Quote of the day
“Many workers – particularly in the public sector – are facing pay freezes, compulsory redundancies and even, in the case of Unite members at British Airways, the prospect of pay cuts. We feel that the proposed deal for our Royal Mail members compares extremely well.”
- a spokesman from the Communication Workers Union, after it was announced that Royal Mail staff will receive a 6.9% pay rise over three years and will work shorter hours – down from 40 to 39 hours a week. In addition, Royal Mail has agreed to keep 75% of the workforce as full-time rather than part-time staff, and full-time workers will get extra payments worth up to £1,400 when all the agreed changes to working practices have been made. (full story HERE)
Adam Crozier strikes again. This looks like an awful deal for Royal Mail, which totally fails to appreciate the position it is in.
Crozier is going, so he tries to make peace at any price so he can be seen as having left with the boat steady. What he has really done is given a 6.5% pay rise plus bonusses attached to very small changes in working practice, none of which are absolutely guaranteed to come into force any more than they were before the deal was struck. The bonus need never be collected, the 6.5% could be paid without any modernisation at all.
Now whether you agree that the service needs modernisation or not, I don’t know how Mr Crozier can crow that it is a great agreement without gaining anything in principle upfront.
However, if Browns Mugabenomics reach full tilt over the next two years, holding them to only a 6.5% increase will seem like a miricle of planning!
“I don’t know how Mr Crozier can crow that it is a great agreement without gaining anything in principle upfront.”
Crozier is claiming that the fact the unions will now allow Royal Mail to go ahead with their modernisation plans is, in fact, a big win. Tragic, isn’t it.
I have read reports of this deal with interest. Given the canny way Royal Mail managed the strike, I suspect that all is not exactly what it seems and that the union will have been backed into a corner as they will find out in due course. Certainly there is little public sympathy for such a pay deal in the current climate, so RM has given itself the opportunity to say in the future “but they agreed to a deal which was very generous, how can they now… etc”.
Call me cynical, but I myself have done deals which bought out old payments and agreements, and the staff thought they had won something. They hadn’t of course and the changes we wanted to make happened anyway, by a process of attrition over time. I suggest we wait for a year or so to make judgment on this…
I was in a mail centre today.
I went in all cheerful having only seen the news reports and thinking these guys will be happy today.
NONE of the posties were happy.
-Saturday to be a normal working day
- End of special business advertising post agreements
-End to early shift allowance
a host of other stuff.
They reckon each will LOSE money on their current earnings within 12 months. Its not over yet.
I also made the mistake of saying how the PS strikers seemed to be pushing their luck on keeping the most generous redundancy agreements outside of Fred Goodwin’s office.
“Anyone who earns more than £25,000 should be banned from the UK”
Whoops…
“Anyone who earns more than £25,000 should be banned from the UK”
Then I’m sure he will be pleased to know that I (as a fellow basic rate taxpayer) am currently trying to engineer my own leaving.
Fool.