Lineman for the County

Endorsing the Returns, Prij, 20/03/10

This week marks my third year working for Royal Mail and, coincidentally, another operational change has taken place. Even in this short time there have been noticeable changes, all of which are driven by the mantra 'mail-volumes-are-down-and-people-are-emailing-and-texting'. Roy Mayall has tackled these claims several times, so I needn't repeat his rebuttals.

When I started, weekday working hours were 0800 to 1300 with deliveries starting at 0930. In October 2007, despite union resistance, this shifted an hour back. The next initiative was 'summer lapsing' in June 2008. This involves dividing a duty amongst surrounding walks during the easy summer period. With the exception of Christmas, 'summer lapsing' now occurs Monday to Thursday using the 'starburst' delivery method. That knocked me off the walk I was on at the time (Hallmark Fount) exactly a year after starting. I didn't appreciate that present.

Now exactly three years in, the agreement from last year's strikes is starting to be implemented. Naturally the first change is the money-making one - Door to Door. I imagine having the full-time staff prepare these items is actually an ad-hoc solution, as I recall Courier said this was something the mail-centres would be doing. It's a rare occurrence that some new policy actually helps me do the job - it's usually a choice between making the van and starting on time or preparing the cavity-insulation leaflets. Despite that, I can see this quickly going wrong. Lapsing has the full-timers out doing an easy walk rather than sorting the incoming mail or preparing their buddy walks. The entire point of lapsing was to fill the spare time they supposedly had. No doubt the allure of distributing leaflets during Christmas will prove too profitable for management to turn down. To quote Roy Mayall:

It means turning us into donkeys. The more weight we carry and the faster we deliver it, the better for profitability. It all goes in with the transformation of our working lives from one of service to our customer to one of serfdom to the neoliberal barons and the banking elite who have demanded that nothing will exist on this planet that does not, at the same time, make a profit for them.
-Deconstructing the Agreement (Part 1)

The claim that mail is decreasing is repeated ad-infinitum around the world. When Peter Mandelson appeared on TV saying Royal Mail was being undercut by text messages, 185,000 remote controls flew at screens across the country. If mail volumes are supposedly falling, then the weight is definitely going up. Otherwise you have a paradox: ten years ago entire walks could be completed with one bag, now the pen-pushers are promoting 'starbursting' as a means to reduce time spent walking and lighten the load.

It's not the personal letters with stamps that are decreasing. They were never the meat of Royal Mail's operation - it was business post that subsidised carrying your postcard across our network, fulfilling the Universal Service Obligation. The real fall is in bulk mail handled solely by Royal Mail. Liberalisation of the postal 'market' means all those items from banks and supermarkets, etc are now carried by competitors. By "carried by competitors" I mean carried by me on the final mile. TNT will tell you how much they'd like to be allowed to do the final mile themselves, but they're really talking about the mile around their warehouse on an industrial estate in the city. Citylink has a postal licence, so why is it I'm delivering packets with their frank? The parasites are very uninterested in any address that doesn't lie within their profit zones.

We provide a service to your door six days a week come rain, sleet or snow. Like the pipes that carry your gas and water; and the wires that carry your electricity, calls and data - the post is a natural monopoly. It makes absolutely no sense for people in red uniforms, orange and yellow uniforms to be treading the same ground anymore than it makes sense to dig up the street and lay another company's gas pipe. When you change providers, nothing physically changes.

We're not perfect (and we've admitted as much in union agreements) and you could switch to the competition if not for the fact that they wouldn't even take your personal business, at least not at a reasonable nation-wide flat rate, and RM would have to deliver it anyway. Just remember, every demoralising complaint is another boost to Postcomm's car-boot sale plan for Royal Mail. This is how you get the post office you deserve. After all, privatisation made the trains run on time and stay on track.

Nothing more ironic than postmen writing about their job on the very thing that's supposedly making them redundant.

Edited 12/06/10
[820]