Tuesday, October 09, 2007
The Postal Workers: A Retro Strike
When the letters I tried to post yesterday slid out of the postbox - it was full of estate agents' junk and repossession threats - I realised that the postal strike is just the latest evidence of our nation's mad dash back to the seventies. In that good old, incredibly disturbing decade there were strikes all the time. Going into work at all was regarded as a rather capricious gesture, rather like not wearing platforms. The strikers are sensitively keeping everything 'in period', holding up signs that say 'A decent living wage for postal workers'. Such a sign would have been incomprehensible in the eighties and quaintly amusing in the nineties, but now, suddenly, it seems as right as an Afro on a white guy. But what does it mean? I do pretty well - I can afford to eat at the cinema about once every three months - but is my wage 'decent' and 'living'? The sign became incomprehensible in the eighties because the idea of the market took hold of all our imaginations and people were expected to earn what they were worth according to a strictly abstract calculus. Perhaps it makes sense now because we have acquired a slightly more sophisticated grasp of the idea of the market in which the workers' power to organise a strike is as significant as the simple power of money. Anyway, I am feeling increasingly comfortable now that I am back in my default decade. I am even considering going on strike. I did once and I loved every minute.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I don't know what you mean by as right as an afro on a white guy. and wasn't it a big sixties thing (outside of Liverpool, anyway)?
ReplyDeleteany excuse not to work sounds great to me too but I wouldn't want to devalue the postal workers' reasons for withdrawing labour - it is their right and I don't know why idiots come on the today programme and complain how badly they're behaving and how it's disrupting all our daily lives. if it didn't disrupt your daily life, sir/madam, it would be pretty pointless, wouldn't it?
I worry about people sometimes, this thing called society.
According to our postal van man they get £70 a day. Or rather they don't since they are on strike. Discuss.
ReplyDeleteHow is a market determined wage a 'strictly abstract calculus'? Strikes me as an entirely concrete calculus, rooted in how much money the employer can make out of you, and what they have to pay to retain your services.
ReplyDeleteA decent living wage for bloggers, that's what I say. Also a free Afro and platform heels - it's time our Cinderella service entered the modern age.
ReplyDelete£350 a week. hmm, well I've heard it's a simple life but I never fancied getting out of bed at 4 am.
ReplyDeletenige, in this take, take, take world, I've always regarded blogging as a simple opportunity to give something back, however small, to the wider community. ;o)
ReplyDeletein my world, the white man's afro never went out of fashion.
ReplyDeleteThere's a bit of a conflict between the Post Office as a social institution - community hub and all that - and as a modern go-getting business with all the management-speak, the ruthless competition and the huge footballer-style remuneration packages earned by the two or three guys at the very top. In this sense, a very British affair of mixed-up messages that's been brewing unpleasantly for a long while. Round here the management want to close down the local sorting office for good measure, so that all our mail will become dependent on an office in a far-away county of which we know nothing. My sympathy is with the posties.
ReplyDeleteThe market concieved as abstraction was the whole point of neoliberal theory, I believe. Your world is very interesting, Elberry. And thanks for explaining that I am the Dark One.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree sympathywise, Mark. At least they are not led by that awful Crowe feller at RMT
ReplyDeleteGoing on strike as everything around you turns away from paper towards electronics is understandable but just silly. We haven't had any snail mail for a week and do we care? No, but a host of other people have delivered other sort of things to my door.
ReplyDeleteFar better, in my mind, would be to think of ways to work with the market rather than to stand shouting in the rain that life is unfair. Indeed one could even look for a different market or two.
Oh, and btw, every coal mine I have ever been down is now closed. I wonder, is there a clue in there trying to get out?
A clue like a dusky canary, Mongoose.
ReplyDeleteMy local post office is like the ones I remember from France: You are LUCKY if they decide to help you. Usually, they don't. You come in, there's no one at the counter, but you can hear loads of people chatting away in the back. There's no bell to call them, they ignore cleared throats, and they don't respond to "Excuse me, excuse me," until you shout it, and then they emerge with surly expressions. How dare you want to buy some stamps or post a letter!
Recently when I sent a package to my brother's house in north Florida, the guy input the zip code and said, "Oh, this is going to Miami." I said, "No it's not; it's going to a place 300 miles north of there." He gave me a cold look, "My machine says it's going to Miami." We almost got into a shouting match; after all, I know where my brother lives.
John Cleese could have made a version of Fawlty Towers out of my local p.o. And, btw, our postal folk make more than I do per year.
they're just conservatives, mongoose - or rather I should ask, are they conservatives?, because I don't understand such things - they want to preserve what they've helped to establish. what you're asking of them is to be radicals - on £70 a day. god help us if that happens.
ReplyDeletehumans are base animals still. I wonder if we'll ever abandon the idea of competition, a culture of winners and losers? As long as it isn't one of ours, we actually enjoy seeing someone lose. we know it's wrong but it feels so good.
My sympathies are with the postmen. Our postman told me a story recently that he said exemplified the attitude of the bosses who want to deprive the postmen of the right to use their initiative.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a fairly sparsely populated part of England and the postman has a long collection round every afternoon - about 40 miles round trip. He had a flat tyre one afternoon last winter and was forced to wait for over two hours until a breakdown truck could reach him to change the wheel. He had a spare tyre in the van and the tools to change it, but a directive from the management forbad postmen to change a wheel.
The result was that he was over three hours late getting back to the sorting office and missed his bus home. He was not allowed to take the post van home with him, even though he was on duty the next morning at 4am and he ahd to hire a taxi to take him home which cost him half a day's wages.
I think the postmen should have better PR people because they have a noble cause which is not being properly explained by their union.
Ian, yes, I know they're trying to protect themselves and they have my sympathies too. And, yes, 70 quid a day wouldn't keep the rest of us in Wine Gums, would it? Alas, it is no longer possible for this business to protect itself by standing still and being big. Unless something very drastic happens, it is over.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Philip, that would be no doubt a "competency" issue. Complete nonsense, I agree. It will not be long before their vans no longer carry spare wheels. This will remove the risk of an untrained postie getting his fingernails broken changing a wheel. Laugh not! It will happen.