We have a very tight and organised system at work. We traditionally have 5 working docking bays, something like 15 HGV 18 ton and 8 Electronic pallet trucks.
We're a very small operation and work in a small part of a much bigger site being the co-op.
But over the years things have slowly but surely been going to shit and rather than investing money to fix the problems we're facing they're throwing more agency workers at us, it's not an issue of man-power. It's an issue of working equipment. We repeatedly stress this point and frankly we don't have the time to be training new workers.
2 Working dock bays have been broken for a good month or so, Electronic pallet trucks are falling to pieces and at times are borderline dangerous to use.
Our wagons which have an excess of 1 million miles on them are in absolute tatters. They're in such a terrible state of condition that at times it's really dangerous to be loading them.
Each day we risk an accident happening out on the road because DHL as a company can't invest the money. 1 wagon in particular has a massive chunk of sharp metal sticking out which could be sharp enough to cut an artery. I'm just waiting for it to happen so I can sue the shit out of this rotten company.
Our qualified and experienced workers are leaving, either moving onto to become drivers or are looking for other jobs, soon enough I'll be the last experienced dock worker. I used to enjoy this job but morale has been pretty low. I've stopped caring about what happens. Why should I?
Conditions at work are not only declining at a rapid rate it's frankly becoming a danger and isn't fitting for a company worth billions of damn dollars.
The worse thing of all is the wages. Minimum wage plus like 1 pound extra per hour for nightshift. While a couple years back this likely wasn't so bad but now it's frankly nowhere near enough.
Our wages have no been compensating us for the increase to cost of living or the increase of duties we're having forced upon up.
Such increased duties include bread which traditionally came up on cages like everything else being on pallets which means we have to keep our own cages to do their job up North for them.
We're getting entire pallets of goods which are meant to be in cages so again we have to break down said pallets into cages for them in the south. Yet we're expected to give other places all of our empty cages.
We aren't being compensated for our extra duties and neither are the drivers we load. We used to be a operation for only one part of the country, now we're doing deliveries for other parts of the country.
DHL as a company is a joke, it's pathetic and dangerously greedy. I would not recommend working for them. I'm in the process of trying to speedrun becoming a truck driver simply because the pay is way way better. If I can't get a job as a driver here I'll simply go to another company.
I'll be the last experienced worker to leave the warehouse and frankly with how low the pay is for this job they aren't going to be keeping anybody else long enough for them to become experienced workers.
If the company wants to play games then they best be aware that they'll lose hard. This was a bit of a rant but I felt I needed to talk about it, folks, you gotta know your worth in a workplace and if the company isn't valuing your service as an employee then you need to think about yourself cause to these companies you're just a number. They aren't willing to invest as much into you as what you bring for a company.