No the RM have been doing unofficial slowdowns and stuff for a good long while before the national strike hit. There is a massive backlog of parcels to get through, even bigger than the media are reporting it to be.
As an ex employee I can give you guys some insight to whats happened over the past years and some of you are spot on. Before privatisation, Royal Mail operated at a loss of millions per day, overtime was readily available to anyone who wanted and most were still home before their normal duty was finished. Line managers didnt give a hoot either, as long as the mail got delivered it was fine. Deals often were made, give me 8hrs pay for 3hrs job, no problem deal done. Royal Mail has been ruled by the Union for years, whatever management wanted to change no mater how trivial, they had to go into talks with union leaders, at most times local union. (local union agreements). This has been going on up until a few of years ago, and the introduction of no second post. Second post was a very big expence (pay 1 person to delivery 6 letters in most cases at the cost of 2 - 3 hrs pay) and in rural cases the cost of a van. Most cases a 1/3 of the office was meant to return to the office and sort mail, but this never happened as most just went home once they delivered their first delivery being paid 3 - 4 hrs for work they never done. Most line managers were as I was employed from delivery office staff and went on an intense 6 week course, and came of the course and given a line managers post. What has happened in the past few years, Royal Mail started employing Managers from outside the business and started a cost cutting venture, They knew where the problems lied and started to impliment cuts starting from the top. Line managers jobs were cut, second post went, revaluated duties so everyone had to sort before going out on deliveries, these are just some of the things that Royal Mail done. This is the reason you dont get mail early these days. The CWU has obviously made some deals for Royal mail to impliment these things, as to what I dont know. This is where the general public are kept in the dark and dont understand the ill feelings that are going on between them. I would not be suprised if Royal Mail tried going back on agreements that was made before Christmas with regards to job cuts and introduction of new machinery. What I do know is that Royal Mail are losing what cream of the business they have left if both sides dont get their heads together. They have lost millions of pounds in business to rivals already. and the businesses they are losing dont post 2 or 3 letters per day they post thousands every day. But to be fair to Royal Mail they have had a done deal as they have had there hands tied by the goverment on what they can and cant do, as to their rivals have had free hands to take the cream and undercut prices even though Royal Mail has had to still deliver rivals post. As to the delivery staff they had a good thing for to long and they dont like whats happened, they have lost money through changes though their basic pay hasnt been lowered, they dont get overtime as freely as they used to and have to work their full duty. Just to add, parcels are dealt with by parcelforce and are now a seperate company from Royal Mail, though Royal Mail has some agreements to deliver on behalf of Parcelforce.
