The postmen are going on strike, and the news story about it didn’t really say why. On the postal union’s site there was a Message to the Public which I didn’t find persuasive. They talked about how they were faced with the prospect of arriving at work and being told to do a completely different job to the one they usually do and of having their hours of work changing from day to day. These are things that I and many other people have been used to for years. They also talked about how Royal Mail want to reduce their pension benefits and increase their retirement age. At the moment the Royal Mail pension scheme is so expensive to run that Royal Mail have to pay an extra 730 million pounds a year into it in addition to its member’s contributions. The CWU are in the enviable position of having the government underwrite their pension scheme if Royal Mail eventually go bust. Meanwhile final-salary pension schemes are closing in most companies in the UK.
So I don’t really feel very sympathetic towards the postal workers. In attempting to explain their grievances they have simply highlighted how out-of-touch with the real-world they are. Since their members’ pensions are protected if Royal Mail become insolvent maybe they’re calculating that it would be better to protect their cushy benefits and drive the company under than it would be to negotiate a less advantageous deal. It is of course the job of a union to protect its members’ interests, but sometimes that involves looking at the long rather than the short-term and even the CWU recognises that the current pension scheme is too expensive.
The amazing popularity of online shopping should have been a bonanza for the Royal Mail but instead they are in deeper trouble than ever. This may well be because the management is useless, or it may be because the organisation is bureaucratic and inflexible and many of the people who work there are unimaginative jobsworths, I have no way of knowing. In any case, this strike won’t help their situation. Like Millie Banerjee of Postwatch, I find it hugely disappointing to watch a great British institution tear itself apart. But on the other hand, maybe the demise of the Royal Mail will create a brilliant opportunity for a new, much better mail service. Here’s some things I’d like them to offer:
- Destination tracking - Every time a parcel addressed to me is processed they should check to see if it is too big for the letter box or if it needs a signature. If that’s the case they could send me an email or text asking if they should deliver it the next day or on some other day when I am going to be at home.
- People who are at home all the time could act as mini local post offices. Big parcels for anyone in their street would be left with them at the start of the day, outgoing parcels could be collected at the end of the day.
- Tracking the delivery man. It would be so easy to put a GPS receiver on each delivery person and then track them so that I could see an ETA for them.
- Smarter redelivery. I’m going out for the day but I still want my eBay parcel to be there when I get home so I go to their site and ask for all today’s mail to be delivered to my friend up the road.
- Parcel aggregation. It’s daft for several delivery companies to all be calling at the same address. Why don’t they set up a clearing-house for data and then they could all deliver each other’s parcels.
Crikey, I could go on all day with this. Anyone fancy going into business?
Sign me up!
I worked for Royal Mail, delivering half a ton of paper a week, for five months. Whilst there were a number of reasons why I left (for example, I got a teaching job) it was the fact that I felt that the senior management were treating my like a dickhead that made it easy to quit. The job I was taken on to do - essentially a relief delivery postie - was poorly conceived and incompetently handed from start to finish, all of which was a senior management issue. The local delivery office managers were generally working hard to deal with the shit that was being lobbed down on them from above. I’m not surprised there’s trouble.
In a few years Royal Mail has gone from being a massive loss making company to a reasonably profitable one. But it’s done this by delivering more items (about 80 million a day) with fewer staff. The result is that the basic postie is being asked to deliver increasing amounts of stuff. The pay is low (I was on just over 6 pounds an hour). Again, I’m not surprised there’s trouble.
Does it make me an old trot to think that it is the responsibility of the senior management to ensure that a company offers its services, and if industrial relations get to the point that the workers go on strike, then it is the fault of the people at the top to have lost the trust of their staff? Well, probably. Certainly it is the people at the top who benefit when the numbers add up correctly, so I think we should hold them to account when things go wrong.
I worked with a man who had been a postie for most of his working life, and now he did the night shift, organising the deliveries as they came in overnight. He would “throw in” i.e. sort the walk I was going to do that day. He had an apparently photographic knowledge of every street in the area, how to divide up the bundles of post, organising them into bags for the optimum delivery route: cross over at number 103, up to 260, pick up another bag from this drop point, then do Arcadia Crescent anti-clockwise … etc. This sort of expertise saves hours of work, and cannot be replaced with technology or market forces. (Many third party delivery providers sub-contracted the actual delivery of the items to the Royal Mail anyway - it’s not cost effective to have more than one person trudging round the houses.)
No doubt there are a number of problems with the way our stuff is delivered, but in my experience they have little to do with the people actually putting the stuff through the letterbox. Yes I know there are countless stories of when the postie has done something wrong, but having been there myself (often the one making a mess of it), I know who I am going to blame. I’m not surprised there’s trouble.
I have searched and searched for a coherent or persuasive account of what exactly the CWU are objecting to. The more I read the less convinced I am by their arguments. I was for a long time a union representative for the BBC union BECTU, who have many similarities to the CWU in terms of wanting to protect many restrictive working practices that have accrued over years of muscular union action. I really cannot imagine BECTU trying to defend the position the CWU is adopting now, it really does remind me of the arguments we were having, and mainly losing, ten years ago. Robert Peston says it reminds him of the 70’s and I think he’s got a point. Having said that, I do agree with you that the management are doing a very poor job - it is they who are responsible for the daft new letter size rules and the lack of innovation in the services offered by Royal Mail.