Entertainment For Lively Minds
Return to Sender
(Please press play on the Youtube video and then read this simultaneously. Go on. It’ll be a laugh.)
I’m going back into work tonight. Tonight, and every night until Christmas Eve, as I agreed when I signed my contract. A contract I now know not to be worth the paper it was printed on. The pay dispute incurred after a soon-to-be-privatised Royal Mail hired the cheapest, nastiest, most incompetent recruitment agency it could, has now become a national news scandal. For the privilege of working for minimum wage and being treated like scum by pinched-faced hirelings with additional duties, the Christmas Casuals and I are not going to be paid – perhaps ever.
But I am still going back into work tonight.
I am 41 years old. I’ve worked all my life until the last two years, during which I’ve been pretty much continuously unemployed after being made redundant, along with some brilliantly talented colleagues. There’s been the odd freelance writing gig, but it doesn’t pay the bills. All I want to do is work. And that is what I intend to do, cycling 10 miles across town in foul weather in order to do so.
Not for Royal Mail, not for David Cameron’s bland, branded, PowerPoint-presented vision, not for any boss. Just for me, and the admittedly dimming sense of pride I feel in doing a day’s work; in feeling my back ache after some manual labour; and, yes, probably like old Boxer the horse, in feeling halfway alive simply by doing so.
And that is why I’m going back into work tonight.
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Damn, that makes me proud.
One of our own with that much pride and backbone.
Sorry, something in my eye.
Power to your pedals, Stick.
I wish you a Christmas miracle and a gainful New Year.
I wish you well
It's good to hear your fighting spirit.
sorry: WARNING I AM GOING TO SWEAR
I think it is appropriate here. Look away if it offends.
they don't fucking deserve you - none of them.
Agreed..
An up arrow for all of the above, more power to you, sir.
Good Post!
Good on you, hope something better turns up for you in the New Year. I admire your spirit, great thread, although not that great for you I guess.
I feel clean when I'm working
As the Proccies once sang. Good for you, Mr Stick. Yours is a sane and decent response to a situation that is neither of those things.
Stick
May 2012 be the year you deserve.
Good on you
Hope the New Year brings a bit more joy for you
Take this advice
and have a great Christmas
Good man
Good man Stick .
Stick
You are a good and honourable man. May 2012 bring you much more than this.
You absolutely deserve it.
Merry Christmas.
Well done my good man.
Never realised I Vow To Thee My Country was actually Holst's Jupiter. (Have I got that right?)
Yes, you're right
Stick, your dignity in adversity deserves so much more. Here's hoping that 2012 is a massive improvement.
Holst's Jupiter - The Bringer Of Jollity
was also the inspiration for this:
Manfred Mann's Earth Band/Joybringer
I've been on a bit of a voyage of rediscovery of the Earth Band recently. They did some nifty material.
Also inspired
"Make Your Stash" by early 70s Oz rockers Daddy Cool (covered here more bluesily by Mike Rudd & Spectrum)
I'm proud to virtually know you Stick
You're a good man. Keep writing this stuff. And I hope you and yours have great Christmas.
Mister ...
... you're a better man than I.
Keep the faith
thanks for sharing that Stick. I hope things work out for you
A clanging note of discord sounds...
If you are not going to be paid do not go in. Work does not create self respect, being paid for work does. If you do work and are not paid, it breeds anger. At the very least. Plus your agency will simply continue to fuck people over if people keep showing up. Only by wrecking their contract with the Royal Mail will they learn.
IMHO obviously.
I agree with you
my comment above was just on the quality of the guy to think that way and it recommended the same outcome in less reasoned language!
Many thanks all
You really are lovely. And 'Sprocket? I'll hang onto my daft scruples for now, thanks - and f*cking sue the c*nts later.
Stick, I don't know the news/background to this...
...but your integrity is mind-blowing and inspiring. If there was a way to organise a whip-round for you here without embarrassing you, I'm sure loads of us would be there.
If there's some kind of contractual crap going on,keeping going in can ONLY add weight to your case: and then go see your local CAB and write to your MP when its over - and don't let the b*****ds get away with it.
Less integrity than bull-headed idiocy I think!
My mate just made me laugh by calling me a "principled starving c*nt out of some Zola novel". And yeah, I'm contracted. The background: all over the country, Casuals are walking out of the depots, because they're not being paid. But thanks very much Colin: I saw your post on the Year thread, and admired you a hell of a lot for your decisions. Bloody good on you for joining the CAB too, for giving a toss, and making a stand. I sincerely hope 2012 brings good things for you.
Thanks Stick...
...it takes a hell of a lot of something or other (integrity/bull-headed-idiocy/whatever!) not to drown in a sea of bitterness and despair in your position.
I'm not sure (if were wearing the CAB hat) that I would *necessarily* advise someone in your position to keep on going into work - I'd certainly want to know the facts and be clear of the contractual relationships and obligations signed up to before recommending a course of action. But SOMEONE is in breach of contract if they are with-holding payment or otherwise failing to pay you. That is, simply, against the law. By going into work and fulfilling your side of the contract you have, however, an iron-clad case whenever it comes to the crunch. SOMEONE will have to carry the can for this - if the agency goes out of business, the govt-owned RM will have a huge moral obligation to do the right thing, regardless of the purely legal situation. Cameron will not want to be tainted by a public body grotesquely shafting casual employees.
Stating the bleeding obvious
The Royal Mail have a contract with the agency and if the agency goes bust the receiver will want the Royal Mail to pay what they owe so that they can rack up huge fees, dispose of the agency's assets for bugger all (possibly to the original directors who will open for business under almost the same name the next day) and, after a year or so, give creditors 3p in the pound. If there ever was a law that needed reforming its the one regarding liquidation of limited companies. The last time I was caught by this it was quite clearly a stitch up. The court bailif said it looked like it had been planned very carefully.
I admire your stance Stick, I hope 2012 is better for you.
From what is reported in a Guardian piece...
...3 days ago (online), the agency in question is part-owned by the RM. They will surely have to pay up/honour the contracts in due course.
Didn't know that Colin
That just makes it worse.
Swedish derogation...
New legislation came in this year to provide additional rights to agency workers to 'protect' them from being in a worse position than permanent employees.
Of course, like anything else, it wasn't thought through and many large companies (Tesco is another) are now setting up their own staffing agencies so that they can avail themselves of what is known as the Swedish Derogation.
Other companies are simply not taking on agency staff any more; some because they genuinely couldn't afford to.
More about it here.
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2011/11/07/58130/legal-opinion-th...
(double post...)
...
Royal Mail
Kept me similarly "off the couch" and depression at bay when my freelance work dried up 5 years ago. I lifted mail sacks off planes at Stansted Airport and sorted the buggers during the night. Kept the wolf from the door and the manual lifting and shifting certainly got the serotonin buzzing again.
Stick - Good work old bean - Raise a glass to yourself and the good old Royal Mail.
There but for the, etc
I was made redundant in April 2009 and was unable to find new employment until January 2011. Just before I got my old job back, I did the Royal Mail online tests and got through to the interview stage. I thought I could do worse than walking around in the fresh air, earning a bit of desperately needed cash and hopefully losing a bit of weight in the process. There were 30 of us going for 15 places in Battersea, on three-month contracts. I didn't get the job. I can see now what a lucky escape I had.
I couldn't have done what you're doing, mate.
I join the many saluting you.
Thanks all
I've gone and given myself a cold now, by continually cycling in the rain. Feel a bit stupid really.
Every day now, one of the line managers patrols the sorting aisles with a clipboard asking who's got paid yet and who hasn't. Nobody has. It's quite comical, in its sheer hideous predictability.
Still writing up Blog, here:
http://night-mail.blogspot.com/
EDIT: Ah, just checked bank balance, and I have got paid by RM, a week in arrears. £34. I'll just repeat that. Thirty-four of your English pounds. And thirteen pence.
...bookmarked.
Still can't quite get my head around what's going on to you and your fellow postpeeps.
Tell me about it
Although, thankfully, we've just got bunged some emergency cash for Xmas.