DickyNick:
They must be running out of postman/woman with class 1 licences and don’t want to pay to train them If they are taking on external candidates for direct employment.
I suspect they just don’t want to train anyone any longer. I was a postman on the rail-bound post wagons before I pushed to get trained up as C+E. I ended up doing the 2 week course on my holidays, although the firm did pay for the course. At that time, there was a leaning to only offer HGV training to 600 drivers rather than van or even non-drivers.
The 600 driver jobs - were “dead man’s shoes” jobs though, and once on one - you didn’t bloody well WANT to come off that for the same money driving artics with all the extra responsibilities at that time.
So… for actual C2 and C+E work (RM pay two different rates now) - it is far easier to have a turnover of agency bods to drive the big vehicles, leaving the dwindling numbers of 600 drivers to disappear due to natural attrition.
Well Postman Pat and Jess are 36 yrs old today (17-9-18) so they must like working there!
“36 years” I think is the average Postman’s seneority, which is why you can be a trucker there for 20 years, and not get anywhere near first dibs at the cushy 318s to pick into at re-sign time.
It is also one of the reasons I left when I did as well… nearly 23 years altogether, and only 31 on the seniority list! (about 12-16 duties were considered “cushy”, spread among earlies, lates, and nights.)
When the MTSF package got rolled out, the senior drivers passed it by though - because for working 36 years on days - you got about half I was offered for 22 complete years on lates and nights.
To this day, I consider myself lucky to have picked up one of the ten slots going for VR. Others who had about the same seniority as myself - turned it down, and then got sacked a few months later on some other pretence… The chance to grab a big pile of money - gone forever!
Beware the firm that says things like “We wish to maximise natural wastage, rather than have compulsory (or even voluntary!) redundancies…”
I intepret that as “We’d rather not pay anyone off at all if poss, but want to shed about a third of you. Expect to be sacked for things like walking on the cracks in the pavement, uttering a sexist remark within earshot of a female colleague, or looking at your Iphone on firm’s time for amusement purposes!”
