Most of us posties do not want to lose money in strike action and those of us in the front line of the postal service are acutely aware of the damage it causes to Royal Mail’s reputation.

But with the freezing of pay coupled with the relentless increase in our workload it almost feels as if we are being actively goaded into voting ‘yes' in the national strike ballot which is ongoing at the time of writing.

I am a leave reserve postman covering various delivery rounds and with the problems involved in clearing the backlog of strike mail many of us have been out delivering mail until well past 4pm in the afternoons (please bear in mind we start work at 6am!).

It may be easy for those with office or factory jobs to refuse overtime, but when you are a postie with a more direct relationship with your customers it is not easy to bring back undelivered mail and some managers do put pressure on us to get all the work done whatever the circumstances.

Modernisation is a convenient umbrella word which serves to imply that anyone who raises any objection to the changes involved is by definition a ‘militant' or neanderthal in their approach.

That is certainly not the case either with me or with most of my colleagues.

We just want to be treated fairly with an achievable workload and our delivery office managers, who are bearing the brunt of much staff discontent, need to be set more realistic targets by the executive.

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