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A 3.5 % rise in basic pay backdated to April would probably equate to a circa £100 million give or take £5-10 million, once you take into consideration the employers NI due.
The VR payment will account for a similar amount as a one-off payment.
So, around £200 million in total, which ironically was the amount the company spent on the ill-fated share buyback scheme earlier this year at a time when the share price was double what it is now.
The cost of strikes must also be approaching £200 million now, which just highlights just what a ****ed up situation and dispute this has now become.
@Bres
To find a resolution in the dispute, especially in terms of pay, would require that Thompson and the board backdate any offer to April 2022. If that would have been agreed they could have probably jointly worked their way through any kinks in relation to terms and conditions.
Unfortunately, if that scenario was ever going to occur, it would have happened pre strike action or at the latest back in October, November and maybe then the profitable Christmas period and the rest of Q3 could have been saved.
Due to the fact the dispute has now run into Q3 and ****ed up the most profitable time of year for the company, I cannot see how the company can possibly even afford to make a one-off circa 5 % backdated payment, along with meeting the commitment it has made to VR, which will have been massively over-subscribed.
Again, looking from the outside in, the Christmas delivery period has already been systematically destroyed simply because of the backlog build-up due to the latest rounds of strikes.
On Tuesday I made a number of Christmas orders from Amazon, and the one's that were sent-out by Amazon Logistics were delivered in a timely manner within 24-48 hours. Three of the retailer's I used, though decided on Royal Mail as their designated courier, and despite providing me with a tracking number within 1-2 hours of ordering those details have not been updated subsequent to that and there is now little chance of me receiving any of those items before the middle of next week at the earliest.
Backlog must be horrendous even now and is only growing, the company has also made it worse, simply by retaliating and trying to negate the costs of the strike action by cutting overtime so there is as much chance of them saving the Christmas period as there is of the CWU accepting a non-backdated pay deal.
Thompson and the board have totally mismanaged the company's finances over the profitable COVID-19 period and the CWU is now holding them to account as well as holding them and every other stakeholder to ransom for that.
Lastly, why would and should they accept a non-backdated deal and reduced terms and conditions when the company has paid so much out to other stakeholders over the last twelve months along with the fact they're already pushing through a lot of the changes without an agreed deal on either pay or terms.
Today though will be probably be the peak moment in history for CWU and I really cannot see Thompson or the Board simply taking this one on the chin, especially with how far down the road they already are.
From the outside looking in, it does feel like all the momentum is once again back with the CWU and the employees, especially with the Jolly Boy's outing Dave has planned for Friday.
The company has really let this slip over the last couple of weeks and allowed the union to regain the upper-hand once again, which is a surprising state of affairs, especially after they lost a lot of the previous bargaining power they held when they cancelled much of their November planned strike action due to a paperwork error.
The only saving grace for the company is every week they delaying the pay deal they are saving a couple of million a week.
Although at this stage, it's growing more likely that the company would be unable to afford any kind of backdated deal anyway, along with meeting the current VR tabled offer, without potentially risking breaching it's loan and debt covenants.
Shareholders will be royally screwed over if the Union wins the dispute.
@Onesharewonder
It sounds very similar to the current state of the financial markets and the macroeconomic environment.
FTSE is now less than 5 % away from all time highs, the Dow bounced 1000 points after the latest speech from Powell. Hedhefunds are saying a new bull market is emerging and institutional fund managers are investing client funds looking to secure their bonuses.
Yet in the real world absolute carnage is occurring. A cost of living crisis,l along with record inflation.
The posties are striking. Nurse's are striking, rail workers are striking, teachers are striking and the Bank of England has said we're heading for the recession of all recessions.
They can't all be correct.
Either way i'm off to touch some grass.
GLA.
Jesus,
You clearly have all this time on your hands and you won't take the opportunity to look at your own timeline. Seriously your whole timeline from Q1 - Q2 2022 reads as bad as any RNS released by RMG during the same time period.
Back to filter for you, and would the other Harry hindsight clueless clown who recommended his previous post aimed at me say who you are just so I can filter your sorry ass also.
Although based on the law of averages, I am 99.9 % certain who you are and the post you aimed at me two weeks ago has a very different flavor now.
Simply read your OWN timeline back from that period and you will see just how much you have contradicted yourself with the post the you made @14.21.
Posting a totally different viewpoint with the benefit of hindsight from one which you posted in real-time is normally the MO of another frequent poster of this board.
@Dowsie
Fair-point,
The drop from £3 is due to strike action and the drop from £5 to £3 is primarily due to bad management and the board and their failure to plan to for life after COVID and the expectations of the posties and CWU.
I will add a final point which is that Thompson really needs to go at this stage as he is not fit for purpose.
Either that or he's just being used as a puppet or scapegoat by the board to cover up the part they have played in the mess that this company has now become.
@Wilcox,
Shareholders in the main will never support the strikes simply because it's the strike action that has decimated the share price and any hope the company had of trading it's way out of the losses that have accumulated in the first half of the current financial year.
Added to this, if the strikes persist into December and January and the posties win their dispute, it will be the shareholders that will be forced to absorb the cost of both the dispute and eventual accepted pay offer, because by that time the only way the company will be able to afford it will be by making a cash call on the current shareholders. DK might as well sit back and watch it all play out as a discounted 1/3 or 1/4 rights issue in Q1 next year will get him where he wants to be.
Any chance the company had of achieving a profitable Q3 have pretty much gone up in smoke with the latest round of strikes and if the December strikes go-ahead the company will probably take any current offer off the table as it will be unaffordable without a cash injection.
Many have called this from November 2021,
Both, the market top on the Dow and the subsequent bear market rallies and exactly where the economy was headed.
It's pretty much the same people whom called the financial crisis 2008 and the Dot-Com bubble of 2001. They saw the same cyclical patterns.
It's all out there in the public domain.
*Russia invade Ukraine in February.
Plus, governments around the world turning on their printing presses during COVID is the main cause of inflation, along with the USA passing of it's own inflation problems onto the rest of the world via the US$.
Macro-economist's, have pretty much been calling a recession since November 2021.
When all is said and done the Union is just acting on behalf of the members who previously voted 97 % to strike.
The response yesterday and the vote of no confidence in Simon Thompson was pretty overwhelming from the workforce.
The board distributing 100's of millions after the final year results around May / June, knowing full well volumes were dropping off, inflation was increasing and based on previous disputes with the CWU, leave the impression that they have pretty much taken the Union and the workforce for fools and is gross negligence given what it has now led to.
Once you take the emotion out of it as either an employee or shareholder, you actually see the board and Thompson are equally as guilty of scuppering both the company and a potential deal as much as Dave Ward and his cronies are.
Now would actually be a good time for DK to step-up and make a decision on way or the other.