Possible DPD Strike Looming Due To Wage Cuts?

[Nelly]

A huge Christmas parcel delivery crisis looms - after DPD cuts wages for 10,000 drivers weeks before December 25. DPD announced it would be cutting the rate for smaller parcels by 65p and has axed a £500 Christmas bonus.

One driver told The Sun newpspaer that the changes would cut their yearly earnings by £6,000, reducing their £40,000 income after tax and expenses by 15%.

They said: "It's a disgrace. To wake up at 6am to find out your income is being slashed that same day shows a complete and utter contempt for the people who actually deliver their parcels."

Further reading here: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/news...cel-deliveries-ahead-of-christmas/ar-AA1NNFTy

DPD drivers are staging what appears to be the first mass walkout in the company’s history, with couriers across the UK downing tools between October 7-9th in protest over devastating pay cuts that could leave some drivers up to £80 per day worse off.

The unprecedented industrial action comes after DPD informed drivers that parcel rates would be slashed by as much as 65p per parcel – a move that sounds eerily familiar to anyone who remembers how Evri gutted their couriers’ earnings earlier this year while announcing robot delivery dogs as a convenient distraction.

Further reading here: https://courierchecker.com/dpd-drivers-to-stage-walkout/

 

[tamzzy]

Holy! They get paid £40k after tax and expenses!?
Blimey sign me up!

 

[Gray2233]

So in a period of massive cost of living spikes, they thought it'd be a good idea to dock tons of drivers?

DPD has a bad, bad track record during Christmas periods to begin with and I'd not trust them after having to deal with how they function as a business in the past. We're talking a good 5-6 years ago now, but they outsource a ton of their customer support around the Christmas periods to extremely questionable call centres such as Echo-U (There's both a Newcastle office and a couple more). The training is shockingly limited at 4 days without proper system access to the point of being useless to onboarded staff who get pushed out the door a few weeks later, they're pretty much told to fob people off as best they can as there's literally no way for the staff hired for that period to function in a productive manner. They do similar with drivers too, hire them on short term with little to no concerns for competence then boom out of the door after the period. Busy periods make sense but DPD take the absolute wee.

I'm not speculating here either, I didn't work directly for them but I have had to deal with them from an intermediate standpoint.

I stopped using DPD many years ago due to them pooping the bed on an order I made from OCUK when I was much younger funnily enough, but my experience in the actual working world soured me to them further.

That said, the source is apparently also "The Sun" so outside of my teenage need to see boobs in the pre-internet age I might take this with a pinch of salt.

 

[BUDFORCE]

That's terrible for the drivers they should strike.

They work bloody hard, ****** stressful job.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Holy! They get paid £40k after tax and expenses!?
Blimey sign me up!

I thought they get around 27k a year before tax. Never knew the wage was so high.

 

[Rroff]

I thought they get around 27k a year before tax. Never knew the wage was so high.

The comment is probably a driver who is picking up a lot of extra work.

Maybe my regular DPD driver will change their mind about hating me for all the 30kg batteries and complete sets of vehicle wheels I have delivered hah.

 

[Rai200]

Holy! They get paid £40k after tax and expenses!?
Blimey sign me up!

Owner/operators earn about £50-60k pre tax but have the cost/upkeep of the vehicle and obviously lose out if it's not working. I imagine many of those costs can offset their tax burden, hence the £40k take home.

 

[Lopéz]

A friend of mine is a DPD driver and he quit last week due to this.

 

[BUDFORCE]

A friend of mine is a DPD driver and he quit last week due to this.

Yea that's awful but also understandable.

We need to start looking after our people not ******** on them, shame on DPD management I bet their not cutting their huge bonuses.

 

[jaybee]

Holy! They get paid £40k after tax and expenses!?
Blimey sign me up!

Is that right? They earn over 50K gross as a basic courier?
That seems high compared to other couriers from what I heard.

They work bloody hard, ****** stressful job.

Is it though?

I'd be miffed with a wage cut but I wouldn't call it a stressful job at all. Follow satnav. Deliver parcel.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Do DPD employ their drivers or do they use “self employed” gig economy type arrangements?

 

[200sols]

I'd be miffed with a wage cut but I wouldn't call it a stressful job at all. Follow satnav. Deliver parcel.

Probably get an unreasonable number of parcels and in limited time to deliver them, dealing with morons on the road, morons in houses/flats. I can image it being stressful.

 

[Vonhelmet]

They refer to the drivers being paid per delivery, which always concerns me. That invariably leads to people driving like nobs because they’re against the clock all the time. I imagine it is quite stressful running lights and parking on the pavement.

 

[Zefan]

Just wanted to pitch in @ stress. There's a big difference between different kinds of stress. The kind that is acute that comes with moment to moment problem solving and time pressures that is in this sort of job, and the more chronic kind that comes from being inside the cogs of a corporate/bureaucratic machine, where you may have responsibility for people and processes, and associated relationship management/internal politics. As someone who is very firmly in the latter, I am very much drawn to describing this sort of delivery job as low stress, however I appreciate that stress remains, simply of a different kind and scale. You certainly don't take your work home with you.

 

[Vonhelmet]

You certainly don't take your work home with you.

Not unless you have to deliver a parcel to yourself.

 

[pastymuncher]

You certainly don't take your work home with you.

Not having a dig or anything but we have a lady that works for Evri and she is a star and goes way beyond what you would expect from a courier. I guess she is classed as self employed and she has her own long wheelbase Mercedes van. We have had her turn up at 10pm delivering a parcel before and she says she starts at 05.30-06.00 to load her van up. She never has bank holidays off and seems to work seven days a week. Being that busy all the time I would say that she does take her work home with her what with thinking about parcels that she hasn't been able to deliver that day for one reason or another and planning the next day out and finding time to have her van maintained. I have worked all around the clock before as when I left school I had a job working for the biggest fishing company in the south west (shoreside not on the boats). In busy times, mainly the summer, we would start at 02.00 and not finish until 22.00 and as a youngster I could do it but I was always so very tired. Right now, even if I didn't have my medical problems I couldn't do that job for any money. She is in her late 40's at a guess and she's working all these hours and probably getting paid nowhere near enough for it yet she does a stellar job and goes the extra mile. I don't know if DPD drivers are employed by DPD or self employed but either way it's a crappy job and I bet there are consequences if they don't meet their daily quota plus they are tracked everywhere because even we can look up and see where they are if we have a delivery due that day. It must be quite a stressful job and there is no way I would want to do it.

 

[ajm2704]

I currently work at dpd as a driver, the self employed drivers have had their pay cut but shift managers and employed drivers have had a pay rise. Get that........also the quoted earnings here are wrong, it's 40 000 annually before the costs. Fuel, van payments if you contract a van from dpd themselves, goods in transit insurance, public liability insurance, commercial insurance, tyres, maintenance etc. Take that away and you are looking realistically maybe 34-36 thousand a year..... if you own a route that has high enough volumes. And yes it can be stressful as dpd demand deliveries to be completed within the hours time slot the customer is given not to mention the pre 10.30 and pre 12.00 deliveries. Drivers are pushed into not taking a break during the day because of time constraints. 12 hours plus a day without a break and then dpd tell drivers they are cutting their pay? So yes thats why there is a walkout......add all that to xmas peak period where drivers are delivering 170-200 stops a day. Dpd as a company are money hungry and have no care for drivers mental and physical health. All they care about is how much money can line the top dogs pockets.......

 

[Maximum Triceratops]

Just wanted to pitch in @ stress. There's a big difference between different kinds of stress. The kind that is acute that comes with moment to moment problem solving and time pressures that is in this sort of job, and the more chronic kind that comes from being inside the cogs of a corporate/bureaucratic machine, where you may have responsibility for people and processes, and associated relationship management/internal politics. As someone who is very firmly in the latter, I am very much drawn to describing this sort of delivery job as low stress, however I appreciate that stress remains, simply of a different kind and scale. You certainly don't take your work home with you.

Been on both sides of that fence, as a delivery driver and now a Manager, as you said different kinds of stress, the former being once you are done for the day you can forget about until the next day

 

[Diddums]

I currently work at dpd as a driver, the self employed drivers have had their pay cut but shift managers and employed drivers have had a pay rise. Get that........also the quoted earnings here are wrong, it's 40 000 annually before the costs. Fuel, van payments if you contract a van from dpd themselves, goods in transit insurance, public liability insurance, commercial insurance, tyres, maintenance etc. Take that away and you are looking realistically maybe 34-36 thousand a year..... if you own a route that has high enough volumes. And yes it can be stressful as dpd demand deliveries to be completed within the hours time slot the customer is given not to mention the pre 10.30 and pre 12.00 deliveries. Drivers are pushed into not taking a break during the day because of time constraints. 12 hours plus a day without a break and then dpd tell drivers they are cutting their pay? So yes thats why there is a walkout......add all that to xmas peak period where drivers are delivering 170-200 stops a day. Dpd as a company are money hungry and have no care for drivers mental and physical health. All they care about is how much money can line the top dogs pockets.......

That's not just DPD though, that's all of them. It's such a cutthroat industry. The core problem is me. And you. And everyone else on these boards and any other customer of these companies. Everyone wants everything right now and for £lol. So it's a race to the bottom.

 

[Zefan]

Not having a dig or anything but we have a lady that works for Evri and she is a star and goes way beyond what you would expect from a courier. I guess she is classed as self employed and she has her own long wheelbase Mercedes van. We have had her turn up at 10pm delivering a parcel before and she says she starts at 05.30-06.00 to load her van up. She never has bank holidays off and seems to work seven days a week. Being that busy all the time I would say that she does take her work home with her what with thinking about parcels that she hasn't been able to deliver that day for one reason or another and planning the next day out and finding time to have her van maintained. I have worked all around the clock before as when I left school I had a job working for the biggest fishing company in the south west (shoreside not on the boats). In busy times, mainly the summer, we would start at 02.00 and not finish until 22.00 and as a youngster I could do it but I was always so very tired. Right now, even if I didn't have my medical problems I couldn't do that job for any money. She is in her late 40's at a guess and she's working all these hours and probably getting paid nowhere near enough for it yet she does a stellar job and goes the extra mile. I don't know if DPD drivers are employed by DPD or self employed but either way it's a crappy job and I bet there are consequences if they don't meet their daily quota plus they are tracked everywhere because even we can look up and see where they are if we have a delivery due that day. It must be quite a stressful job and there is no way I would want to do it.

That's cool, but it's like you've ignored the actual content of my post. Even then, you say yourself she goes way beyond what you would expect, so it maybe not the best of examples. The routes are all planned for you, so there's none of that. Also, tiring, physical, busy jobs are not necessarily stressful by their nature. I served in the military (RAF, but still counts, if barely ) so I understand stress, but even then the least stressful times were the ones where I was most busy.

I personally find the idea of delivery driving appealing, purely from the standpoint of stress management vs middle management corporate hell.