Bristol mail left piling high in sorting centres
POSTAL strikes which saw workers take action in 19 delivery depots across the Bristol area yesterday will continue on Monday in the shape of a 48-hour walk-out.
More than 400 staff at the Severn Beach distribution centre will strike as part of an on-going national dispute with Royal Mail over pay, jobs and conditions.
Yesterday's action by 1,000 workers left thousands of homes and businesses across the region without their mail.
Postal deliveries will also be drastically reduced today.
The Severn Beach centre handles bulk mail, bank, insurance and internet shopping post, and next week's strike – part of a 20,000-strong walk-out across the country – will again hamper deliveries.
The recent strikes have left millions of items of post stuck in the system.
Kevin Beazer, South West regional secretary of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU), which represents the striking postmen, said: "Over the last two-and-a-half-weeks we have seen 1,000 sorting staff go on strike at the Bristol Mail Centre in Filton, 400 at the Severn Beach distribution centre and over 1,000 in delivery offices across Bristol.
"The result of this is that there is a large amount of post clogged up in the system waiting to be sorted and delivered."
According to the CWU, Royal Mail claims there are 10 million undelivered items of post nation-wide.
Royal Mail refused to confirm the figure, but the CWU said this was a "hugely conservative" estimate.
Mr Beazer said: "I would imagine the backlog in the Bristol area alone runs into millions of parcels, letters and packages, and mail is piling high in the Bristol Mail Centre."
The postal dispute has been running since July, triggered, according to the CWU, by Royal Mail breaking a national pay and modernisation agreement made in 2007.
In the last week Royal Mail bosses have reopened national negotiations with the CWU.
Mr Beazer said: "That is significant progress as they have not talked to us at all in the last few months."
The CWU said Royal Mail bosses were threatening job cuts, changes to working hours, cutting overtime and altering deliveries. But Royal Mail bosses again called on workers to end the strikes.
Spokeswoman Jaquie Stenson said: "More than 90 per cent of Royal Mail's people will be working normally on each of the coming days of local strike action and the company will continue to take every possible step to mitigate the impact of strikes.
"Royal Mail has met the union leadership this week in the latest of more than 60 meetings over recent months, and has again called on the CWU to end the disruption to customers' services.
"At the moment, however, it is clear the union's real focus is on damaging customer confidence, undermining the postal service, and on looking for any route to block the change and modernisation it claims to support."
But Mr Beazer said: "It is about defending the postal service."
3 Comments
by Small Business Owner, Filton
Saturday, September 05 2009, 10:23PM
“Get back to work you idle posites!
I have a small business to run which puts 50k through Royal Mail every month. If this isn't resolved in the next few weeks then i will be switching to other distribution networks. So Royal Mail will loose 300k per year which must be the cost of 15 - 20 workers?
Just makr a choice about whether you want to work for Royal Mail. Stop whinging and moaning about your back-breaking jobs and modernisation. Either accept change or resign your post. I'm sure you will find the grass is greener in the private sector.
There are 2.5 million unemployed desperate for employment, so let's give them a chance!
RM should sack the lot of you tomorrow.”
by Craig, MC
Saturday, September 05 2009, 7:53PM
“Point is this is a really hard manual job, all weathers. Today I got up at 5AM-I do serious hard manual type labour covering more miles than these people morning about their EON bill do in their lifetimes every day. OK so on a light Monday I gain 1 hour, but then a Murphy man digging road would not get out of bed at 5AM for less than £100 quid. For those that say oh yeah plenty of unemployed to take your place I suggest you try the job for a few days.
They get the casuals in even they disappear. OK there are so called ¿senior men¿ within Royal Mail people who have done 40+ years service who get it a little bit easy compared to say a new recruit. I can assure you and new recruit coming into Royal Mail the walks are MASSIVE, the workload is outrageous, the managers are bullies.
It¿s not an easy job plus you get abuse from mentally ill people, dog attacks at doors, complaints about missing mail that has nothing to do with you. It¿s a hard job trust me unless you¿re one of the senior older men, but most organisations have such systems even the police service. If you been in Police 40 years you prob. be custody sergeant in an easy station and relied upon as a good source of knowledge and info. Royal Mail seems to think they can replace intelligence with some ¿walk sequence¿ machine. I can assure you as someone who works for Royal mail the sorting machines they have are total absolute tripe. I would not use them to sort aluminium cans.
Just to say thanks to the genuine customers out there who in the main are elderly who still appreciate the postie. Smashing up the Royal Mail is all part of what I would describe as broken Britain. Royal Mail is a service for the country and it¿s people, it¿s not for profit. Royal Mail made large profits in it¿s last financial year so what¿s the agenda with trying to smash up postal workers? Remember it will be us today and you tomorrow be it your in NHS, Tesco etc. Unions are important and so our freedoms. While Fred the Shred enjoys a £15 million pension the next generation is enslaved with a mountain of debt.”
by Postie Teebs, North
Saturday, September 05 2009, 11:59AM
“Royal Mail has met the union leadership this week in the latest of more than 60 meetings over recent months - Yes 60 meetings but no discussions just lectures. Also if RM want the CWU t stick to the 2007 agreement why are they themselves ignoring parts of it, and in some cases actually cancelling the changes they previously agreed to. For instance "innovative duty structures" such as 4 days weeks, 9 day fortnights and working 5 6 day weeks with the 6th week off, all previously agreed based around an average 40 hour working week was all part of the 2007 agreement - yet RM are cancelling it without discussion and everyone is being told to revert back to 5 day weeks, whatever your personal circumstances are. Is this the Modern RM everyone wants.”