Well here am l waiting for item's l ordered over the net, they got dispatched on the 15/09/2009 paid extra for next day delivery Royal Mail and still no sign of them, they’ll get no sympathy when they cry into their tea cup's the Royal Mail's picking on us, had a mate who was a Posty one of the cushiest job's going. Well l bet most people in jobs have had to except change in working practise's, modernization, etc, to keep their jobs and sadly some people get made redundant it's a fact of life. They’re lucky to be in a job where basically it's safe, peep's still need mail(letters,etc) delivered to their door, but each time they go on strike they do themselves no favour’s, people find alternative’s and bit by bit they lose out, it's them who lose out in the end. I worked for British Rail worked my way up from train cleaner > shunter > Depot train driver. Then came privatization to keep are job's we had to except change, one time the driver had a shunter to Marshall him round the Depot (pull the point's etc), after awhile those drivers who were qualified shunters did a refresher course learning the yard track lay out and then had to Marshall themselves round the yard, and any driver coming to the depot to work had to qualify as a shunter so he could do the same. What were we suppose to do go on strike, lose job; there's plenty of people who would gladly jump at a chance of a half descent job these day's 2.47MILL... out of work. So stop whinging get on with your job (the Railway Union was far stronger than yours), and they had to except change! So deliver my mail or in future l’ll pay the extra and get my item’s delivered privately by Courier all the time. 
PS-have never been let down by Private Courier, I’ve had plenty of items delivered by various companies. How many people in this forum are waiting for letter’s, etc, or sent them and they have not been delivered?
To be fair OLDPHART, we've done pretty much the same as what you're describing re. Marshalling the train that you're driving as regards our daily practices. We've been making changes for years.
For arguments sake we'll say ten years ago, back when it was "easy" delivery staff would come in, throw off and prep up their first delivery, then go out and deliver it. They'd come back, have a break and then go out again covering the same ground on a second delivery. They had all of the mail sorted for them by the nightshift when they'd arrived at 5am, they also had a day shift sorting mail for their second deliveries. That really was the easy life.
Roll on five years and all of those sorters are gone and so are the second deliveries. Delivery staff came in, sorted all of the mail for the whole office then prep theirs deliveries into the new RM2000 frames (one slot per house) and then went out on their delivery which was now bigger than their old delivery, probably half as big again. There are no second deliveries.
Now onto present day and RM have got rid of as many full timers as possible meaning that there are now fewer staff in the morning to sort the mail, which takes upto two hours. Sorters are being taken off sorting to prepare deliveries for part time staff who are on 20hr contracts, depriving the remaining few sorters of the help needed to clear the mail. We then have to prepare our jobs. Added to this the management are lapsing whole deliveries and splitting them between five people so we have to take out an extra fifth of a delivery on top of what we already have.
It's more and more and more.
Whats important to remember is that it isn't a well paid job and many family men in the past have relied on the ability to pick up and hour or two's overtime a few times a week to boost their wages. That overtime has been lost because when someone is sick that job is covered by lapsing (or flexing as they call it now) and not by overtime.
In real terms our wages have gone right down.
RM management would like nothing more than to get rid of anyone with any length of service on full time hours and replace them with students on 1 hour contracts that they can bring in as and when required, yet not have to pay them for their annual leave or sick leave because they only have one hour contracts.
It saddens me to read how some people can see no further than the management side and how they think we're after public sympathy when we aren't. We're just trying to protect a great British institution from spineless "managers" who are only driven by the bonus cheques they receive for cutting back on staff hours.
