Firstmed Blog

There have been rumblings of a postal workers strike brewing for quite some time now and it is finally coming to pass this Thurs at 3am. Most seemed to think that they would just be working to rule - not standing on picket lines. Many thought Royal Mail would budge at the threat of strikes. Far from it, Royal Mail seems braced to take the strikers on and sit this one out.

The recent 2.5% pay offer from Royal Mail was rejected by the Union who seek an increase something in the region of 4.8%. The average postal worker gets something around the £311 a week mark. Royal-Mail is not a state-funded utility any more. It has to act like, and perform like a proper commercial enterprise. The trouble is, it lacks the tools with which to compete and has a workforce resistant to such enormous change.

There has been much talk about ‘conditions’ attached to the 2.5% pay offer and indeed the ballott was also about them but nearly all of these have since been removed by Royal Mail apart from an increase in Junk Mail for less money and a loss in ’shift allowance’ by making posties start later.

This is a nasty business and as things stand - everyone is losing. Hopefully a resolution that will be fair to all parties can be found soon.

We at Firstmed heavily rely upon the postal service to ensure that our customers receive their treatments. A large part of the Firstmed solution is convenience, and efficiency so we hope that this dispute is resolved swiftly and our first rate customer service can return to normal.