Having been a postie for 14 years in Reading and Great Yarmouth, I fully support the strike, (I no longer work for the post office). It is a vastly underestimated task. Let Crozier go out on the rounds and all aspects of post work, which he should have done when leaving the FA. Then he will get the respect of the staff and he will realise apart from putting letters through holes in doors there is skill behind the scenes and huge amounts of personal endeavour not seen or appreciated. I had an ex military person (I myself am ex military), working with me one Xmas, and he was knackered and only lasted a few hours (he was hoping to get a full time job in the New Year!!). Post Management please note THEY ARE WORTH IT, PAY UP otherwise they may as well stay in bed.

Paul Green, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

I am an ex postie of 14 years. I support the possible action. I hope management listen because they know it could be futile. Crozier and co. need to get out there with the staff in all conditions and all aspects of the work to give it a complete re-cap. It is an undoubtedly a semi skilled job at least. Top management will get the respect of the staff and they will understand the skills required. There is also an awful lot of personal endeavour going on behind the scenes which is never accounted for! The work of a postie is never recognised you just have to do it yourself before it is appreciated, so PO management please do as I suggest and stop digging in, you want the peoples respect don't you!?

Paul Green, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

I am an ex postie of 14 years. I support the possible action. I hope management listen because they know it could be futile. Crozier and co. need to get out there with the staff in all conditions and all aspects of the work to give it a complete re-cap. It is an undoubtedly a semi skilled job at least. Top management will get the respect of the staff and they will understand the skills required. There is also an awful lot of personal endeavour going on behind the scenes which is never accounted for! The work of a postie is never recognised you just have to do it yourself before it is appreciated, so PO management please do as I suggest and stop digging in, you want the peoples respect don't you!? Some of the comments I have read around me are typically stupid, if you all think its easy have a go including you Crozier if you didn't read it first time. The posties may as well get laid off cos they will not be bothered, and they can start enjoying life.

Paul Green, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

re: posting from pat,stevenage,
I work for the post office,and have voted for a strike. (The first time i've ever voted in favour). He is correct to say that staff have been bullied into a strike,but that bullying has come from management and company executives.
No postman will disagree that changes are necessary if the company is to survive ,in fact the vast majority will welcome these changes,but not at the expense of major job losses,and cuts in services and a profound financial loss to those who the changes affect the most.
Company executives say they have to cut costs,well lets start at the top,get rid of half the executives,and while were at it,how about paying back your bonuses mr Leighton and Crozier?
Also Pat from Stevenage,if many staff are useless as you say,what does that say about the management that employed them in the first place, and continues to employ them!?!
John,Southampton.

john higgs, southampton, hampshire

Postal prices are still far too low compared to most countries and i believe the service here is the best. The job of delivering the mail in all weathers is hard and underpaid. Most people don't have a clue how tough the job can be. Let Crozier and Leighton get out of their beds at 4am to deliver a ton of mail every day for £250 a week!

terry maguire, leeds, uk

Somerset & Todmorden - roll on privatisation? The reality is that no private company will deliver to these areas without significantly increasing the cost to the customer.

Postmen have not asked for 27% rise - CWU simply want pay parity with the average wage.

Paul, London,

An interesting mix of comments! Most of them far from accurate. Fact is, Royal Mail is losing money and needs to change. Many staff and the Union continue to act in the 'old' ways and refuse to take their heads out of the sand.
If the union were more honest and less stupid, they would work with Management at all levels and tell staff the truth - change or lose!
An earlier poster, rightly pointed out that many staff are useless - unfortunately it's these and the bullies who have forced a strike.
Get real, wake up and work for the good of a great company and service. If you don't want to do that. Leave!

Pat, Stevenage, Herts

The biggest problem is the postal regulator opening up our postal market to the French and Germans some 2 years before the rest of Europe. All of Europe is supposed to be open to full competition by 1st Jan 2008. However after making contact with Postcom I have been advised that the french and Germans may hold back opening their markets......suprise suprise!

Roy, Exeter, Devon

How amusing that readers are calling for privatisation! Is anyone aware of what happens when nationalised industries are privatised? PRICES GO UP AND UP AND UP........because the share holder wins!. Electricity, gas railways, we are all paying the price for privatisation. As for the 'ordinary' person, well, revenue gained from posting your birthday cards etc is barely worth keeping the machinery going, so that if Royal Mail is privatised the 'ordinary' person will have to pay for delivery or collect from a central point. The business mail, which is the profitable side of the business will be creamed off, as is happening now. Royal Mail employees are being offered 'Phantom" shares even before privatisation, and have borrowed over a billion pounds from the government payable at 12% interest!.How is it possible for the Government to lend itself money and charge itself interest!.
Royal Mail have the highest paid directors in industry, earning millions of pounds a year.

sophie, norwich,

After working as a postman for nearly 6 years, doing the least desirable walks, I can say with total confidence that half of the workforce deserves more than 2.5% - the other half deserve a kick up the #### and a few months out in the real world.

If there is a strike the workforce will soon be split, the ones that don't mind doing a full days work most of the time will soon return whilst the 'don't want to work up to my time ever, let the others carry me' (even though the union agreed to the equalization of walks) try to stick it out.

Whilst this is happening Royal Mail will bring in the new sorting machines that will give them the upper hand ( for ever ) The Union is being lead up the garden path, Leighton & Crozier aren't being paid big money for nothing.

Chris, Nottingham, UK

chris hutchins, nottingham, uk

for those of you that are misinformed it's not about a pay rise it's about working condition's several area's of the country post men are expected to use their own vehicle to deliver there mail saving royal mail millions also later starts mean later delivery times (which the public don't want) and then there is "summer efficiency" where if a members of staff are off sick or any other reasons they can not attend work the post men/women left in the office have to deliver the remaining mail.
get real the majority of postmen and postwomen do a great job and don't want to strike but are being forced into a corner by unreal over paid management

andy, lancashire, uk

In 25 years as a postman, mail volume and my workload has probably increased by 5-600%. Other companies have taken well known brand names but I'm the one who has to put it through the letterbox.
What the workforce is fed up about is the way we and the public are treated - I've not seen my manager since Christmas, his hands are tied if I did see him and he's based 25 miles away. Royal Mail has recently made us start an hour later. Mail is delivered to our office up to 2 hours later. We are told Special Deliveries might say 1o'clock but "deliver them whenever you get there". Our money is occasionally paid correctly when our manager remembers to tell the wages people.
The list could go on, this is to try to get across the conditions that we are expected to work with. Royal Mail has got to realise that the changes they've made so far are not working and none of their changes for the future is likely to work. Ask the Postmen/women what the customer wants - Royal Mail doesn't have a clue.

Frederick, Suffolk,

What you have to understand, is that whlle a Postal Strike will be a risk for the CWU to take in terms of what it might do to the industry...........any damage it causes will be small beer compaired to the damage that Alan Leightons Buniness Plan will do to your Postal Service, and you the public need to wake up to that before it is to late.

Tom Walker, Islington, London,

Royal Mail almost bankrupted itself several years ago with it's ill-fated 'Consignia' renaming,and buying foreign parcel companies willy-nilly. Presumably the chairman and executives responsible for such errors of judgement were amply rewarded for their efforts. Nowadays all the company wants to do is force the minimum staff to do the maximum work for the minimum money. It is comforting to know that Adam Crozier has imposed a pay freeze on himself this year,meaning that he will have to struggle through with only £1,068,000.

Peter, Normanton, West Yorks

Privatisation! Well yes, if thats what the public wants. Perhaps Hartley in Wells doesn't used electricity or gas, so will not be aware that prices shot up, and have continued to rise following privatisation! Maybe he/she doesnt use the rail network either: Since privatisation travelling from A to B on the train has moved out of reach of ordinary people, as research has shown. They simply can't afford it. And how greedy of those postmen and women to ask for more than eight pounds a week raise when poor Mr Crozier may take a wage freeze. He will only earn 1,070,000 pounds this year. How on earth will he manage!. It may even dislodge him from his place as the highest paid civil servant in history!. Yes, be grateful postmen and women everywhere! Take home wages of around 260 for a 40hr week is reasonable.

sophie, norwich,

ROyal mail management is provoking adispute with the disgraceful way they treat their staff. AS apostman of twenty years experience ican vouch for their contemptous attitude towards staff Ask leighton and crozier why nearly all grievances submitted are found in the managers favour,surely not because its a fellow manager adjudicating. Dignity and respect ring hollow in the culture pervading royalmail and until their is a seachange in the royal mail ethos conflict is inevitable.

bob mcguigan, watford, england

The vast majority of snail-mail is junk and has to be burnt/binned.

Gerry, exeter, england devon

People dont understand why the post office is losing money , simple answer the private companies are coming in to cream off all the best parts and expecting the post men and women to deliver all the mail at a revenue loss!!! This has to change. Why should our postmen and women deliver all their post and only have a 2.5% payrise. Charge the private companies the going rate that would sort the situation out.

Ann Greenwood, London, UK

This could be the end of the Royal Mail as we know it Jim, and the sooner the better. I have suffered the appalling service of the Oxford branch of brotherhood for twenty years and they are the first to strike unofficially or otherwise. Recently, mail sent by first class post failed to arrive and the replacement took ten days. The union must realize it lives in a competative world and they will go the way of the miners and dockers and be confined to the landfill site. We have had to suffer the reduction in deliveries, the failure to deliver packages and the appalling increase in junk for too long. Privatise or die.

glyn rees, oxford, england

Royal mail fails to mention the later starting times for delivery staff therefore customers receiving their mail at an even later time during the day.This goes against all the customer surveys that Royal Mail has carried out over the last couple of years.
Also any delivery staff who is on leave or goes sick will not have their round covered first thing in the morning so thank Leighton & Crozier for getting your mail as you go to bed while they both reap their huge bonuses!

Stuart, Dartford, U.K

Well that means a big reduction in junk mail. It must be a new initiative to help save the environment!

Steve, London, UK

At least a strike would mean we are given a temporary respite from the torrent of unaddressed junk mail the Royal Mail delivers.

Peter, London, UK

Not content with expecting postmen to deliver unlimited amounts of junk mail and 'door2door' items for nothing (productivity without reward) so that Royal Mail can pay millions to Mr Leighton and Mr Crozier seems a tad unfair, don't cha-think? I am told that when staff leave, the remaining postmen will be expected to do their work as well as their own, so expect your mail to arrive by midnight in the near future if Royal Mail get their way.

Brian , Liverpool,

Those of you who want a private Post Office should remember that 11 years ago (during the last national strike) the Government offered private companies the chance to take over parts of the service and they declined. I'm no fan of the CWU, but they were right about cherry picking - since the monopoly ended no one has wanted to offer a universal delivery service and Royal Mail has been left with that unprofitable, but socially neceassary millstone. The 20% of mail that is now collected and sorted by the competition is still largely delivered by the same Postmen and women it always was. Privatisation? Only with Government subsidies I suspect!

Dave West, Croydon,

Part of the problem is that Royal Mail are using part of last years pay rise to fund this years rise. We are still waiting for our Q4 pay rise (2 months late).
In our office of opperations manager has sent out a letter were he is looking to take £20 per week off staff.
As for profits Royal Mail managers signed a contract were they lose 4p an item so they attack the staff wages.

Paul, Middlesex,

it was only a matter of time before the workforce got angry
increases in interest rate , rates increase and inflation in
petrol prices green taxes on planes insurance tax NO
WONDER THEY WANT A RAISE MPS got their raise
why not postal workers .THIS IS THE SUMMER OF DISCONTENT.

george william taylor, HULL, UK

Let Them strike...longer the better, then they will wake up and find they have no jobs.Its not the Royal Mail stuck in the past with no vision, its the outdated working practises of the union.

27% over 5 years is a joke, get real and negotiate a realistic settlement based on varifiable productivity.

Hartley, wells, Somerset

Dear heavens, if it's a postal ballot then half the stuff either will not arrive, or, will not get there 'till after the deadline.
Roll on privatisation.

Ken Wyatt, Todmorden, UK

Just what the Goverment wants is a postal strike to kill off the post off and give them an excuse for total private mail.

What about the effect on business who will go private what about the ordinary person in the street whom relies on the Post Office what are they to do to get their letters.

I say sit down and settle th matter of wage rises based on inflation and productivity as any privae company has to do.

Peter, Hastings, UK