BNP Accuses Royal Mail Of Dumping Leaflets

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by danielf

You can't escape the validity of the syllogism though.

There needs to be more than one supposition to be drawn on for it to qualify as a true syllogism - so in this context I believe I can.

---------- Post added at 17:28 ---------- Previous post was at 17:25 ----------

Originally Posted by danielf

Surely, you did in post #17?

No, read it again - afford due consideration to the context of the statement to which I was replying.

[QUOTE=Mr Angry;35224621

Humour bypass?

Actually it took 3 reads to realise what i had wrote

QUOTE]

Yes, I acknowledged this in my earlier post of 16.55 - sorry to have you chase your tail.

They are allowed to refuse to deliver material under the conscience clause - which was why it was introduced.

By way of background / explanation.

"We have a national agreement with Royal Mail with a conscience clause which allows individuals to exercise their right to not deliver material which they find offensive or believe their customers may find offensive.

"It is not specific to any political party. We are protecting the rights of our members to be safe at work. Royal Mail has a responsibility to ensure the safety of their employees".

"We have had instances of delivery workers being threatened, chased and spat at for delivering some election leaflets. We will support individuals who feel strongly about delivering these items. Postal workers are well within their rights to refuse to deliver offensive material."


Bob Gibson, CWU national official.

Yes ,i suspect that Roy Mayall is saying that they can't refuse to deliver junk mail is from the pespective of a persecuted postman/woman ,i also believe that there is a voluntary aspect to this type of mail delivery hence the comment on not being able to claim overtime if they take longer doing their normal round because they also have a bag of junk mail to deliver ,for which they are being paid extra

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

Humour bypass?

Originally Posted by martyh

Actually it took 3 reads to realise what i had wrote

Never mind that, it took me five attempts to type my reply!!

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

If it is true that they have dumped the leaflets then they have invoked / exercised their right to do so.

You do seem to be suggesting that they have invoked their right to refuse to deliver the leaflets by dumping them ,which obviously they have not .What they have done is looked at the leaflets in the sorting office decided they either want to "pretend"(dump) that they have delivered them and claim the 1.67p per item ,or they have looked at the leaflets and decided to have their own little protest against the BNP by dumping them in the BNP candidates back garden .If they were going to invoke their right to not deliver offensive material then the leaflets would have remained in the sorting office untill another postie took them out .They cannot decide that the leaflets are offensive after they have agreed to take them out with full knowledge of what they are

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 17:39 ----------

Originally Posted by mr angry

never mind that, it took me five attempts to type my reply!!:d

lol :d

[j52c]

Originally Posted by martyh

I was told by a postman friend i used to drink with a few years back ,i am researching that to see if it is still the case

I know it was back in the 1970s when I was a postman that we did not get paid extra for delivering that type of mail, it had to be inserted with your normal delivery over a week.

At that time nearly every household had the football coupons belivered by mail, and some houses had both Littlewoods and Vernons, and each house had it's own address on the envelope. What we used to do was deliver the coupons the house if it had mail for that day, and similar for the next few days in the hope that you would clear the backlog, if however you still had some left you were allowed to deliver the remaining by working overtime, but you were only allowed 3 hours to do it in.

[djstevie]

Originally Posted by Sparkle

This happens to me quite a lot too, in fact the saturday before last I was awaiting the doorbell to ring for a parcel but never did. Sly buggers dropped the red note through the outer slide door. The problem was that I didn't find it until nearly 3pm by which time the collection office was long closed, wasted my morning and early afternoon awaiting that parcel. I was furious and gave the guy behind the window an earful on Monday.

On an episode of a Scottish comedy show called "Chewin' the Fat", the incident you described happens, where the postie gets "caught" putting the red slip through the door but doesn't have the parcel. Hilarity ensues !

Being an ex postie that really is shocking if the postie does indeed do that. My pet HATE though was people complaining that i never rang their doorbell or knocked their door when i did SEVERAL times only for them to either not hear it or be pottering about in their back garden. I then would need to carry the item about with me for the rest of the delivery so why any postie would want to put the "red card" through without ringing the doorbell is beyond me. I never knew of ANY posties that actually done this though.

If however the postie was putting the card through without actually bringing the item then that is inexcusable. While not defending that type of action unless you have worked for Royal Mail you cannot understand just how much pressure these guys are under to complete their deliverys. Some get 4 hours to make a delivery that can take at the minimum of 5 hours and work the extra hour for nothing just to make sure that they complete and dont suffer the bullying and harrasment that so often occurs in the job.

When i was last there (2009) we did get paid up to 3p for election material and could refuse to deliver if we didnt want to however someone else would then need to deliver the items.

[Hom3r]

Originally Posted by Chris

Personally, I would rather post dog turds though someone's door than the racist bile of the BNP. I can understand a postie not wanting to do it. Having said that, if there are official channels that allow them to object on grounds of conscience, there's no excuse for not using them.

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

I agree.

I agree as well.

[ZrByte]

Originally Posted by martyh

I was told by a postman friend i used to drink with a few years back ,i am researching that to see if it is still the case

Its true or at least was true, we have a new agreement with regards to unaddressed mail which may mean RM managers may try to slip the election material in with our regular unaddressed mail.
We used to get paid 1.6p per regular unaddressed item and 2.3p for larger unadressed mail with a maximum of 3 pieces per household and an average of 550 - 600 calls per route.
Last year during the last big dispute we agreed to instead be paid £20 per week and allow up to 5 pieces per household. According to RM management this would balance out as some weeks we would get no households and still be paid the £20 which would offset the pay lost on the weeks when we would have 5. This didn't play out how they said and last year I was down about £60 compared to the older pay system and I only kept check for about 6 months.
We used to get paid about 4.5p per election item which could add up quickly.
On one week last year I earned an extra £100, the route had 800+ calls and three different sets of election material. Under the new system in the same situation I would end up with £20 because it will be counted as regular household unaddressed mail. Though there is likely to be another dispute over this as it wasn't specified in the agreement yet rumours suggest that RM plan to enforce it.

I can see a lot of Posties refusing to deliver them if thats the case and invoking the clause. The clause only applies to households or unaddressed mail AFAIK. But it would have to be declared in the office and someone else would be assigned to deliver them. This is deffinatley gross misconduct if any payment was accepted for the dumped items.

Originally Posted by martyh

funny aren't you

anyhoo ,they get 1.67p per item of unaddressed mail (leaflets)and they aren't allowed to refuse to deliver them



http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/roy-mayall/diary

that article was from 2009

As per my post above we can refuse to deliver it and could even when this article was written though we needed a good reason. The pay in that article was accurate but only for standard households, not election material.

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by martyh

You do seem to be suggesting that they have invoked their right to refuse to deliver the leaflets by dumping them ,which obviously they have not .What they have done is looked at the leaflets in the sorting office decided they either want to "pretend"(dump) that they have delivered them and claim the 1.67p per item ,or they have looked at the leaflets and decided to have their own little protest against the BNP by dumping them in the BNP candidates back garden .If they were going to invoke their right to not deliver offensive material then the leaflets would have remained in the sorting office untill another postie took them out .They cannot decide that the leaflets are offensive after they have agreed to take them out with full knowledge of what they are

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 17:39 ----------



lol :d

Again Marty, I was not saying they were right to have "dumped" the leaflets (if indeed they were "dumped").

I was merely stating that by "dumping" the leaflets they had (and were obviously) exercising their right not to deliver them and were sending a very clear message (whether rightly or wrongly in its delivery (pun alert)) to that effect.

Potential syllogism?

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

Again Marty, I was not saying they were right to have "dumped" the leaflets (if indeed they were "dumped").

I was merely stating that by "dumping" the leaflets they had (and were obviously) exercising their right not to deliver them and were sending a very clear message (whether rightly or wrongly in its delivery (pun alert)) to that effect.

I think "exercising their right" is a bit too generous on your behalf ,however i would agree that they/him/her are making a protest in the way they chose to not deliver them

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by martyh

I think "exercising their right" is a bit too generous on your behalf ,however i would agree that they/him/her are making a protest in the way they chose to not deliver them

But as ZrByte acknowledges in his post above it is a right, a negotiated right. How they chose to exercise that right, particularly if they performed actions which are unwarranted, is the issue at hand.

[devilincarnate]

As a ex-postie I have to say that if the pamphlets were dumped the posties will get sacked as if they leave the office they must be delivered. This is still the case as well.
If there is any objection it needs to made in the letter delivery office (LDO) before been taken out.

The posties still to get paid extra for the leaflets that they deliver (when i was doing it it was about 2-3p per one delivered, So they do mount up to boosting the wage.

Also with all the changes that have now gone on in the RM since i left have driven a lot of posties that i know to get fed up?

I forgot that the election material stuff you did not get paid for.

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

But as ZrByte acknowledges in his post above it is a right, a negotiated right. How they chose to exercise that right, particularly if they performed actions which are unwarranted, is the issue at hand.

Agreed .
My personal take on this should it be proven of course ,is that it was a protest against the BNP as the postie would have known what the leaflets where .
One question ,the offence by a postman of withholding mail ,does that apply in this case as it is unaddressed mail or junk mail ? if it does then that is quite a serious offence ,i believe there are cases where postmen have been jailed

At the end of the day, if they are being paid to deliver it they should do just that. They do not have to read it, just stick it through the door.

When i was a paper boy years ago, I had no choice of what leaflets I had to shove through hundereds of letterboxes, I was glad of the extra couple of quid i would get for doing so.

You could argue that no one likes getting bills, so therefore not deliver them also, or in my case, I don't like pizza all that much, so you can forget me delivering any Dominos menus.

No?

[Mr Angry]

No.