A few questions for posties already doing dm26.

[Lfc1983]

My office is starting DM26 any day now and we still don't know much about it. I have a few of questions for people already doing it.

1. On a Saturday, do you get a non driver with you in the van or do they stay in the office?

2. How do the 3 people in pods work, is 1 always on their own and the other 2 always in a Van share or do they rotate?

3. On Saturdays do you just take first class and tracked for your walks or do you have to do other walks aswel?

Any info appreciated

[raXor]

My office is starting DM26 any day now and we still don't know much about it. I have a few of questions for people already doing it.

1. On a Saturday, do you get a non driver with you in the van or do they stay in the office?

2. How do the 3 people in pods work, is 1 always on their own and the other 2 always in a Van share or do they rotate?

3. On Saturdays do you just take first class and tracked for your walks or do you have to do other walks aswel?

Any info appreciated

It may vary between offices but for us it's:

1. A non driver will either stay in the office for indoor work, or if there has been a problem throughout the week on a pod with mail buildup, they'll put on 2 people so that the non-driver can deliver some mail whilst the driver does the parcels.

2. They don't rotate. The same person is always on their own and the same 2 are always in the van share

3. Just first class and tracked for the pre-DM26 walk, i.e. before the extra 1/3 or whatever lapsed was added onto the duty.

Having said that, don't expect there to be any organisation or consistency. You could basically just end up doing anything depending on how much of a mess the office is in. So expect to be moved around often, being asked to just do parcels by yourself on 3 or 4 walks and subsequently bringing at least half the stuff back etc.

[Perseus]

Leaving offices to work it out for themselves has gotten us on a Saturday:

50/50 singletons - doing around 50 tracked and 10 first class.
Shared vans - BOTH persons going out and doing 150-200 drops BETWEEN them.
Solo on shared vans - 1 person doing 150 tracked and 20-30 1C.

Fair and equal workload, sure.

Quite a few weeks in and not a single door to door sorted on a Saturday. The attitude seems to be ‘I’m not staying in to do that’.

I should add that people were stating that this would happen about 6 months ago and were told that they were being silly

[Lfc1983]

That's what worries me.

Royal mail come up with an idea, goes into the offices and sticks some coloured tape on the frames and then it's up to the posties to try make it work.

It seems in our office that's what going to happen because we are being told nothing about the new way of working.

[BenacreNick]

You have seen the graphic displays of how it should work though right LFC ?

[tramssirhc]

My office is starting DM26 any day now and we still don't know much about it. I have a few of questions for people already doing it.

1. On a Saturday, do you get a non driver with you in the van or do they stay in the office?

2. How do the 3 people in pods work, is 1 always on their own and the other 2 always in a Van share or do they rotate?

3. On Saturdays do you just take first class and tracked for your walks or do you have to do other walks aswel?

Any info appreciated

1. No. Martin Walsh did talk about van assistants on a Saturday. The agreement says that there has to be a plan for the accelerated preparation of the unaddressed mail. That's part of the go/no go. Reports are that this is not happening and the focus is on utilising resource to prevent failures. However the unaddressed mail is workload and should be resourced to prevent failure.

2. The CWU promised static duties. Reports are that workers are required to undertake whatever duties require covering. Due to the reduced number of workers on a Saturday workers are undertaking whatever duties need covering. The CWU knew this would be the case.

3. The workload on a Saturday is whatever is due to be delivered that day. The POD's are resourced with two workers who are undertaking two duties each which should be the normal pairings. You will take whatever workload is required for all the DP's on the two frames. The non-POD singletons take whatever workload is required for all the DP's on that duty. There should be sufficient time in the non-POD singleton duties to assist duties that need assistance.

[Mr Rush]

So far there have been minimal instances of non-drivers staying in. For instance, it was all hands on deck today. D2D prep will have to wait another day/week/month.

Van share pairs have a better chance of being left on their duty without 'operational needs' rearing its head. Singletons are getting shunted around more. Lots of drivers seemed to be shunted off their duties today, with agency backfilling.

Regards the 1/3 or 2/3 or whatever off the third frame, I've spoken to a lot of colleagues and hardly anyone is touching it. There's just too many packets and 1C on the other side for the driver alone to clear in the time remaining. Yeah, maybe if we ran round like it's 2008 and we could finish as early as we can physically accomplish... oh, that's right, no-one has the slightest motivation anymore.

[scoobydo79]

1 No
2 Yes
3Yes

[Perseus]

My office is starting DM26 any day now and we still don't know much about it. I have a few of questions for people already doing it.

1. On a Saturday, do you get a non driver with you in the van or do they stay in the office?

2. How do the 3 people in pods work, is 1 always on their own and the other 2 always in a Van share or do they rotate?

3. On Saturdays do you just take first class and tracked for your walks or do you have to do other walks aswel?

Any info appreciated

1. No. Martin Walsh did talk about van assistants on a Saturday. The agreement says that there has to be a plan for the accelerated preparation of the unaddressed mail. That's part of the go/no go. Reports are that this is not happening and the focus is on utilising resource to prevent failures. However the unaddressed mail is workload and should be resourced to prevent failure.

2. The CWU promised static duties. Reports are that workers are required to undertake whatever duties require covering. Due to the reduced number of workers on a Saturday workers are undertaking whatever duties need covering. The CWU knew this would be the case.

3. The workload on a Saturday is whatever is due to be delivered that day. The POD's are resourced with two workers who are undertaking two duties each which should be the normal pairings. You will take whatever workload is required for all the DP's on the two frames. The non-POD singletons take whatever workload is required for all the DP's on that duty. There should be sufficient time in the non-POD singleton duties to assist duties that need assistance.

Not a single door to door has been sorted into any frame on a Saturday in ours since the start of DM26. There are trays of mail from days before lying under most duties but the management are keeping the pods together (3 people) on a Saturday instead of putting 1 person per shared van and the 3rd person staying indoors. There is of course a practical reason for that in some cases as you can't exactly send a non driving member of staff out on a van duty, but rather than keep non driving staff indoors they will pluck another less senior member of staff from a shared van pairing (if both drive) and pair them. One of the reasons this is happening is that I believe that people will walk off the job if they have to move duty, it's that simple, as people are pretty wound up by the state the office is in combined with duty lengths.
As for the 50/50 guys. If you give someone 5 hours plus to do 50 tracked and and handful of letters, they will take the 5 hours to do it.