The Royal Mail strikes can be frustrating, but as some of you know one of my jobs is working for Royal Mail.
I therefore wanted to quickly correct the misconception that they are striking for a pay rise. This is not the whole truth and the news are not reporting the real reasons. Most other strikes are just for wage increases.
Royal mail want to implement a lot of changes in the company and this includes changing terms and conditions in staff contracts. This is the main reason for these strikes. A pay rise is just one additional part because Postmen haven't had a payrise since before 2019 and are now on a base wage of £12.70 per hour.
The changes Royal Mail want to make include thy following.
1, 10,000 redundancies. They have always started 1 to 1 meetings to dicuss 6,000 voluntary redundancies as part of that total number. The package offered maxes out at 39 weeks wages plus £6000 redundancy pay, and that could include simmering who had worked there 30+ years.
2, Stop paying sick leave.
3, Reduce the power the union has within the company. No right for employees to have a union rep present in meetings, uncluttered return to work after an absense.
4, The removal of shift and area allowances. At the moment because the basic postal worker wage is quite low this is increased with shift allowances. If you work evenings, nights or weekends you get an extra allowance. If these are removed someone working nights would lose £160 per week or £8320 per year. No pay rise would compensate for that or give the incentive to stay working nights.
5, with the planned 10,000 redundancies they will continue to bring in untrained agency staff to replace the staff. These agency workers are paid more than RM staff already. Talking to one he gets over £20 per hour on weekends.
6, Owner Drivers. They want to reduce the number of staff delivery drivers and replace them with owner drivers on zero hour contracts, similar to Evri.
There are many other things they want to also change including shutting down some mail centres. But I hope what I've said highlights the real reasons for this strike action and that you will support their fight to protect their jobs.
As you mentioned, some Postmen can cast a negative attitude towards them. The one writing out missed you cards needs reporting. But the postman being seen taking a break is fine. They have to take their breaks whilst on delivery. They no longer get seperate allocated break times, and their movement is being tracked 24/7 by the GPS in their PDAs. They get questioned if movement hasn't been detected for a certain number of minutes.
