A Tale of Two Companies

British Airways is asking thousands of staff to work for nothing, for up to one month, to help the airline survive. The appeal, sent by e-mail to more than 30,000 workers in the UK, asks them to volunteer for between one week and one month's unpaid leave, or unpaid work. BA's chief executive Willie Walsh has already agreed to work unpaid in July, forgoing his month's salary of £61,000. Last month, BA posted a record annual loss of £401m, partly due to higher fuel bills and other costs. BA has said that hundreds of staff have responded positively to the request.

From the BBC News Website

Workers at seven Royal Mail delivery offices in Scotland have been taking part in a 24-hour strike in a row over job cuts and services. Royal Mail said about 330 staff at two offices in Edinburgh and others in Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath, Grangemouth, Bathgate and Irvine were involved. About 160 distribution drivers in Edinburgh were among thousands in the UK who took action on Friday.

From the BBC News Website

Am I the only person who thinks that Royal Mail staff need, to use a term oft-used by our friends across the pond, to wake up and smell the coffee? We now live in an instant communication age. The Internet, mobile telephones, satellite feeds, wi-fi have all made communication not only immediate but, in most cases, reliable. The opposite, it seems to me, of any business plan Royal Mail may have in operation.

Many people now pay bills on-line and communicate by either e-mail or text. Can you remember the last time you sent someone a letter? Until recently I used to send a cheque to pay my credit card bill; paid my council tax (albeit reluctantly -see Rants passim) by queuing at the post office and sent things such as greeting cards through the post at least a week in advance in the hope the recipient would get the card in time. On occasion they would get nothing at all - I posted £20 in gift vouchers to my mother a couple of years ago and she never received them. Doubtless, some postal worker with a smug grin had helped themselves. Now I pay the majority of my bills on-line. Not only is it infinitely quicker but I know that payment has been received at the other end - and I'm not relying on some couldn't be arsed postie to do their job properly.

Royal Mail's latest strike action - timed, it seems, to affect those who have sent Father's Day cards - will affect many people who still rely on the creaking postal service to deliver. The majority of items I receive through Royal Mail these days is junk mail. So their antiquated views on industrial relations won't really affect me unlike their strikes of years gone by.

Perhaps Royal Mail should take a look at the real world - such as events presently happening at British Airways.

It's time to get real.

Better Than Walking the Streets

A slump in the number of stamped letters being sent in the UK has seen Royal Mail's losses widen to £279m in the year to the end of March. The company said it faced a time of "difficult challenges" after the opening up of the postal service. The results included its first loss from its stamped letters business - which is handling about three million fewer letters each day than a year ago.
BBC business editor Robert Peston said that the results were "pretty grim".
The Mail made a loss of £10m in the 12 months running to the end of March 2007.

From the BBC News website.

Well, strike me down with a recorded delivery. Apparently, three of the worst postal service areas are Dundee, Falkirk and Edinburgh. Now to the good people of Dalkeith this isn't a major surprise. We can get our mail delivered anytime between 10.00am and 2.00pm. No second delivery, of course - it's just the one. But if you expect your mail delivered before you head off to work in the morning then you may wish to nominate yourself for a Comedy Award at this year's Edinburgh Festival.

It's not the first time that I've had mail go missing. Both sending and receiving. I posted a birthday card to my mother the year before last and foolishly enclosed a £20 gift voucher for Marks and Spencer with the card. She never received it.

I've lost count of the number of times people have asked me if I've received mail they've sent me, only for me to give them a quizical look. On one occasion, the postie shoved a recorded mail letter addressed to me through the letter box. Without knocking for a signature. Problem was, he pushed it through my neighbour's letter box. And she was on holiday...

The postal service in this part of the world is, to put it mildly, shoddy. I've complained to Royal Mail in the past but have got nowhere. Apparently my complaint got lost in the post...

I e-mail friends and colleagues now rather than use snail mail. I pay much of my bills on-line, thus avoiding the need for a lethargic postie to think about whether he/she can be bothered to deliver my cheque. A decision helped, incidentally, by Royal Mail's decision to remove the post box from the end of my street meaning it's even more of an effort for me to post mail.

So the news that Royal Mail is losing millions of pounds is hardly startling. But I can already hear the rumblings of discontent among the trade unions who'll doubtless be discussing ballot papers very soon.

And if posties consider strike action through a postal ballot then who knows what may happen....