« Poor back... | Wet one today... »
@ 01/11/09 – 08:55:18
I was trying to do a search to find out just why the post people are striking. I could not really find anything specific so wonder if anyone here knows.
I went into the collecting office yesterday and I was tempted to ask but changed my mind, the man already looked grumpy.
SeasideMan
Pro 
gardengirl
Okay I sort of got that impression about they were going to have to move away from job and finish but was not sure what else there was. We used to have 'job and finish' years ago but it all got changed, guess that happens everywhere.
The thing I find a bit strange about strikes is that from what I can see the post office, for example, is already in trouble, if the staff strike and it then goes under or gets taken over, they might be even worse off. However I guess they feel that they have no other choice.
Thank you for explaining.
SeasideMan
Pro I agree with you, this seems like quite a peculiar move that may end up backfiring. It feels like the 1970s again with a union-driven strike.
gardengirl
I am far to young to remember the 1970s... well just about young enough to have not cared.
jenray
Pro Don't think it's a question of the remaining staff will have to work harder for the same pay as Tom puts it...more like the remaining staff are being asked to do far more than is humanly possible and many are not from here, can barely speak English and are being employed by the PO perhaps because not that many people here can live on the money unless you do loads of overtime, and are willing to do shift work, which does nothing for family life or personal relationships, which accounts for the large number of posties who have worked for a long time in the PO and who are divorced....I can remember Beeching saying we didn't need so many railway stations, Thatcher closing down the mines, and now some idiot is saying that if the PO doesn't make all these changes, it isn't going to survive at all because in a decade or more, there will be no paper transactions??? Sound familiar?? Nobody thinks that should something happen in this world that brings our computerized world to a damn standstill, paper communication will come back immediately because no alternative...with a PO reduced to a shell of its former strength, it will be like the current railway system and mines...the former, damned awful expensive mess, and the latter, we now have to import coal from around the world because our mines have been closed down....
gardengirl
Lots of people have to do shift work and extra hours. When I was younger I had two jobs and worked Saturday day in my main job as did my husband. That was just to have money to pay the mortgage. I do think that things need to change and this is an ongoing thing for companies and yes staff do suffer but companies need to make money or the staff will have no job.
When I first started in my job I used to do things that a machine now does, not that I would want to still be doing it. The difference is, I used to take a while and make mistakes, which was not so good for customers, not on purpose of course. The machine does it much quicker and makes no errors. That is just the way things change, people want things faster and better and business has to deliver.
I do not see that they can keep the PO going if no one is using it, just in case we need it in the future. It needs to adapt, people buy stuff on the Internet and get it delivered there are new markets to be had and the PO needs to move with the times.
I cannot really comment on the railway as I do not know much about its past. However I thought it is more to do with years of under investment, I do not know.. as for the mines, I assumed (maybe wrongly) that we do not have much coal left to mine and that is why they shut. I have a coal mine just up the road from me so there are some around.
jenray
Pro I'm not disputing that lots of people do shift work and extra hours...and that lots of companies have gone onto mechanization for certain jobs, but the PO is a strange set up, in that, even if another company takes over delivering say Amazon's purchases, the PO does the job much better and that is why Amazon tried another delivery company and came back to the PO...It's not true at all that nobody is using the PO...they still deliver huge amounts of mail all around the country every day...some newspapers would have you believe that the PO is on its last legs..it's not, it's being squeezed between vested interests and the management are trying to reduce the workforce to a point where the amount of work that needs to be done hasn't got enough people to do it...and not through laziness on the part of the postman, but you've only got so many hours in a day to do what is demanded of you, and the demand now is often too great...as my hubby worked in it for six months off 30 years, I've seen it go through a whole series of changes, and seen the effects on the people working there...and have known what it was like to be on a pay level where it wasn't possible to make ends meet without government assistance...Alan Johnson did help to bring in much better wages for the postmen when he was in the CWU but that didn't happen very long ago so for the majority of our lives, we've lived on extremely poor wages...if it's privatized, the postmen who do decide to work for the new owners won't get anywhere near the hard won wages of the postmen in the PO now...and staff cuts will be made right across the board...and Beeching's cuts were shortsighted and done only to save government money at the time so under investment was the reason for the demise of much of our railway system...and we do still have coal in our mines, but the majority have been closed down now and can't be restored...Thatcher just wanted to break the back of the miner's union after it nearly brought down Ted Heath...she was out for revenge and she didn't give a damn about the long term effect on the country...besides she couldn't think further than her damned nose...she wanted a free hand to pursue privatization and that meant killing off the power of the unions...Thatcher was never on the side of the working man and woman...she had her own agenda and she followed it blindly until even her own party threw her out...
gardengirl
I am sure that all governments have their moment or things that they are remembered for I was a bit young to really understand the impact of Mrs Thatcher and pass much comment on it. Did the current government not raid pension schemes to fund its own spending plans? As I said they all have their moments.
However I think it is common place for all companies to try and overwork their staff and underpay them. I do not think the post office is any different from everyone else. I still think the strike could end up causing more issues for the workers if they end up with no jobs because of it. Having said that, I can see that if no one stands up to bully bosses nothing will change.
jenray
Pro unfortunately, it was Thatcher who gave the PO in particular a holiday from having to pay into its pension fund and used the money to avoid tax rises or to give us a reduction in it...either way, she used it and that holiday cost the PO very dearly because it now has a gaping hole in its fund as it never managed to catch up on itself, and no, I don't think this government raided pension funds but private companies did...think this government realized what a holiday meant now and the consequences, but I can't swear by this, they may have, but somehow doubt it...Being a fair bit older than a lot of people here, I do remember the various political parties and the governments and what happened during them...they all made a mess in their own way, but some were definitely worse than others...the Conservative policies appear to be the most damaging in the long term unfortunately while the Labour policies were painful in the short term often...mostly because they were inheriting Conservative policies and had to set about repairing some of the damage...usually very expensive damage...the Conservatives always say they left the government in a good financial state...they did because they laid a hell of a lot of heavy taxation on the people and huge interest rates and finally sold off the family silver to raise revenue and in the process, left the house bare but with a miser's purse fairly full...meanwhile Labour came in and reduced taxes and interest rates, looked at the state of the NHS, education and a whole raft of other essential parts of the countries infrastructure and found that very little had been done to improve any of them...each party inherits the previous ones efforts to govern and run the country and so very little is changed radically, because there simply isn't enough time to make any real changes and overcome the obstacles placed in the path of any suggested ones by the opposition who don't want the current government to succeed well in anything...it's a vicious stupid circle and it needs changing radically...
gardengirl
I do remember the Conservatives being in but mainly because of the house price crash, but nothing before that.
I very much agree that they have all made their own mess and I tend to think they are all as bad as each other. I know that interest rates are very low at the moment but we are in the middle of a recession and rates are low as a result of that, not really because of the decisions the government has made. We had many years of boom and now we have the bust just as always regardless who is in power and them saying that they can stop boom and bust.
Labour have been in since 1997 so I feel they are responsible for the mess the country is in. They still do not seem to be on top of things saying that we will be the first country out of recession and of course we are not.
I have no major preference for any one party, we have to try and decide who is the best of a bad lot and that is not an easy choice.
jenray
Pro Ray and I both said today after this fiasco with Alan Johnson that there is no party we feel able to vote for with confidence now...that is really depressing...Think I'll start the Responsible Anarchist Party...LOL...GBHs...XXX
gardengirl
Sounds like a plan, you have my vote!
Related posts
The content of this website belongs to a private person, blog.co.uk is not responsible for the content of this website.
The management are carrying out a "modernization" plan and the posties don't like it. I think it boils down to the fact that some staff are being replaced by machinery, and the remaining staff will have to work harder for the same pay.