04/02/26 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 4 February. We welcome your comments!

WE CAN USE OUR FEET!
According to a CWU letter to branches, Royal Mail
has "triggered [the CWU-RM] dispute resolution
process over the issue of how USO reform is
deployed"... and if an agreement is not reached in the
next 4 weeks, it says the bosses will impose the USO
changes by force. To this declaration of war, the
union leaders have responded that they'll "try to
persuade" the bosses to follow a different course...
Really?

BEYOND PLUTO
And by the way, we wonder which planet union
leaders live on, when DUMs have been trying to
implement their Outrageous Delivery Method changes
- attacks on our Ts&Cs - all along, and for months!
Meanwhile on planet Earth, there's no doubt about it:
we're going to have to organise our own full-blown
counter-attack, and pronto!

SPOT THE PERMANENT JOB
Processing managers told us the "good news": 8
vacant full-time duties are on offer... But when we
looked at what we could actually apply for, there was
only 1 permanent full-time duty! The rest are
temporary duties, so they can be taken away at any
time with just 2 weeks' notice. As for the single
permanent full-time duty, it includes a Saturday shift
from 2-9pm!! We'd call this "bad news"!

WE'LL FIGHT THE WEEKEND WRECKERS
The only other permanent shifts on offer are 5 parttime
duties - those with so few hours that no one can
actually live on the wage. And every single one
includes Saturdays and/or Sundays! There is one
where they expect us to work Saturday 2-7pm
followed by a Sunday 6am-2pm... And another has a
7.5hrs night shift on Friday, followed by a 12hrs night
shift on Saturday, and then an 8hrs night Sunday.
These mad shifts were agreed behind our backs! And
we aren't taking them!

CUTTING COSTS AT OUR EXPENSE
We know the so-called "vacant" weekend duties have
actually been covered by casuals for a long time. So
are managers simply trying to replace weekend
casuals with us - on even cheaper (flat-rate on
Saturdays) wages?

WHOSE SICK IDEA?
When we go off-sick, the peanuts pay for the first two,
three or four days of sickness is a starvation rate of
ROSP = ~£23.75! Yes, just when we need more
money, for medicines, taxis and all sorts of other
extras. RM probably thinks they can get us to come
to work instead, sick or not, and spread our bugs! But
they're wrong, and we intend to fight them on this.

DEAD BEFORE IT BEGAN
DUMs in EC have backtracked on trying to make us
sort dead letters (RTS)... Did they finally bother to
read our job descriptions, or were they just worried
about ending up with a pile of unsorted mail..?

NOT SANTA'S HELPERS
On Distribution, this Xmas was the most chaotic so
far. Management said they'd contracted extra drivers,
which they simply hadn't. So what did they expect? A
Xmas miracle? Or did they expect us to cover for
their c-up? Both of which were, of course, wishful
thinking!

KILL COCK-ROBIN!
Managers just announced this week, that they've
completely stopped the People's App. The problem is
that many of us don't have the Robin App up and
running. Not everybody is tech-savvy anyway. So
either give us a paper payslip again, or give us a
crash course on how to manage this ****ing
technology!

PROMOTING A NEW LINE OF UNDERWEAR?
The failures come and go in the POCL area: M&S is
constantly seeking advice from other managers,
which explains why he gets the wrong answers. As
for his obsession with stopping us from taking toilet
breaks, he might think this will put him in line for some
kind of fast-track promotion... But given that there's
no stopping us: when we have to go, we have to go -
he is p***ing in the wind.

SULKING DARKFORCE
We hear that Darkforce is licking his wounds and
doesn't want to return as night shift manager...
Apparently he just couldn't handle the fact that he
can't sack whoever he wants, whenever he wants...

PASSING THE BUCK
Processing managers in Mail Centres are diverting
piles of unsorted items to other MCs, which in turn
divert them to the next. They don't want to admit that
they're short of workers everywhere, so undelivered
items are just going round and round, and round
again...

PROFITS UP, SERVICE DOWN
Just after the plant manager sent us that letter telling us
that Xmas had gone so well, the Citizen's Advice Bureau
worked out that 16 million people had their post delayed
over Xmas, 6 million more than last year. The CAB
says "Ofcom must start cracking down even harder on
missed targets" to fix the delays. As if that will do the
trick... In fact we hear that clever Ofcom is going to fix
things by reducing the targets...