-_-

I think the main culprit here is privitisation, not just the relocation of the sorting office. Relocation shouldnt really matter as long as travel time is accounted for but I suspect a few numbers were crunched during the move to sweep that allocation under the carpet. So you take an entire office, move it 10 minutes away from its initial location and add 20 minutes to every walk to account for return times also (perhaps im being a little generous on the tiimings here but you get the point). 3 or 4 walks adds an hour to the office so you can see it quickly adding up right? I strongly suspect they'd prefer to take hours OUT of the business rather than inject more into the office. I also strongly suspect they're not about to relocate again to a closer location regardelss of whether it would make a saving or not (it wont) so we need to move on from the relocation complaint. It's a 4+year old complaint and its got us all nowhere. Now I dont want to keep banging the drum on this but I really think our best bet is to look at these strikes properly. Several times within this thread (the annual thread) people have talked about unavoidable Royal Mail items, things you cant get in any other way. The strikes are not only for pay but mainly because the post force is being expected to deliver this stuff along side much more profitable items, in increasing volumes within tighter time constraints. In many cases they are even implementing planned overtime which basically means your mail is planned to fail in heavy periods unless you delivery person works over their time, regularly. This is nationwide. Bombarding the CEO with the knowledge that you havent received a letter or whatever isnt doing anything, theyre so many steps removed from the problem their response is just protocol. I believe the postal workers are already fighting for this to not get worse each year so we need to back them instead of coming on here and winding each other up annually. Royal mail needs better resourcing, less profit, tell the CEOs that

I would argue that the "absent mail without a recent strike" sentiment echoed in a few posts within this thread could be classed as an unintentional complaint in their direction. I dont even think there's a managerial spell that can be cast to squeeze those days without staff into a normal days work. How do you absorb the weight of those items into a regular day without some kind of stress on the worker? Ive no idea what their sytems are so perhaps Im wrong but I cant imagine it being much different. I just want to steer the conversation towards a positive local action in favour of the strikes because it seems to me like the sooner they realise how much we rely on this stuff, the sooner we can return to some reasonable normalcy... and my post man will return to his usual cheery self!

I should explain, I joined to rant because it looked like my postman was going to have a nervous breakdown this morning and I had just had a particularly annoying meeting so wanted to yell-type into the void. This happens every year, a few of you have even typed as much, figure it out. Im almost 90% digital now and unlocked the secret cheat codes by being nice to my postman: -If you cant avoid Royal Mail, get it sent tracked. -Claim refunds from royal mail and enjoy the added bonus of it turning up later anyway. Seriously people, its a blessing when you think about it.

You lot need to look for alternatives to Royal Mail. go electric where possible, use alternative delivery operatives and make plans to collect all of these important documents in person from an allocated location. When you really think about it, what is it you need to have delivered to you exclusively by Royal mail? If the answer is "more than you'd think" then maybe you should start thinking about being more active in supporting the strikes. Hurry the decisions along. I see a lot of complaining to the CEO about individual experience but nothing about the overall state of their business. You all know how awful it is for the postal workers at christmas, their workload more than doubles without much additional resourcing to accommodate it. The strikes are more about remedying this sort of thing than it is pay (which is also of importance, of course). As all these problems mount up and the public patience wears thin, postal workers are then being stopped on the street for a ten minute q+a about the situation further adding to the delays. Would you prefer these workers to stay long beyond their working hours to accomodate this as well? It is an incredibly physical job, Kilos of weight over several miles each day, especially with backlog. We cannot and should not expect postal workers to mainline anything we can get elsewhere and shame on any of you computer literate people should you complain about a christmas card this year. We all know it'll be bad until the the new year so lets just make alternative arrangements. UP THE WORKERS!