Unofficial mail strikes

[paulvonscott]

They do have a right to strike Bou, though these 'sympathy' strikes aren't such a good idea.

The Royal Mail is basically an ailing company, the last thing it needs is largescale strikes where companies switch to another mail provider and don't come back.

Basically this is a dangerous game to play (give us some more money, or we'll make you pay anyway), because if they carry on, there won't be a Royal Mail (personally I think it'll be gone in 10 years) and they'll end up working for an American owned corporation who will pay them less to work harder in more unpleasant conditions.  

Incidentally private companies will deliver personal mail, they'll just charge more for it.  At todays rates you'd probably pay ?2-3 to deliver to a village and up to ?8 to take it to some godforsaken place.  Finally you'll end up paying a mail subscription service monthly for the pleasure when the private companies are in control.

When it's gone, it's gone, and it won't ever come back.  So this seems a bit of a gamble to me.  The basic problem is that the Royal Mail needs to make money and the posties aren't getting enough.  It would be much better if the unions worked on how that might be possible in order to pay the workers some of it back in return.  This rash of strikes is just self defeating.

[Mr C]

Strikes over now everyone, they managed to thrash out a deal at around four this morning. Hopefully, it shouldn't take too long for the backlog of post to filter through so everyone gets their progs this week rather than two months down the line!

[Queen Firey-Bou]

phew..... spoke to my postie mate last night , she was going ballistic & writing stinky letters to postie newspaper, she reconned it could be the final straw for getting rid of rural posties & bringing in stupid couriers ( who generally 'sorry we don't deliver to the west coast' etc etc ). Her postie collegue is retiring, & his job is advertised as temporary postie only, thin edge of wedge etc.

so now its over theres no excuse for not getting business done? damn.

[Dudley]

As the Beeb points out, since the union didn't authorise the strike it can't actually order people back to work.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3236031.stm

[Art]

When I was in DK I had a very nice picnic sat by a little pond and wooded area that was apparently created and maintained by the unemployed in this way, whilst my Danish mate attempted to persuade me of the general betterness of the DK way of doing absolutely anything. He was pretty convincing on the subject, and the fact that the people seemed so healthy and happy and  everything was so clean and well maintained could sway me (its very convincing if you live in, say, Camden), but its worth noting that he doesn?t live there anymore :-)

[Matt Timson]

And yet one striker is reported as saying that he will return to work if his union tells him to- funny that!

[Generally Contrary]

The reason that a compulsory work programme works in Denmark but wouldn't work in Britain is one of mindset.  Here in Britain we value people only as economic units.  All this talk of 'let the markets decide people's wages' actually means, 'pay people as little as they can bare'.  Whenever new working rights are introduced they have to be justified by their value to business, i.e. happy workers = productive workers, rather than their value to people.  I long to hear a public debate where one side does not fall into this terribly mechanistic trap, for example, 'let's give people better health and safety at work because it is the right thing to do.  It'll cost business money, but that's the cost of a good society.'  Everything from pension to sick-pay rights to anti-racism laws are justified on the basis that they are good for business.  They should be justified on the basis that they are simply good.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that with this level of public debate can you really see the compusorary working unemployed being treated with dignity?  Or rather as cheap labour?  Let's take the example of YTS.  Or many New Deal cases.  Or the use of 'temporary' labour.  This cheap labour will then be used to undermine the working rights of the most vulnerable workers.  Which, of course, is great for business.  

[Art]

Theres definatley a much greater sence of obligation to the community in DK. Anyone sitting around doing nothing would be very much frounded upon.

[Matt Timson]

I think this kind of goes back to a discussion we had ages ago about the fact that benefits should be higher.

I'd have no objection to raising benefits (and I mean *really* raising them- not just chucking somebody an extra tenner a fortnight) if we had a system like they do in DK.  Although that said, finding a decent job can be a full time job in itself and you'd run the risk of 'unemployment' being your 'job' because you didn't have time for doing anything else...

[ukdane]

2 Things.

1) One of the reasons why this system works better in DK than it would in UK is definately to do with the culture. Speciafically the fact that no one job, or person in a job is any better than another. Ok, so a higher paypackage is represented by more responsibility, or better qualifications. BUT (and I'll take working for Lego as an example here) The man on what would be considered the bottom rung in UK is not seen as anything other than a work colleague by anyone on a rung higher. Likewise, a person in a senior managerial position is regarded equally by the person who cleans the toilets (Ok, this is a bit of a generalisation, but the overall mindset is there).
I had a long conversatin at my interview for Lego with the person who was to employ me, and we were in total agreement, that there are clear differences between the two cultures.
There are very few "titles" or "titled postions" here, and most that do exist are there either because the company isn't Danish by origin, or because the posistion necessitates that their is a title.

2) Shortly after posting the above message, someone rang me up and offered me a job- not sure if I'll take it yet, as the hours are diabolical (I'll hardly get to see my family, and its only a parttime job), AND I might get paid more on the dole than I do if I were to take this job- a tricky position!

[Oddboy]

As the Beeb points out, since the union didn't authorise the strike it can't actually order people back to work.

Way I see it - as it wasn't an official strike, the Royal Mail should put all the "strikers" on disciplinaries & dock thier wages for the hours they were "striking".  They were just taking the pizz really, blagging time off work.

[Generally Contrary]

Many other European countries also have a level of democracy in their workplace that puts Britain to shame.  Work councils, unions on the board etc.

To think we call ourselves a democracy when the environment where we spend the vast majority of our waking lives remains outside the remit of democracy, either directly through participation, or though any substantial governmental involvement.  The mantra of much of the public press appears to be, 'keep government out of business - leave it to the market'.

[Dudley]

the Royal Mail should put all the "strikers" on disciplinaries & dock thier wages for the hours they were "striking"

Oh, don't worry, they're planning exactly that sort of thing.  That's why we call them "evil incompentent capitalist pig scum".


GC - nice icon BTW - we aren't a democracy.  Elective dictatorship, with a sovereign who still has limited but real powers, isn't the half of it.  How about the fact that no party can win office without a fighting fund of about ?12M, thus ensuring that every politician has to be in the pockets of big business?  Or the House of Lords, not even vaguely improved by getting rid of the hereditary element?  Or the enormous and disproportionate power of the (privately-owned) press, egged on by the lack of privacy legislation and relatively mild forms of censure for out and out lying?

We need a written constitution, state funding of political parties, replacement of the House of Lords with an elected body, and newspaper controls simlar to those on television channels, at the very least, before we can call ourselves a democracy.

[petemaskreplica]

well, I got my prog on time, nyeeerrr!