Staffing Issues

[POSTMAN]

In any other company heads would roll,too many scumbags on the gravy train in this one.
Looks to the outside world that the union are once again looking by as they rip this firm to shreds.
People post campaign,you're havin' a laugh!

[Budfrog]

For this year at least, with Christmas on the horizon and with many units carrying Vacs/Understaffed, would it not make sense for RM to contact all those who have left in the past 2/3 years on VR offering FTCs until recruitment can get their house in order. Not sure what the takeup would be however with many years RM service behind them there would be virtually no need to train or vet these people and some might just welcome the additional income for a set period of time.

[97gaz]

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[Martin Walsh]

I post a fact ! It is not the CWUs fault that a privatised Royal Mail got rid of a lot of people in the centre.

Mail's integrity means that recruitment has to go through security clearance and this is a lengthy period in any case but with less managers is taking weeks longer.

I visited the picket line of the National Gallery PCS strike they have taken 80 days strike action over the impacts of privitsation and the sacking of their rep. They would bite management hands off for the securities the CWU achieved under the agenda for Growth Agreement such as no outsourcing , no franchising , no two tier workforce , no zero hours , protecting of our current terms and conditions ! The RMT , PCS , GMB and Unite have all faced priviatisation and face the attack on conditions.

The CWU have managed too stop those attacks. Of course in some workplaces their is unacceptable pressures on the workforce which needs to be stopped but first and foremost the workers in the units concerned must raise the issues and stand collectively on the issues they believe is wrong. The highest number of request for local industrial action ballots since the Agenda For Growth Agreement has been received by CWU HQ and that is 18 out of 1500 delivery units.

[bigbazza]

Christmas How funny lino's overwhelmed with staff saying "What do YOU want to do with these 3 cages of packets and the last 4 loops"

[fishtank]

I'm surprised after all that's gone on Dingo that you're still using the number of disagreements flagged up to HQ as a measure of how things are in delivery offices. There are many links in the chain between a member being bullied and Bob Gibson's desk and absolutely no accountability in any of them.

[ziggy]

I post a fact ! It is not the CWUs fault that a privatised Royal Mail got rid of a lot of people in the centre.

Mail's integrity means that recruitment has to go through security clearance and this is a lengthy period in any case but with less managers is taking weeks longer.

I visited the picket line of the National Gallery PCS strike they have taken 80 days strike action over the impacts of privitsation and the sacking of their rep. They would bite management hands off for the securities the CWU achieved under the agenda for Growth Agreement such as no outsourcing , no franchising , no two tier workforce , no zero hours , protecting of our current terms and conditions ! The RMT , PCS , GMB and Unite have all faced priviatisation and face the attack on conditions.

The CWU have managed too stop those attacks. Of course in some workplaces their is unacceptable pressures on the workforce which needs to be stopped but first and foremost the workers in the units concerned must raise the issues and stand collectively on the issues they believe is wrong. The highest number of request for local industrial action ballots since the Agenda For Growth Agreement has been received by CWU HQ and that is 18 out of 1500 delivery units.

I'm sorry but it's not the posties fault that a privatised RM got rid of people either but it's the posties who are suffering. The recruitment process does take a long time so maybe recruiting when the vacancies first appear would be a good idea instead of waiting months, sometimes a year or more.

Maybe units would stand collectively if they felt there was even the smallest support from the local rep. Too many times people have cancelled subs because there was zero support from reps. The reps who are more concerned about getting work taken off themselves and added to posties who are already struggling.

RM is in meltdown, the only thing keeping them going at the moment is the part timers who are so desperate for Fulltime hours that they are practically on call. If those guys all stuck together and worked their contracted hours (I appreciate that many can't) then RM would be up sh1t creek. It's a pathetic way to run a company.

[antcpfc]

Maybe RM are planning to ask for a reduction in the USO from six days to five. It would save a lot of redundancy money if the workers had already left.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I post a fact ! It is not the CWUs fault that a privatised Royal Mail got rid of a lot of people in the centre.

Mail's integrity means that recruitment has to go through security clearance and this is a lengthy period in any case but with less managers is taking weeks longer.

I visited the picket line of the National Gallery PCS strike they have taken 80 days strike action over the impacts of privitsation and the sacking of their rep. They would bite management hands off for the securities the CWU achieved under the agenda for Growth Agreement such as no outsourcing , no franchising , no two tier workforce , no zero hours , protecting of our current terms and conditions ! The RMT , PCS , GMB and Unite have all faced priviatisation and face the attack on conditions.

The CWU have managed too stop those attacks. Of course in some workplaces their is unacceptable pressures on the workforce which needs to be stopped but first and foremost the workers in the units concerned must raise the issues and stand collectively on the issues they believe is wrong. The highest number of request for local industrial action ballots since the Agenda For Growth Agreement has been received by CWU HQ and that is 18 out of 1500 delivery units.

All very good and laudable but if the Union don't sell themselves at local level, or has a presence of only 1 or maybe 2 Reps, who are under enormous pressure from the members, Lineos and Managers (especially in delivery) then you are going to get disillusioned and demotivated members. The average member sees very few branch officials, gets very few Branch updates, gets a national magazine which seems to be full of back slapping full time release reps and policy positions. They also see reps apparently isolated and swimming upstream with little support from branch or division or HQ, they see what they think are bad reps being supported both by management and the reps above them, and they see reps in conversation with management apparently feathering their nests.

Is that fair, of course not, its not even accurate, but it is a wildly held perception and unless changes are made with regards to member engagement, and unit support something always promised but which never materialises, then the cancer will spread and ultimately its not the members that will suffer, they think they are already, but the Union as force for good.

[Martin Walsh]

As always I seem to be public enemy number 1 for simply reporting what is happening !

It is not the OPGs fault for the recruitment process that is certain. But I do believe that we need to understand what is considered a vacancy which is agreed to be recruited against. If you had your revision say two years ago and your TM1 office template has got vancancies that does not mean Royal Mail will fill them. There is an agreement called the Stoke Agreement but real name is the filling of vancancies which means when a vacancy occurs there should be a discussion at local level on whether the vacancy 1 needs to be filled at all and 2 if it does what hourage is needed ?

Some of you are quoting your office has had vacancies for over a year. It is my belief that as far as Royal Mail are concerned they do not intend to ever fill them.

The delay in the recruitment process is because of offices who have agreed to fill the vancancies. A lot backfilling a full time VR with a 25 hour part time. It use to take 13 weeks from agreeing to recruit advertising , security clearance , induction to them going into the office ! Now it is taking over 20 weeks plus to get new recruits into offices and often when they finally offered the job they have found alternative employment due to the delay and then Royal Mail to start all over the recruitment process.

Fish no there are lots of offices where there are problems but as you know the union will help but the members must come forward first to alert the union be that local , area , Branch , Divisional level or National level. It cannot be an anonymous posting on here !

TBT for every bad unit I could tell you of good units. The CWU have the facility of local reps no other union has the ability of a rep in every workplace and it is not perfect but some Area Reps and Branch Officials cover large geographical parts of the UK and it is impossible to be in every workplace every day. Often those offices who are organised and use the IR framework or say no get more of the reps time as the IR framework has strict timescales which get reviewed at Divisional level every month. That is not ideal but it is a fact but I would want a programme of visits to units by Branch's with every unit being visited on a month to month basis to support the local rep and as a Divisional Rep I attend each of the Branch's local reps meetings and I go into a few units each month to speak to the members I am in 3 units next week and I am meeting 22 local reps.

So it is about organisation but it is easier for London not so easy if your Branch covers both Blackpool and Carlisle !

[ziggy]

Dingo, by responding to what you post it is not a dig at you, it's an opportunity to try to get answers or make some sense of the chaos that we are experiencing every day.

At the risk of Seeming incredibly stupid but how can RM just make a vacancy shrink? Or disappear altogether? Surely a bit of honesty from RM isn't unreasonable. We had walks taken out when the revision happened but they want more?

We have 5. Five Fulltime duties in an office with around 25 walks. I've said it before there is nothing left to give. Even if the mail volumes were falling (don't believe they are) the same doors are being visited every day, delivery spans are actually increasing with the box emptying and the increase of delivery to neighbour. There's been no attempt to allocate extra time for this despite the union promise of "looking into it" It should just happen, every walk in every office should automatically have had time given to compensate for the extra work.

[chrisj]

Again, responding to the comment about a shortage of recruitment personnel... It is hard to believe that is the only or even major reasons why there is a staffing issue - in what appears all over the nation (not all offices, of course).

My office had never been under the threat of TNT nor have we had any restructuring viz a vis Redundancies. What we have had is staff resigning or retiring with vacancies not been filled or where we have had new staff they have all been 27 hours... People are not been made up and folks that even applied for posts were not allowed to take up their posts. We had a ridiculous explanation that 27 could not have applied for 32 hours job despite the fact that we do not have any 32 hours staff left that does not have a walk - so it was a fake advertisement!

We currently have no 32 hours Reserve posties - all reserves are either FT or 27 hours despite having a number of posties on 32 hours. It is mad!

We are short staffed! Managers chipping in, lots of work is covered on OT and Reserves being messed around on a daily basis...

Work has now increased, we are still lapsing double (if you want to call it summer lapsing) and IPS is now a struggle...

* I thought they were using Reed to deal with their recruitment - what has changed?

[trythat]

As always I seem to be public enemy number 1 for simply reporting what is happening !

TBT for every bad unit I could tell you of good units. The CWU have the facility of local reps no other union has the ability of a rep in every workplace and it is not perfect but some Area Reps and Branch Officials cover large geographical parts of the UK and it is impossible to be in every workplace every day. Often those offices who are organised and use the IR framework or say no get more of the reps time as the IR framework has strict timescales which get reviewed at Divisional level every month. That is not ideal but it is a fact but I would want a programme of visits to units by Branch's with every unit being visited on a month to month basis to support the local rep and as a Divisional Rep I attend each of the Branch's local reps meetings and I go into a few units each month to speak to the members I am in 3 units next week and I am meeting 22 local reps.

So it is about organisation but it is easier for London not so easy if your Branch covers both Blackpool and Carlisle !

Dingo, I always appreciate it when someone like you comes on here, but you only have to look at some of the posts to realise that the CWU are failing many DO and local reps. I read some of the threads and can't believe I work for the same company! When I was a rep, we were promised monthly meetings with the DSM and area rep, so all local reps could check what was happening in the area, never happened - and yes I asked regularly. I never met my div rep, I was lucky as I had a good area rep, and past and present branch secretary.

At our AGM's I've met Bobby and Billy, but over the years I seem to be complaining about the same thing.

When I email HQ, I generally get a reply, but not always with an answer I can use, HQ has got to remember that both RM and CWU want us to sort problems out locally, which we did, but by doing that you can't always get what you want, and more often than not, I've been advised not to go to disagreement because we won't get anywhere.

I resigned as rep, once I found someone who would take over, it just becomes to grinding trying to do delivery and getting things done, I felt as though CWU wanted me to be a manager in disguise, which I really disagree with, but if I wanted to get anything done,I had to have a finger in everything going on. I didn't enjoy it in the end, local reps need more help.

Get more div and area reps out to DO every month, it would make such a difference.

[POSTMAN]

When you've got area reps scaremongering reps about having to work boxing day you know you're on to a loser!

[SpacePhoenix]

Delivery staff are partly to blame, how many:

* Run round their walks
* Don't take their proper breaks
* Cut across lawns, etc instead of using driveways/footpaths
* Doorstep items (bound to be a few who do that - easy sacking fodder for RM)
* Don't get signatures for items needing a signature or sign for things themselves (also bound to be a few who do that - easy sacking fodder for RM)
* Come in early before their official start time
* Go over their official finish time without either cutting off or claiming ot
* Take d2d home to prep (again bound to be a few who do that - probably easy sacking fodder for RM)

Why would reps bother when there's so many delivery staff who do some of the above despite being told not to by reps? Why would RM bother to put hours in when there's so many delivery staff who do some of the above saving them hours, making walks look achievable when they're not if done properly?