7AM starts

[19times]

Apply for family friendly if you're going to have issues with picking up your kids. I put in a form before our office resign and it meant I was able to sign for a duty that would allow me to finish in time to pick up my daughter. We still have early starts though so not sure how they would work it if you're not getting any mail from MC'S until 7 or later.

i applied over a month a go but not heard anything back, i never even got the tear of slip back that was on the official form saying it's been acknowledged.

Tits.

[chooch]

What annoys me most, is that it's all so unneccessary.
Nobody wants their mail, parcels, packets,delivered when they are not at home to take them in.
And we all took this bloody job on, mainly because the hours suited. We wanted to start 5.00am, so we could finish early afternoon.
Now the dogs that are running this firm in to the ground, want even later starts, even later finishes.

And worse still, in my book, the dogs that are coming up with this s**t, would scream blue blooody murder, were the shoe on the other foot, and it was they that were inconvenienced for no good bloody reason.
Bastards, a plague on all their houses.

I couldn't have put it better myself

[blackbooks]

With a 7am start and no longs and shorts, on a 39hr week your duty times are 7 - 14.48.
If you split the meal relief 20/20 then your finish time is 14.28.
Obviously it depends how far you have to travel, but that would normally give you sufficient time to pick up kids from school.

The childcare issue is a bit of a red herring.
If you move to later starts it limits the hours you can work in a day (last letter 3pm in a town) and that limits the possible choices from the menu of options of 1 in 4 Saturdays.

'The childcare issue is a bit of a red herring.' - All very well if you work your time. What if you have/ want/ need overtime? We are having start times for P/T moved from 7.00 to 8.30, so we lose 1 1/2 hrs of working time if we have kids. Ironically, in our office, it means that the ones who are keen on doing overtime and keep the ship afloat are looking for new jobs.

It also means more cut offs, especially if you have SAs to do.

Multi-million pound investment equals poorer service, even the railways can do better than that.

[SpacePhoenix]

Some of the shift in times will be down to walk sequencing

[Stella102]

your lucky we start at 11!!

[SP115]

6am here, Everyday.

[Jono]

What gets me about the so called "progress" made by Royal Mail is that in the last 10 years the sorting technology has supposedly got better at the expense of the service. When I started it was on a 0505 start, mech was already there waiting when we arrived and we were soon sorted. prepped and out the door for about 7am ) with a 12.30 finish - two deliveries and the office pretty much clear everyday (option of leaving DSA/mailsort on Sat)
As time moved on we were cut down to one delivery with a slightly later delivery commencing about 0800ish - yet AGAIN the office was pretty much clear on a daily basis. So now we find ourselves in 2013 starting at 06.30, our second lot of mech doesnt arrive until about 07.30 and most of our walkers dont leave the office until nearly 11am, more often that not mail is brought back on heavy days and the whole idea of keeping us back later waiting for the "missort" run is a waste of time because there is still a volume of missorts on frames upon returning from delivery. The whole idea of clearing the office by means of missort runs is a crock of sh*t and a waste of money. Scrap the (pointless) missort run, get the walkers out the door an hour or so early and it would solve most problems imo. Probably a little bit too late as I type this cos we are about to enter the van sharing side of things this year so I expect more problems

So as time has gone on - the whole process of getting the mail into the delivery office in the morning has got worse in terms of time - yet years ago when there was supposedly alot more "live mail" it was in and ready to be sorted by 6am at the latest...obviously the closure of localised mail centres in favour of regional ones has had an inpact but having said that - the mech wasnt walk sequenced back then which makes a huge difference to prep times when you have 4/5 trays of it to initially prep when you start every morning...

Surely the whole idea of waiting for missorts in the morning cant be cost effective when ultimately it fails in the long term?

[dvbuk55]

Royal Mail were fortunate that being a small unit in the country, we do not have any child care issues as the youngest is well in his forties. But basically as said before, they do not give a toss what upheaval they create.

Either I am misunderstanding or all the children are in their forties and the working parents are in their 70s

[fru_T_bunn]

I would love to go back to 4:30am starts......I used to love spending my entire life feeling tired, not having a life midweek, going to bed before a primary school kid would......BRILLIANT!!!!

[BingBong]

Seems to be happening alot. Our office has yet to have a revision but our start times are changing mid January. 7am for full timers and 8am for part timers. At the moment its 6am and 7am. They are even delaying our second trays of mech to almost force the issue for changing times. Saturdays will be rubbish soon. Nice one RM.

[chooch]

They are even delaying our second trays of mech to almost force the issue for changing times.

Reading Jono's post above don't you think you might be over-reacting?

(rhetorical question - I don't expect an answer)

[justdeno]

We will be finishing around 3.30 to 4pm, I normally do bike oversize packets in van at end off duty, around 3pm now. Most people are picking kids up,so more 739's. How dare they not be in for their packets, forget the kids.

[HeilMoya]

The word is that when we move to our new office, FT's will go to 39 hours but there's rumour of increasing 25 hour contract PTs to 30. My managers have more or less said that there just won't be enough time in a 5 hour shift for us to get everything done when we start P&L at the end of the month hence this rumour. So I'd be estimating a 9am start and 3pm finish for PTs which kind of defeats the point of the revision (aka penny pinching strategies) in the first place! Saturdays will be hilarious getting through the football crowds... We've also got something like 6 vacancies but RM won't replace until after the revision kicks in, if at all. Most already work their days off and do paid o/t (but only with the carrot of an early start) - we're an "everybody gets on" kind of office but you could see a mile off that it's all going to kick off with P&L...

[19times]

Buump!!

I've only just sorted my family friendly out, it didn't take long

Upshot is i'll now start 1 hour earlier and be in at 0543! and 0643 on others. I've also come off my walk that i've held for 3+ years (p+l) to go onto a cycle duty.

Quite happy with that but the way it was done was totally

[north london driver]

well i just hope you all voted against the last agreement or are you one of the members who voted yes
which is very rare nowdays. any way off to work now.