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Postal workers to ballot for strike action

3:03pm Sunday 29th June 2008

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Postal workers in Oxford today voted unanimously to ballot for industrial action as their anger mounts over increased workloads and later delivery times.

This morning, post men and women from Oxford city centre, East Oxford and Headington met at the Cowley Workers' Club, in Between Towns Road, Cowley, for a meeting organised by the Communication Workers' Union (CWU).

Their unanimous vote means more than 200 workers could go on strike in the city as soon as August.

Workers will decide whether to walk-out within the next three to four weeks.

The meeting was chaired by Bob Cullen, area processing representative for the CWU, who told the Oxford Mail: "Hopefully management will sit down and negotiate matters. Postal workers are working extremely hard at the moment and generally seem to get a kickback from the public when in actual fact it is Royal Mail abandoning the public and abandoning Oxfordshire.

"It is closing mail centres and closing post offices. Service is deteriorating rapidly."

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Your Say YourOxford Mail

William, Oxford says...
3:50pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Sack the lot of the useless Bast*rds.

All the want is to be difficult.

Bob Cullen...........

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sid, Bicester says...
4:20pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Is it any wonder Royal Mail are pulling out of Oxford.Poor little lambs having to work for a change, whatever next,welcome to the real world chaps and an even bigger welcome to the dole queue(with any luck)

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K, says...
4:35pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Well thats just fine and dandy, where i live we had no mail for 4 days until I called Royal mail to find out why this was I had been waiting for my bank card to come through and a package from Amazon, I had a rather heated chat with a scotish young lady when I told her that none of us along our road had seen a postie for 4 days she told me"well thats strange" I went on to tell her what time our regular man delivers and also what I was waiting for including the bank card(which the bank had sent out on 13th of this month)She told me that they where not responsible for the delivery of such cards and that it was the BANKS fault, I then told her to come off it as all banks use RM for thier deliveries.
Funny thing is the very next day I got a large delivery of mail including the wandering bank card that RM don't deliver!!!
I'm still waiting for my package which should have been here on 26 june according to Amazon and thier tracker says that RM would be delivering it to me!!!
just wondering which century it will all turn up in.

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Mr Ison, England says...
4:40pm Sun 29 Jun 08

You mean a wee lassy replies,'Hoots mohn,och aye dunoo'?

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Dick, oxfordshire says...
4:48pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Hi Sid/William ..
RM employees at Oxford MC are likely to have a range of options open to them on its closure:
1. offered redundancy packages;
2. offered places at Swindon;
3. offered to fill alternative vacancies throughout the Thames Valley Area.

RM is having difficulty in recruiting/maintaini
ng staff levels at Oxford MC and Delivery Offices throughout Oxfordshire .. I don't see sacking umpteen staff will improve the service to Oxfordshire's domestic and business customers.

Finally, Sid, whilst you are enjoying the fact the 'poor little lambs' plight on the dole queue, who will be paying for them being there ... oh yes, you and me!

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bifocal bill, oxford says...
4:50pm Sun 29 Jun 08

i support the postmen all the way since 70 per cent of mail that i receive is junk which gets shredded asap

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donovan williams, oxford says...
5:39pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Let me just make it clear why rm is closing. The main reason is the fact are cwu is so strong by closing us down all the other cwu through out uk would break down. They know this and this is why there taking action to shut down oxford mc. I work for royal mail and i will put money on it that when the mc shuts down it wont be longer than 5years before there are plans for a new building. Oxford mc struggles with the mail they have at the moment now think of how much harder that struggle will get to divert all mail to swindon from little offices such as thame.

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Steven, Oxford. says...
6:00pm Sun 29 Jun 08

I posted two items in Oxford on Wednesday afternoon before the final collection and neither have been delivered so far

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William, says...
7:19pm Sun 29 Jun 08

donovan williams wrote:
Let me just make it clear why rm is closing. The main reason is the fact are cwu is so strong by closing us down all the other cwu through out uk would break down. They know this and this is why there taking action to shut down oxford mc. I work for royal mail and i will put money on it that when the mc shuts down it wont be longer than 5years before there are plans for a new building. Oxford mc struggles with the mail they have at the moment now think of how much harder that struggle will get to divert all mail to swindon from little offices such as thame.
Nobody wants to hear you excuses Sir.

You and your co-workers refused to change with the time,something of a "had it too good for too long" about it.

You have nobody to blame but yourself.

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Santa, says...
7:20pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Well F*ck me,what to do now?

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Sheffield Postal Worker, Sheffield says...
8:08pm Sun 29 Jun 08

@ William - Absolute crap, you have a worse service now than you did 10 years ago, so this in your opinion is a good thing? I don't think so. Creeping privatisation and cuts are the result of the poor service you are seeing. Get off your high horse and read some facts about the postal service of today.

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Questioner, Abingdon says...
8:12pm Sun 29 Jun 08

Isn,t this the best news of the day? Good riddance to the lot of 'em! Hopefully they will be out until Christmas this time, iced chops and fritters do not taste so good in November. Clearly if they can afford to strike they are getting too much money for what little they actually do, and putting the mail in the wrong letterboxes. Never, in the deliverers history has so little been done by so many.

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ERIK, oxford says...
8:15pm Sun 29 Jun 08

lets face it, the main reason Oxford posties "lose" our post is because they either nick it or dump it in a ditch somewhere because they are too lazy to deliver. Thats if it ever leaves the so-called efficient cowley sorting office

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Mr Ison, England says...
8:26pm Sun 29 Jun 08

It's the stairs climbing of the student and affordables that Sheffield posty finds wearisome.

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Mr Ison, England says...
8:48pm Sun 29 Jun 08

I may strike,no more flying for me until legroom is reserved for the tall and not the COD PIE.

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David, wantage says...
7:57am Mon 30 Jun 08

Posties are the salt of the Earth. Yes, there are a few exceptions, as there are in all walks of life, but in the main they are a sterling bunch who work in all weathers to deliver mail to either an ungrateful or disregarding public.

They are up at the crack of dawn to sort the mail then deliver it.

There will be errors made in such a large organization with such a massive throughput but percentage-wise, not many, I'll bet.

Why is it that people only promote the mistakes and don't comment on the fantastic service they've had over the years.

I'm not connected to Royal Mail in any way except as a very appreciative customer.

Well done and thank you, all posties.

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Dave, Oxford says...
9:06am Mon 30 Jun 08

Oh no, if they are giving the posties more letters to post they are going to have to find much bigger hedges to hide them all in when they don't deliver them.
Sack em all RM. Go on do it today. We won't notice the difference.

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Henry's Mum, says...
1:51pm Mon 30 Jun 08

Maybe some of you people who think being a postie is easy. I agree with David up at the crack of dawn and out until all hours as the the workload is so heavy these days. Are any of these 'moaners', 9-5 office workers,factory workers - who as soon as the clock says hometime - off they go. Or even curtain twitchers who have nothing else better to do than clock the postie. An any work enviroment there are 'bad apples' no one pats the good workers on the back - who are out in all weather to deliver something that has cost a pittance to post. Before you knock at the workforce - look at the management who sit in their ivory towers thinking of another burden to put on our posties.

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Banbury Postie, Banbury says...
4:14pm Mon 30 Jun 08

Top Bloke David.
Posties may make mistakes,but in every job people make mistakes!
Most of the time the reason why there are mistakes is Royal Mail are sending posites out on rounds what they are not trained to do.

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Retired RM Manager, says...
5:25pm Mon 30 Jun 08

As a retired RM Manager who started of as a postman, I can assure you all that the problem is deep seated within the Oxford branch of the CWU. Bob Cullen fails to inform the public that one main reason for heavier mail bags is down to the new working practices that they have implemented. 6 delivery postman/women share 6 deliveries. Each week one of the staff of 6 will have the whole week off and the other 5 cover the vacant delivery. This means that each of the postmen/women have one week off every 6 weeks. The constant moaning of "junk" mail having to be delivered is again a smoke screen by the CWU. This so called "junk" mail represents 80% of Royal Mails income and without it the business would be in deep trouble. having managed a large delivery office I can tell you that OMC are always looking to find a reason to strike. The sooner it closes the better. Bob Cullen and his cronies will not be happy until Royal Mail is brought to its knees.

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TJ, oxford says...
11:26pm Mon 30 Jun 08

So this is a stirke vote for the delivery staff is it? So why was the meeting chaired by "Captain Birdseye Socialist extreme Bob Cullen" from Oxford MC.

Why is it only Oxford who are voting for strike action and not every other delivery office in the Country?

Because Bob ia forcing them out in an attempt to stop the closure of the Mail Centre which was also caused by Bob and his endless strike ballots.

Get a grip, get paid for 8 hours then work 8 hours, end of.

But to go on strike and deprive us of our post to further your own political and workshy agenda is just wrong.


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postie, oxford says...
10:40am Tue 1 Jul 08

I cant understand why the Oxford Mail have once again got the whole story wrong. The front page picture was of the Mail Centre, which is not affected in this . And according to delivery staff, there was about 30 people at the meeting on Sunday, not the 200 that was quoted. I also know that none of the posties would vote to strike anyway, and would prefer to negotiate. When people are forced into a room or car-park and asked to vote on strike action, the majority will always vote yes because of peer pressure, and nothing else. The union in the Oxford area are very good at manipulating things and making people think that they are striking for a good reason when they're not. A good Union would sit and negotiate at every stage-not force people to lose money when they feel like it.
I'd also like to add, that the retired manager has also embellished a few things, in saying that the posties get one week of in six. They do, yes, but have to work a six day week, but only actually get paid for five. Therefore they are actually accumulating those days off.

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Ian Sternberg, Harwell says...
11:15am Sun 6 Jul 08

And yet again the Oxford Mail Blogsite is crammed
chock-a-block with stupid comments from Right-Wing idiots Who wouldn't know what a Delivery Bag was if They tripped over one !

If some of the
Anti- Posties lobby would get Their Fat Arses out of Their Ideological Armchairs & went out & did a Postal round in all weather & at all hours then mayby They wouldn't be so keen to slag off Our
hard-working Postal Workers .

The Posties are the people Who do the job - They are the experts Who know what They are talking about - and We should be listening to Them & giving Them Our support .

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