Reward for failure

Ed P

The comparison with McGregor is apposite. This is a Labour government out-doing the most right-wing Tory government since WW2 in union-bashing and selling off. It won't leave Cameron much space on the right for traditional Tory policies, as NuLab have stolen them all.

teledu

But New Labour are there to look after the working man such as your postie from evil, pro-privatisation demons like Crozier aren't they? Failure to do so might just drive the working man to vote BNP.
How will Alexander vote at the next election Majorie? Has he said?

Stuart Saint

It has taken the Post Office management 30 years to find their spines; if Crozier achieves modernisation and, under the next Tory government, privatisation, he will be well worth it.
If he doesn't, sack him. That's the way it works.
I don't know the name of my postie because I've had 5 in the last year . . .

Tiberius

What makes Alexander so special, that he should expect the taxpayer to guarantee his retirement plans, when millions in the private sector have already suffered what he fears?

Nicholas

Talking to my postman this is clearly not just about "modernisation" in the truest sense. The time and motion software (Canadian I believe and based on something relevant like rubish collection) which manages postal routes imposes a set time per delivery which anybody actually receiving mail knows is bunkum. Every house is different and every delivery will be different to a greater or lesser degree.

Those imposing the system have never gone out on the rounds to see for themselves. Like so much of "blue chip , corporate Britain" nasty people are sponsored to drive to the bottom line, earning huge rewards in the process whilst redundancies - not because the company is going to the wall but to increase profitability for a minority - have become an accepted part of the job market. In my view companies who cause redundancies to boost profits where their assets already exceed a certain amount should be taxed. After all, the staff joining the dole queue are a burden on the taxpayer. The redundancy pay-off equation delighting the bean counters might not be so attractive if it came with a hefty penalty.

So, painful as it is to acknowledge, the guys in black hats are not just the union people. There are black hats on both sides, perhaps rather more sitting in the management offices, enjoying their bonuses and the ruthlessly ambitious corporate "lifestyle" that came to this country, not with Thatcher, but with Dallas. In the old days being "aggressive" and "assertive" in business used to be nothing to be proud of.

In terms of success in "managing resources" (corporate newspeak for real human people) and "managing change" it sounds as though Crozier should get the sack and join those, probably thousands, he has made redundant during his "career".

But of course he is in the exclusive "Chief Executive Club", mysterious to access, which will ensure that however badly he performs and however many companies (and lives) he wrecks he is guranteed another highly remunerative, bonus laden job.

Now I probably sound like a socialist, which is personally galling for me, but these nasty go-getters" that infest our business world are just as destructive, short-sighted and short-termist as the unions. I sincerely wish a plague on all their houses and hope that one day humanity, compassion, respect for the people in the workforce and values other than the bottom line may prevail and actually be vindicated by the long term benefits.

Meanwhile, the official lying and superficial soundbites from both sides of the squabble give us no special understanding of what, exactly, is going on.

jon dee

Your post seems a mix of PR lobbying on behalf of the CWU and an angry personal attack on Crozier as a result of your perceived treatment at Cause Connection.

While I'm not an advocate for Crozier, expanding banking services should not be confused with the disastrous Labour policy of bulldozing the closure of Post Offices.

Linking Crozier with McGregor is probably as harmful as linking Hayes with Scargill, even if he believes he's worth the comparison.

Like you, most of us know our posties and can provide anecdotal evidence of their objections, but this ignores the fact that the postal industry is in parts riven by spanish practices and militant attitudes, that have held up it's development, modernisation and profitability, while the communications revolution goes on around and outside it.

Other industries which stubbornly refused to modernise needed strong management to survive and prosper eg newspapers moving from " hot metal".

Sadly the stubborness often causes a worse unemployment position than would have been the case had common sense prevailed.

As for your views on bonuses, ACAS and President Blair, I smell red herrings and a failure to accept the future.

denis cooper

Adam Crozier doesn't really need to "join President Blair in Europe"; he's already a local agent of the EU, albeit indirectly and maybe to some extent unwittingly.

Look at Article 22 of the 1997 Postal Services Directive:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31997L0067:EN:HTML

which ordered that an "independent" postal services regulator be established in each EU member state:

"CHAPTER 9

The national regulatory authority

Article 22

Each Member State shall designate one or more national regulatory authorities for the postal sector that are legally separate from and operationally independent of the postal operators.

Member States shall inform the Commission which national regulatory authorities they have designated to carry out the tasks arising from this Directive.

The national regulatory authorities shall have as a particular task ensuring compliance with the obligations arising from this Directive. They may also be charged with ensuring compliance with competition rules in the postal sector."

For us that's Postcomm, as they readily admit:

http://www.psc.gov.uk/legal-framework.html

"Postcomm is a statutory body created by the Postal Services Act 2000. The Act itself gives effect to the 1997 Postal Services Directive (as amended) and our work flows out of the requirements set out in both pieces of legislation."

Which is why, for example, we had the Dutch EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes sending a letter to our Foreign Secretary, graciously giving her permission for the British government to spend a certain sum of British taxpayers' money supporting British post offices.

But three weeks ago when I emailed a bloke in that Commissioner's office to ask about a press report that her term of office had been extended beyond October 31st, he broke off the exchange to avoid answering my question:

"But on what legal basis could the Council of Ministers authorise the present Commissioners to remain in post beyond the end of their five year term, which expires on October 31st? The treaties lay down procedures for the appointment of Commissioners, and for their replacement in the event of resignation, death or compulsory retirement, but make no provision for extending their term of office, whether in a full capacity or in a caretaker capacity."

The truth is that we are now just hours away from the European Commission being legally reduced to a one man band - all the present Commissioners other than the recently re-appointed President Barroso will become ex-Commissioners at midnight CET, when their five year terms expire, and anything said to the contrary is an illegal pretence, relying on people not having the time to study the treaties.

Verity

What a grotesque opening sentence. I tried to make sense of it twice before clicking on Next.

Marbury

In the original version of this post, the author claimed to have worked for Crozier at "M&C Saatchi". I posted a correction. Crozier never worked there - his big break came when he decided to stay on at S&S after the brothers and their cronies set up a new rival agency (M&C). Perhaps this seems trivial, but the two agencies were - famously and controversially - fierce competitors, and I fail to see how anyone who worked at either could ever confuse the two. If that wasn't odd enough, my post wasn't published or acknowledged, though the correction was quietly made.

JohnAnt

Sorry, but 'for me' your postman Alexander is 'a remote figure', and I couldn't give a wotsit for his assumptions about how testing or 'secure' his job should be, and what life-style or pension capital it should provide him with. Nor about his 'young' family and 'nearly paid-off' mortgage etc etc.
it interest me about as much as the family photos of Blair, Harman, Brown and Miliband.
I've spent too many hours waiting for 'Alexander' or his mates to deliver the post, too many hours phoning suppliers to establish when they sent their invoices, phoning customers to apologise for the slow or non-delivery of their goods; too many days trying to make up for Royal Mail's incompetence and the bloody-mindedness of its unions; and too many years hoping that the service might eventually improve.
As far as I'm concerned, Alexander can just go and do what he and his socially maladjusted colleagues have been telling me and my neighbours to do for decades.

TGF UKIP

Jon Dee seems to me to have it bang on and we seem to have another Coffee House hack on sabbatical from the New Statesman.

Postal deliveries in my part the world seem to be almost functioning as normal, and yes I did get a delivery today.

This strike as so many were back in the eighties is basically about "job and finish" which seemed to have been sorted out in 2007. In the cities, though, and especially in London it does not seem to be accepted that if you are paid by your employer to work eight hours you work flexibly for eight hours, not you do your ordinary job and any work carried out in the remaining time gets paid extra.

If the management do not win this time it will simply store up further strikes which will no get Ms Ellis Thompson's further right on support.

Marjorie ET

It's really good to read your thoughtful comments, unlike some other publications....Crozier never worked at M & C, I am sorry if that impression was given. For the fellow who has had five postpeople in the past year, that's a sorry turnover. To the gentleman who said Alexander should 'get used to the private sector' I daresay you have had much bigger rewards than he has. I make no apologies for being sympathetic to his plight--as someone once told me 'here in Britain there is dignity on the way down as well as for those at the top.' And that's what made you different.....

BOO

teledu: "Failure to do so might just drive the working man to vote BNP."

But the beeb and everybody's been explaining: the BNP's far RIGHT! So how could working men turn that way?

Or, is the ploy not working? Are we so dumbed down that we don't know left from right, or working from middle or elite? Is that why we'll vote BNP anyway?

Ben Gardiner

I have to say that this is the worst - the most poorly written and argued - article I've ever seen at the Coffee House.

Fergus Pickering

When bosses are such bastards, such greedy useless bastards, then there is no need to go into full bugger the workers mode. We know where the fault lies. Crozier is a walking argument for the revolution. Who hired him? Wasn'the a football manager before, an unsuccessful football manager? Bring in Alex Ferguson. He could do a better job just working on Sundays.

Marjorie ET

Verity and Ben--youa re right, there is a whole paragraph missing. Sorry.

Marjorie ET

Here is the correct opening sentence!

My postman and me

Aside from the fact that we both come out in hives whenever we hear
the words ‘reform’ and ‘modernisation’, which have both ceased to
have genuine meaning under ‘new’ Labour we know what it’s like to
have Adam Crozier as a boss. For Alexander (the postman—his own
choice of pseudonym) he is a remote
figure, seen on TV or caricatured in cartoons passed around by
protestors. Distinguished only by the fact that he is Britain’s highest
paid public servant he got a £15K bonus after only two months in the
job, which is probably as much as some of the staff make) he left the
FA with hugely expensive new headquarters in Soho and a mess at
Wembley, and was only accidentally promoted to be joint ceo at
Saatchi & Saatchi because he wasn’t invited to go with the brothers
when they left and formed M & C Saatchi.