18/02/26 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 18 February. Comments welcomed!

EXPOSING THE REAL PROBLEM - FOR ONCE!
The BBC's Monday morning exposure of the
breakdown in postal deliveries, started with 20
workers phoning in, but soon there was many, many
more, and all saying the same thing: there aren't
enough of us to do the job!! So no, undelivered
letters piling up isn't due to "storms and higher rates
of illness among staff" as RM bosses claim, blaming
the workers instead of themselves, for their job cuts
and the "parcels first" policy!

SIMPLY PUT, NOT ENOUGH WORKERS!
Yes, after the already drastic effect of privatisation,
Kretinsky's EP has made even deeper cuts to try to
squeeze out profit, chucking yet more permanent fulltime
jobs out the window, while he tries to impose the
so-called Optimised Delivery Model, and end the
USO. But we're not having any more of this!

UN-UNIVERSAL NON-SERVICE!
Union leaders are discussing with the bosses how to
implement the USO cuts, while we are talking about a
strike! In fact, what makes this so-called USO "deal"
even worse, is that they've linked it to our pay. The
bosses say if they don't get their USO "reforms", they
"can't afford" to increase our pay. Never mind that a
pay deal was already agreed last year!

COST OF LIVING SKY HIGH!
In fact we need a decent pay rise without any delay!
It may be that inflation is marginally down but we still
can't manage! This 0.4% "fall" in inflation means little
or nothing when it comes to our cost of living. So we
have plenty of "issues" - and above all, our pay rate,
to walk out about!

MORE C**P DUTIES
Those "new" duties management is "offering" are even
worse than the ones offered 3 weeks ago... The 25hrs
permanent duty was obviously not a "full-time" duty -
so we guess that was a typo. As for the other parttime
permanent duties, all include, again, weekends,
except for one which only "offers" just 20hrs, which is
good for nobody!

EMPLOY MORE WORKERS!
And by the way, when we apply for duties, it seems
we're no longer applying for a specific job. Instead, it's
more and more the case that managers try to move us
wherever they can, treating us as if we're all
"reserves". But we want to stay on our own duties.
And if there aren't enough of us to cover, then the
answer is obvious...

PETTY AND BLOODY-MINDED
We're fed-up with managers putting into question
every aspect of sickness absence, whether it's our
sick notes, the time we're off, our sick pay rate, etc.,
etc! They even accuse us of faking the flu! Do they
want us to come to work and sneeze in their faces, in
order to convince them?

GIVE IT PEPTO-BISMOL?
At least 12 of us should be working on the Parcel
Sorting Monster... Yet we've been just 10 from the
beginning. So it's enough for just one of us to be sick
or on holiday, for the Monster to get severe parcelconstipation
- which sows panic amongst managers,
who then try, desperately, but hopelessly, to find
workers from other areas to clear the Monstrous
blockage...

GO FIGHT SOMEWHERE ELSE
Can someone tell the two "Elephantesses" on the
cleaning side to stop their bickering? This reminds us
of the old days! It was funny at the beginning, to
watch them argue over who's in change of whom,
and which areas they're supposed to "manage" - but
it's getting on our nerves now. So if they want to fight
about who's boss, can they please do it in the privacy
of their own offices, out of our earshot?

LOVE WRECKER
On Letters, we saw very few red or flower/heart
shaped letters, despite Valentine's Day... And since it
can't possibly be due to a lack of love and affection,
we can only guess that people felt that if their loved
ones were to receive a love letter on time, they'd
better send it online!

GAMBLING WITH OUR PENSIONS
We've been told by management that in a few
months, we'll have an update about our pensions.
They say that the new "CDC" scheme, which was
launched in October is meant to "boost" our pension
income...
But these new schemes still don't guarantee us a
fixed income on retirement, like the old "DB" pensions
did! So RM may tell us what our "target pension" is
expected to be, but this will go up or down,
depending on the stock market... which could crash!

WE NEED TO PREPARE TO FIGHT
If anyone wants to check out what the CWU leaders'
USO proposals look like, there's a summary on the
Royal Mail Chat. But why should union leaders
propose anything less than the USO remaining, "as
is" and as it should be? And what about union
"policy", demanding renationalisation? They may not
be ready for a fight, but the rest of us know it's the
only answer.