Is a postal strike really going to work?

[Tricky Dicky]

Realistically, all I'll notice is a drop in the number of Domino's Pizza leaflets & discount vouchers for the local garden centre, so, every cloud...

Indeed, was going to post something similar. I get useful mail through the letterbox once at week tops, a strike with less garbage through the door will be an advantage.

Quite honestly, I wouldn't care if they stopped house deliveries completely, if there was somewhere open 24 hours a day I could go to once a week to pick up anything for me.

 

[Arkwright]

Might be wrong but I thought the pensions had already been taken away from Royal Mail ownership and underwritten by the Government.

Letter post is down and yet parcel post is up, Royal Mail is struggling to compete with My Hermes on price and with the current Pricing in Proportion and small and medium parcels Royal Mail is has lost a huge amount of business to it's competitors. I don't always think that Privatisation works and yet Royal Mail does need investment in order to move on and grow it is just a question of whether the funds come from the Government or Third party investment.

My concern running a small rural Post Office is whether the contract to use me as a collection / delivery point will be kept or whether it will go up for tender and the likes of Tesco / Sainsbury's take our business. Uncertain days ahead.

With reference to a strike it just won't work and they will lose the support of the public and customers.

 

[Goldstone1976]

Might be wrong but I thought the pensions had already been taken away from Royal Mail ownership and underwritten by the Government.

Oh? That would dramatically change the attractiveness of an IPO if so.

 

[Fef]

I haven't had a second post for years. I honestly didn't know they still did that.

When I were a lad in London, we had a first post between 7-9 am, a second post 11-12, and a third post 3-4:30.

Now we only get one post 11-12 - so we still get a second post - they've scrapped the first and third post!

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Might be wrong but I thought the pensions had already been taken away from Royal Mail ownership and underwritten by the Government.

Letter post is down and yet parcel post is up, Royal Mail is struggling to compete with My Hermes on price and with the current Pricing in Proportion and small and medium parcels Royal Mail is has lost a huge amount of business to it's competitors. I don't always think that Privatisation works and yet Royal Mail does need investment in order to move on and grow it is just a question of whether the funds come from the Government or Third party investment.

My concern running a small rural Post Office is whether the contract to use me as a collection / delivery point will be kept or whether it will go up for tender and the likes of Tesco / Sainsbury's take our business. Uncertain days ahead.

With reference to a strike it just won't work and they will lose the support of the public and customers.

The RM pension scheme was subsumed into the Government run PPF and the £28 Billion of assets went onto the Treasury coffers , at the time the scheme was transferred into the Pension Protection Fund the deficit was estimated at around £9 Billion. The deficit in the pension scheme was the major obstacle in making RM an attractive proposition to investors which has now been swept under the carpet. All of the big supermarket chains are setting up "click and collect" pick up points for their own online orders and see an opportunity to expand this service by being a 3rd party agent.

 

[sten_super]

My concern running a small rural Post Office is whether the contract to use me as a collection / delivery point will be kept or whether it will go up for tender and the likes of Tesco / Sainsbury's take our business. Uncertain days ahead.

The village I live in lost our post office a couple of years ago (before we moved there) and it hasn't been replaced. There's one in the next village (about 30 minutes walk), not that I've ever used it, and I assume that is our local pickup point for packages.

However, I've used Collect+ on a few occasions (for cycling gear) and they have a collection/delivery point at the convenience store in our village - indeed all of their points are in convenience stores and 'metro'-style local supermarkets. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the shape of things to come.