Equiniti then IDS would not see a penny of my cash.
I agree that when you purchase shares, whether at £125p or 605p it supports the business and that unsold shares are detrimental although technically all shares belong to someone.

AngerSharkz, all I have done is to copy and paste from
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-stocks-where-does-money-120029292.html

If you buy stock through an initial public offering (IPO), it’s a fairly simple exchange. You, the buyer, pay the company issuing the shares whatever price it charges for a slice of the business. Although the investment bank that organized the IPO takes a cut for administrative fees, it works much the same way as any other purchase — the buyer trades money for a product or service to the company doing the selling.
Companies use IPOs to raise money as they make the transition from being privately controlled businesses to publicly traded companies. Successful IPOs deliver massive cash infusions that the issuing company uses to hire employees, build new plants, develop new products, and grow and expand the business. Both new companies and well-established companies use IPOs to gin up cash this way.
Either way, according to the Economic Times, the company that issues the IPO is not under an obligation to repay the money it receives from investors. Once the IPO is complete, the shares that investors like you purchased from the company going public become part of the open market. They can then be bought and sold on the secondary market.
Once a company creates, issues and sells shares to investors through an IPO, those shares exist in the realm of the secondary market, which is what most people think of as the “stock market.” That’s where investors buy and sell shares they already own to and from other investors — not the issuing entity — on exchanges like the Nasdaq composite and the New York Stock Exchange.

If you own stock and didn’t participate in an IPO, you purchased your shares on the secondary market. Unlike IPOs, money spent in secondary market transactions doesn’t go to the company that issued the shares. It goes instead to the investor who sold them to you.

The big stock exchanges like the NYSE work like auctions — they’re actually called “auction markets” — where the highest price a bidder is willing to pay is matched with the lowest price a seller is willing to accept.

AngerSharkz, I believe that the point Broch is trying to make is that shares purchased on the secondary market do not directly raise money for the business.

Also interesting to note that when the Chair asked if he thought that things had not gone well since he took over as CEO, Thompson replied by saying that "I think things haven't gone as well as WE would have wanted" and was then pulled up and reminded that he was the CEO and therefore his responsibility.
A Freudian slip perhaps that may give some insight as to who is pulling the strings in power?

Redceo, "I believe that the CWU are largely responsible for the dire situation currently".
Are you talking about the SP or the state of the RM UK operation in general?

To be fair, the SP is holding up extremely well in the face of a £758m projected full year loss.

JMC66, agreed that the shareholders own the business but the £45,800 that you paid for those 10k shares did not go to RMG to grow the business and I very much doubt that RMG saw too much of the original offer price of 330p in October 2013 as the Cameron/Cable coalition government trousered most of that.
No, your £46k went to the broker that held the shares that you purchased.
I wish you well in your investment but unfortunately you may need to be patient to realise any profit.

On the subject of "shareholder value", it is now clear that the BoD knew that RM UK was going to be in financial difficulty around January 2022 however were unable to divulge this information due to market regulations and therefore had to sit on their hands until after the announcement of the full year results.
Do the shareholders feel as though this stock has given great value over the last twelve months? I certainly don't.

Darbo, that's a bit Wuff especially for a business of Amazon's Pedigree....
I will get my coat....lol

AngerSharkz, I believe that Thompson will be writing to the Select Committee regarding "external consultation" even though The Chair did remind him that he was subject to Parliamentary Privilege at that time?
Another example of trying to avoid answering the question and again not a good look. He was also reminded that misleading Parliament was a serious matter.
He could have done so much better but failed miserably despite arguing his "passion for this great institution".
How would you rate his performance? I would give him three out of ten.

PP, yes it's quite bizarre how group profits and company profits are somehow confused although Thompson did at one stage say that the dividend was paid out of GLS profits which only amounted to £346m?
Neither side seems to be able to get this correct?

AngerSharkz, I totally agree with you there. None of the questions were difficult to answer from a CEO perspective and he would have gained kudos points by correcting the PVA/PDA question at the beginning and giving a straightforward answer. Instead he came across as evasive which is not a good look.