Fat Cats Grow Fatter as People Line up to Kick the Posties

Read this and weep. As people join in the kicking and grinding into the dirt of the lazy postmen (on £8.50 an hour) the bankers who have ruined the country (just last year actually) are now getting wonderfully huge bonuses once again (Goldman Sachs is paying each of it's bankers a £440,000 bonus amongst other disgusting absurdities).

When the government and Royal Mail (aided by the press and public opinion) batter the postmen into submission it will be one up to the likes of the bankers and greedy fat cat bosses in general - the boss of Royal Mail by the way earns £3 million per year.

The less money and more work that people like the postmen will have to do will mean of course more money for the fat cats.

When the postmen fall who will they come for next? You?

In Defence Of The Postmen

The main issue at the heart of the postal dispute is this:

Years ago when a postman finished his delivery early he would return to the office and be made to sort mail until his shift ended then go home.

If he finished his delivery late he would book overtime for this.

Of course this booking of overtime was obviously open to abuse as no-one knew if the postman really was late or just swinging the lead.

So Royal Mail came up with a solution called 'job and finish'.

Job and finish was this: if you returned to the office early having finished your delivery then you could go home early, but if you returned to the office late you did not get overtime for this.
So, it saved the firm a fortune in overtime and postmen also got to go home early on quiet days.
But soon after all of this Royal Mail stopped taking on full time postmen. Every time a full time postman left/retired/got the sack he was replaced by a part timer on (say) a thirty hour contract and the remaining full time postmen would then absorb the ten hours of work (between the forty hour job and the new thirty hour postman).
This of course led to a gradually increasing workload for the remaining full time postmen.
Fast forward about five years to today and in most delivery offices the full time/part time ratio is about fifty fifty.
You can imagine the increased workload.
Where in the past there was a 'swings and roundabouts' approach to things (you'll make time somedays lose time others) now it's a case of 'you'll lose a little time some days and a lot of time others'.
If a postman asks a manager to be paid for the extra work he has to do (some days up to three hours) he's told 'job and finish' - you'll make up the time on quiet days, which of course now is rubbish.
So postmen are now working probably about forty five hours a week for forty hours pay - which is okay if you're salaried but postmen are NOT they are contracted to be paid by the hour.
So there you have it. The actual CRUX of the dispute.
There are other things going on of course and management and the union will fall out all day long, but for postmen it's all about being forced to work for nothing.
How do I know all this - well it's because I am a postman of course!!