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?

Made in China, Sweatshop Britain and Royal Mail!

I went shopping yesterday. I bought some pants, two different brands, both made in China.I bought some socks, again two different brands again both made in China.I bought a belt - made in China of course.
I couldn't seem to buy anything that wasn't made in China.
Everything nowadays seems to be made in China - or Vietnam is apparently another popular place for manufacturing at the moment.
I can of course see the attraction for big business to the likes of China what with it's sweatshops paying pennies to people working long unregulated hours in poor conditions to manufacture goods that they then sell on to us for ££££££££££'s.
Strange as this may seem I've drawn a parallel between sweatshop China and the current Royal Mail dispute (see a previous post for a postman's - mine - view of events). In Britain, Trades Unions have fought for years to end sweatshop practices (it's not that long ago after all that we were sending children down the mines, into the mills and up chimneys etc), but as I say we've stopped all of that now. We've moved on and secured decent pay and conditions for the average working man and stopped child labour of course.
What we have going on in this country at the moment is I believe an all out attack (by big business) on the working man (I'm starting to sound like a Socialist here - a right wing Socialist? Hasn't that been tried by someone before?). Anyhow, Royal Mail are a perfect example of this attack. They are slowly but surely getting rid of all the full time postmen and replacing them with part timers on twenty five hour contracts.
All postmen are now bullied into working forced and unpaid overtime. The pension fund has been decimated - and put out of bounds to new starters as has sick pay etc. There are people who work forty hours every week doing a forty hour job (and are paid forty hours) but only have a twenty hour contract so in effect when they are on holiday they only have half pay!
When you point this out to a lot of people they say 'welcome to the real world - we all have to put up with that so stop moaning and get on with it'!
To these people who are knocking the so called lazy greedy postmen I say 'Wake Up! Don't put up with it yourselves - fight back. The big corporations would like us all to be working for peanuts so that they get richer'.
When Royal Mail and the government defeat the postmen and the CWU (I'm no great fan of some of the activities of the CWU but on this issue they're right) which I fear they will then we will be one step closer to sweatshop Britain.
In years to come maybe instead of Made in China everything will have Made in Britain on it - and in prosperous China people will look at the goods and sympathise with the poor British workers working long unregulated hours in poor conditions manufacturing goods for pennies to sell to the affluent East for (Chinese) ££££££££££££££££££££££'s!!!

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!!