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<b>Thursday 22 October:</b> Royal mail strike again and a paranoid energy company
POSTAL SERVICES HAVE SEIZED across Manchester today as Royal Mail workers joined the nationwide strikes. They are among 120,000 staff across the country staging two days of 24-hour walk outs over pay and conditions. Pickets are expected outside Manchester's Royal Mail headquarters on Oldham Road where around 1,000 mail centre staff will not be working today.
AN ENERGY COMPANY HAS BEEN CRITICISED for taking a protester to court under the Terrorism Act. Scottish and Southern Energy's attempt to serve an injunction on electrician Steve Acheson, from Denton, was dismissed and called "a fantasy bordering on the edge of paranoia”. The firm wanted to ban him from holding peaceful protests at Fiddlers Ferry power station, Cheshire, where he worked until his sacking in December, claiming it was a “threat” to the site’s security.
MANCHESTER CITY’S £500,000 DONATION BRINGS CHILDREN’S hospital appeal within touching distance of its £20m target. The appeal, which is raising cash to support Manchester's new hospital, now stands at £19.8m with just one day to go.
GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE NEED TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION when dealing with mentally ill people, a police watchdog has concluded. The move by the Independent Police Commission comes after the death of Wayne Dyson, 44, who fell from flats in Ashton-under-Lyne, after seeing officers three times. Ch Supt Dave Lea, head of GMP's local policing improvement branch, said: “We acknowledge the necessity to further develop a clear policy that applies across the force area and takes into account both the findings of the IPCC”.
This ‘N’ That wisdom: Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there
Taken from the free calendar available at This 'n' That, Soap Street, Northern Quarter. Wisdom rating 6/10
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to all Manchester capitalists: Unions have the right to call for a strike if a serious dispute over pay etc. cannot be otherwise resolved. Who wants to work in Britain for little less than 16k per annum? You are not Botswana, you know - life is more expensive here...
What have Royal Mail services seized? Anyway, the public sector as it is now will signal a second economic collapse for this country. The sooner the Conservatives get in and scrap half of it the better!
"If these people don't want to work under the pay and conditions, bin them off." Tell me, do internet trolls have their own Union?
The strike worries me in two ways: Firstly is my initial response, like the comment above, people are being laid-off left, right and centre, so they should appreciate the fact they have a job; but secondly, should job insecurity after the credit crisis imply workers should just accept unacceptable conditions just incase they're replaced? The above argument about the workers being unskilled is completely irrelevant, regardless of skills, one cannot dispute the years of experience these people will have. What is quite worrying is the fact the 'credit crunch' is being used as precursor to give companies, including the Royal Mail, carte blanche to get workers to do work they're not paid for - and we some how think that's acceptable. Yes the posties are likely to end up worse off at the end of this, but how shameful that we, including myself, are quick to point out how lucky they are to be in a job, even if it means putting in work they're not being adequately paid to do.
Let's be perfectly honest here. Being a postal worker isn't a skilled job and doesn't particularly risk lives. No qualification required other than can you sit in a van with a cat named Jess and drop some mail through Mrs Goggings door. If these people don't want to work under the pay and conditions, bin them off. There are plenty of people who would kill for a job at the moment. Plenty of other employees in other walks of life are having to take pay cuts and pay freezes but everyone just seems to be getting on with it. Furthermore, these people knew the terms and conditions of their employment before they stepped into the job. No point whinging about it after you realise that you get crap pay for walking around the street with a bag over your shoulder.