Chatting with Young People about the ‘Posties’ on Strike

Press coverage of the Communication Workers’ Union dispute with Royal Mail, even when slightly sympathetic, shakes its collective head at the apparent hopelessness of the workers’ situation. We get little insight into the day-to-day experience of the workers themselves. It is not stretching a point to note that this lack of anecdotal analysis chimes with our concern within Youth Work to encourage workers to tell their stories of practice. Thus it is fascinating on a number of counts to read this detailed account of the pressures upon the postal workers and the impact upon their lives of  ‘new managerialism’.

The Diary of Ray Mayall begins:

Old people still write letters the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a biro, folding up the letter into an envelope, writing the address on the front before adding the stamp. Mostly they don’t have email, and while they often have a mobile phone – bought by the family ‘just in case’ – they usually have no idea how to send a text. So Peter Mandelson wasn’t referring to them when he went on TV in May to press for the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, saying that figures were down due to competition from emails and texts.

I spluttered into my tea when I heard him say that. ‘Figures are down.’ We hear that sentence almost every day at work when management are trying to implement some new initiative which involves postal workers like me working longer hours for no extra pay, carrying more weight, having more duties.

It’s the joke at the delivery office. ‘Figures are down,’ we say, and laugh as we pile the fifth or sixth bag of mail onto the scales and write down the weight in the log-book. It’s our daily exercise in fiction-writing. We’re only supposed to carry a maximum of 16 kilos per bag, on a reducing scale: 16 kilos the first bag, 13 kilos the last. If we did that we’d be taking out ten bags a day and wouldn’t be finished till three in the afternoon.

‘Figures are down,’ we chortle mirthlessly, as we load the third batch of door-to-door catalogues onto our frames, adding yet more weight to our bags, and more minutes of unpaid overtime to our clock. We get paid 1.67 pence per item of unaddressed mail, an amount that hasn’t changed in ten years. It is paid separately from our wages, and we can’t claim overtime if we run past our normal hours because of these items. We also can’t refuse to deliver them. This junk mail is one of the Royal Mail’s most profitable sidelines and my personal contribution to global warming: straight through the letterbox and into the bin.

His tale ends:

Like many businesses, the Royal Mail has a pet name for its customers. The name is ‘Granny Smith’. It’s a deeply affectionate term. Granny Smith is everyone, but particularly every old lady who lives alone and for whom the mail service is a lifeline. When an old lady gives me a Christmas card with a fiver slipped in with it and writes, ‘Thank you for thinking of me every day,’ she means it. I might be the only person in the world who thinks about her every day, even if it’s only for long enough to read her name on an envelope and then put it through her letterbox. There is a tension between the Royal Mail as a profit-making business and the Royal Mail as a public service. For most of the Royal Mail management – who rarely, if ever, come across the public – it is the first. To the delivery officer – to me, and people like me, the postmen who bring the mail to your door – it is more than likely the second.

We had a meeting a while back at which all the proposed changes to the business were laid out. Changes in our hours and working practices. Changes to our priorities. Changes that have led to the current chaos. We were told that the emphasis these days should be on the corporate customer. It was what the corporations wanted that mattered. We were effectively being told that quality of service to the average customer was less important than satisfying the requirements of the big businesses.

Someone piped up in the middle of it. ‘What about Granny Smith?’ he said. He’s an old-fashioned sort of postman, the kind who cares about these things.

‘Granny Smith is not important,’ was the reply. ‘Granny Smith doesn’t matter any more.’

So now you know.

The whole detailed story is well worth your attention and well worth bearing in mind if your young people wonder why folk are forced to go on strike.

Thanks to Peter for the link.

Beyond Twitter: Young People and Youth work in a digital age.

I’m not sure about ‘beyond Twitter’, about being ‘post-Twitter’ as I’ve yet to tweet.  This will come as no surprise to those, who suffer my frequent lapses into verbosity. This admitted I might still wear with pride the T-shirt, Never Texted, Never Tweeted: I’m the Discourse Kid! Although as this slogan is less than 140 characters I suppose it counts as an embryo tweet. And I do despair at the shallowness of Obama, Brown , Cameron and Co. twittering vainly about vital social policy issues. On the other hand Henry Giroux seeks to question my one-sided caution in a thought-provoking piece, The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media.

He suggests that:

In Iran, the state sponsored war against democracy, with its requisite pedagogy of fear dominating every conceivable media outlet, creates the conditions for transforming a fundamentalist state into a more dangerous authoritarian state. Meanwhile, insurgents use digital video cameras to defy official power, cell phones to recruit members to battle occupying forces, and Twitter messages to challenge the doctrines of fear, militarism, and censorship.  The endless flashing of screen culture not only confronts those in and outside of Iran with the reality of state sponsored violence and corruption but also with the spread of new social networks of power and resistance among young people as an emerging condition of contemporary politics in Iran. Text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,  and the Internet have given rise to a reservoir of political energy that posits a new relationship between the new media technologies, politics and public life. These new media technologies and  Websites have proved a powerful force in resisting dominant channels of censorship and militarism. But they have done more in that they have allowed an emerging generation of young people and students in Iran to narrate their political views, convictions, and voices through a screen culture that opposes the one-dimensional cultural apparatuses of certainty while rewriting the space of politics through new social networking sites and public spheres.

All of which might seem an overly dramatic introduction to informing you about a forthcoming conference organised by Simon Stewart and our very favourite and always helpful ‘geek’, Tim Davies.

Beyond Twitter: Young People and Youth Work in a digital age

Thursday 24 September 2009, 10.00am–4.00pm

Catrin Finch Centre, Glyndwr University, Wrexham

Technology today is creating one of the greatest transformations ever seen in humankind. Technological turning points of the past came about progressively. People and social systems had time to adapt. This time around rapid innovations are coming upon us suddenly. This digital explosion has opened up a plethora of opportunities and challenges for society.

Professional youth work and emerging children’s and young people’s services have not been left untouched, but what are we doing to ensure that our work remains current in a technological age? From social media to digital exclusion, youth workers are faced with ever more complex and challenging situations that they are required to respond to.

This conference and open space event is the beginning of an extended conversation reflecting on how youth and community work practice can respond to the digital transformation of society

As the organisers argue, it’s great value at just £25 for youth workers, and £10 subsidised rate for students. So if you’re in youth work –  they would love  to see you there…

Booking details and online booking on the Glyndwr University Website here.

Practice Revealed: The Moral Impasse

I won’t apologise for this double posting. It appeared on the In Defence site a couple of hours ago. Very stimulating, in my opinion.

At the Preston In Defence of Youth Work meeting on Friday, June 12,we touched briefly on the need for workers to tell their own stories of practice. We mourned the lack of material. However God’s Lonely Youth Worker has come to our rescue on the Children and Young People site.  The piece begins:

I’d worked hard with the “ASBO” group. They’d been identified by the Anti-Social Behaviour Team as being at risk of becoming entangled within the criminal justice system. I liked them. They were quite an elusive little group but they had an interesting collective character.

God, did they think they were hard. Proper little tough-nuts who were afraid of no one or no thing but terrified of showing any trace of vulnerability. I had to use a lot of reverse psychology to get them to believe they wanted me more than I wanted them. I would dangle carrots but never directly in their direction. I would never, ever outstay my welcome when I met them on the streets and would always leave them wanting more.

It goes on to recount the Youth Service’s response to the development of the relationship. Already it has provoked a cracking discussion. Basically I think we should muck in and contribute our pennyworth. Excellent stuff.