Many Royal Mail staff are currently quite well paid for the menial, unskilled they do. The Royal Mail bosses know that. A new, casual workforce could easily be hired and trained to do most of the work for much less cash. And that's what the Royal Mail is doing.

The Royal Mail is just another example of public sector employees thinking that outdated, cushy terms and conditions should apply for all time. When your job is something that virtually anyone can do with just a minimal amount of training you are always going to be on a loser with such an approach.

Being paid a decent living wage doesn't mean people are thinking that they should have cushy public sector jobs.

Menial
adj
1. consisting of or occupied with work requiring little skill, esp domestic duties such as cleaning
2. of, involving, or befitting servants
3. servile
n
1. a domestic servant
2. a servile person

I worked for Royal Mail for a time. The jobs definitely involved skill, so I can only think that Pete is refering to the other meaning of menial. I don't want to live in a world like that, so good luck to all the Royal Mail workers.

I think the Internet saved royal mail. A lot of letters were getting replaced by emails so business was declining. But now, people order goods online (ebay, amazon, etc) which probably saved royal mail.

If the action looks like it will continue into the christmas period. The companies will just have to take out contracts with private delivery companies (they have no choice). At that point, I don't think royal mail will be able to recover because the private companies will out compete royal mail who will have to charge more to pay the bigger wage bills. Either way, youre probably stuffed.

Royal Mail is finished come post christmas time, all of the major firms like amazon which the RM relies on for the majority of its income are going to do a runner to companies like DHL, TNT, and Fedex. General mail like letters is a huge loss maker for the company, once businesses start pulling out major deliveries RM is done and dusted and the striking workers are out on the dole. Mass redunduncies will occur after this strike.

The end of Royal Mail is simply inevitable now.

This strike has no public support, and simply far too easy for everyone to spin this as the postmen ruined christmas thus removing what little support the strike had to begin with.

In response to Pete, I agree with others. Pete you are completely wrong. Your prejudice or lack of insight betrays reality. Postmen and women are skilled professionals - well those who've been doing the job for a while. They work at speed, and have developed a great deal of important expertise in thier profession too easily discounted when a cheaper alternative with less terms & conditions is considered, such as invaluable local knowledge of routes including knowledge times of delivery/weightage per route.

Unfortunately, I would have to agree with Realistic Red, that this strike will have no public support - or at the very least very little. That is because the public remain deeply misinformed by what has happened/is happening. While the Great British Public rely on the like of the Daily Mail and The Sun to tell them what to think, this situation will remain.

The public largely blame strikers for being selfish and self-interested, not appreciating the wholesale attack on the Royal Mail and the bosses complicity in public-service sabotage, as well as the wider view of neoliberal advance. If a prolonged strike occurs, the negative consequences for joe-public, small businesses ..etc and what would then be an inevitable collapse of Royal Mail, will unfortunatley largely believe the lie that the mess was the fault of self-interested postal workers. What the union needs to explictly communicate (ironically, the CWU aren't very good at communicating - the exception being Dave Ward on tv news bulletins last Friday) is to keep on explaining to the public the chief source of the Royal Mail's woes. Following the reforms made in 2006 which the regulator imposed on Royal Mail 3 years ahead of the rest of Europe, the management negotiated a terrible deal with competitors who have taken business off Royal Mail which Royal Mail then have to STILL DELIVER for them since they hold the univeral service (the main cost being in the delivery, not the sourcing the product). As Peter Hain was quoted as saying: "a ludicrous and unfair system of promoting competition, which I'm afraid our government has been responsible for" (BBc Radio-4 Today prog - 24/02/2009).

Then, the Hooper report earlier in the year recommended part-privatisation - citing the massive black hole in the pensions fund as being a main reason for the bankrupcy of the business. However, Hooper was making the assumption that Royal Mail was existing in a market that is a level-playing field. The fact is that with the 2006 reforms, Royal Mail has forced to subsidise it's competitors and has been put in a position where it could never beat them (whilst European competitors like TNT are still benefitting on substantial public subsidy in their domestic countries). In short, Royal Mail has been forced to capitulate European competitors through EU regulations which have only been undertaken in full here in the UK, directed by a regulator whose raison-detre seems to be to destroy royal mail, and a government apparantly happy to bend over backwards for others at the expense of a national asset. Their motivation was always, perhaps, to reduce ineffiency in the service; Royal Mail in keeping with the best examples of national monopoly in the 1970s did waste money, with exploitation of overtime by workers rife by the late 90s. This was largely reduced with a series of reforms on pay and conditions which the Union agreed to, starting with 'The way forward' in 2001.

However, as time has gone by, with the management have imposed even more directives and changes which have made the job worse and in some cases more inefficient with the idea of making more savings to cover themselves for their incompetence in contract negotiations with competitors. As part of their modernisation programme, without any consultation with the union and more significantly - workers on the ground, management used computer programmes to revise postal routes and how much mail each postie had to deliver, with consequences in some areas reported as including walks having become far too heavy, lack of enough time allocated in the duty structure for new routes and whole areas not getting deliveries for days on end.
The public need to be informed

That said, a strike now would be the worst of all possible result. However, provided proper negotiations restart and no more new directives are passed until everything is put up for discussion again, then I believe the union should POSTPONE any mass strike action to well after x-mas, clear the backlog, and in do doing, earn moral authority over having stepped back from the strike.

A further demand from CWU should be for a Public debate about the future of OUR Royal Mail. Should include: protecting the universal service, integrating modernisation with protecting terms and condtions of existing permanent staff, guaranteeing the future of remaining post offices and bringing some of them back from the death where justified need remains, returning freight onto the railways to reduce carbon emissions of road transport and reducing reliance on postal delivery workers to use cars on delivery routes

'Postmen and women are skilled professionals - well those who've been doing the job for a while.' says Green New Deal.

What planet are you on?

Compared to unskilled private sector workers doing similar jobs, Royal Mail staff are currently well paid and have good working conditions. It is unfair of a government body to pay above the market rate for this work as poorly and modestly paid private sector taxpayers suffer financially to give these workers a better standard of living than they themselves enjoy.

Any postal staff who don't like the new pay and conditions at the Royal Mail can always take their supposed professional skills to private post and parcel companies to see how much money their skills earn them at those places.

Pete, I didn't say that postie's terms and conditions should not be adapted to the new reality. However, for those in the service a long time, I stand by them defending that which was promised to them. So should you.

Pete, a solid core of postmen and women are indeed skilled professionals. I'm afraid, you are letting your prejudice cloud your reason.

If private sector workers feel resentful of hard won terms and conditions of a public sector workforce, maybe they should reflect more on why it is there is massive support for postal workers across the public sector in general and the importance of protecting the universal service (which those like you discount only too easily). Ask any public sector worker whether they resent postal workers fighting for their jobs and the pension entitlement of long-serving employees, and they will defend them to the hilt. Just because you work in a job in the private sector where you have no protection against the excesses of market forces, don't start pointing the finger at those who have fought and won those protections and are not so willing to give them up so easily, as if you in the same situation would.

The fact remains that postal workers realise it is in their interests also to improve productivity, and they have been. Royal Mail's problems chiefly stem from both government recklessness and management incompetance, which if you'dd bothered to read it was what I outlined in my earlier comment.

Royal Mail Managers across Britain have been mobilised in an effort to weaken the postal workers and their CWU union in the run-up to national strikes. Managers are travelling hundreds of miles in order to do work that is proper to CWU members and to attempt to drive down the backlog of post that has built up during the regional strikes. At the beginning of October, for example, managers
from Belfast were working in Bristol. Swindon Managers were in London, and Scottish Managers were clearing packets in East Anglia .

Managers are also cooperating with Royal Mail’s plans to set up scab centres, on the model of Wapping during the News International strike.

Managers are also bullying and harassing postal workers, and refusing normal union facilities.

The vast majority, if not all, of these duties rely on managers volunteering their services.

As Unite members we are scandalised that some Unite-CMA members are volunteering for these anti-union duties. We support the following motion:

1. We stand 100 percent with the CWU against Royal Mail and will do all in our power to assist their struggle against the management and its backers in the government – including collecting money and attending picket lines and solidarity rallies.
2. We condemn Royal mail management for organising scabbing and attacking postal workers and their union.
3. We condemn the government for allowing this to happen and call on them to demand that it ceases immediately.
4. We condemn all Unite members who are volunteering for scabbing and call on them to stop immediately.
5. We condemn Unite members who intimidate and bully postal workers.
6. We call on Unite to expel CMA members who volunteer for scabbing.
7. UNITE should instruct CMA members not to perform anything but their normal duties or to work beyond their normal hours until the CWU has achieved a satisfactory deal.
8. UNITE should defend any CMA member who refuses to participate in the scabbing operation and shows solidarity with CWU members in dispute.
9. UNITE should begin its own industrial action ballot for CMA members in Royal Mail.
10. UNITE should call an emergency meeting of the Administration, Managerial, Professional and Supervisory National Sector Committee to discuss and find ways to support the CWU
11. We believe that the National Officer (Julia Long) should publicly condemn the scabbing.