The importance of next weeks policy forum

[Martin Walsh]

I really don't think our members understand how Royal Mail is changing and it's plans for change and how quickly. Putting aside the BT2010 agreement for one moment but I will return to it later.

Royal Mail are now stating they are a parcels company which is managing the decline in Letters.

Whist due to Off Comm and the ability to charge fair prices under DSA for the first time since its introduction Royal Mail are making a profit on DSA mail.

Last year due to the price rise Royal Mail made a 2% rise in revenue from Letters but saw a 9% decline in letters. According to Royal Mail records we are now in terms of letters the same as in 1991 but with 55 000 staff less.

Parcels as packet seems a dirty word nowadays , count for 48% of revenue and increasing at a rate of over 6% per year with some areas increasing at double that. Revenue from parcels is growing at 13%.

The parcels market is competive and is worth 6 billion per year. From April Royal Mail will introduce a click and collect parcels service where POL outlits will be open later for customers to collect parcels from these outlets up to 22:00.

From the 2nd April Royal Mail will introduce a standard 24 or 48 hour service for packets and they will guaranteed , confirmed and standard. Royal Mail eventually want all parcels tracked with a bar code and customers to be allowed a delivery window time selection.

All Delivery staff will have PDAs this year and Royal Mail are currently in discussions on the sim cards etc.

The above policy all declared to all managers yesterday and today and will be contained in a special edition of th Courier are all a massive change to Royal Mail.

On top of this it is clear that whilst the Government and Royal Mail want privitisation there is not a que of people lining up to invest in the business. Moya stated yesterday they only want investors who are in for the long terms pension companies who invest over years , she did state that these companies have lots of offers and that discussions were hard and not guaranteed and that she did not believe they would know until at least the Fall. Morevoer it may not be a majority share offering.

The CWU are clearly at odds with the company on privitisation and believe you can raise capital without selling the company. Royal Mail and the CWU are meeting on Thursday where the CWU will present their alternative option to privitisation.

In terms of Business Transformation well it quite clear that the revisions which are not working need investment rather then PWC or further reviews. The CWU told Royal Mail yesterday and today that those offices must be sorted and reinvestment introduced or there will not be any more revisons.

In terms of bullying and harrassment and it's not just bullying but Royal Mail's proposals and unrealistic 100BSI TARGETS are causing our members unacceptable stress and it cannot continue. Whilst they have been some progress in the talks of bullying and harrassment the fact is there is in my opinion a link to unrealistic and unachievable performance targets and stress and bullying in the work place.

The performance targets are unachievable. The fact is a lot of those revisons are not achieieving the 100 BSI targets and Royal Mail has to move away from these flawed revisons.

The outstanding lump sums need to be paid.

There now needs to be a pause on mail centre closures and RDC and Voc closures in order to understand the state of the network and how the new parcels strategy will effect the network.

That WCM needs to change and if productivity is what it is all about and we know it is then start paying bonuses which can once a year be consolidated into basic pay as bronze ,silve and gold awards in the office really don't cut it.

Pat there must be a no strings deal as high as possible.

On top of that it would seem that the money which has been left by the government to fund the final salary part of our pension will not sustain the final salary after the new 5 years or so and therefore Royal Mail may want to change this part of the scheme again. remember all your past service prior to 2008 will be calculated on your final salary when you retire. This now could be a risk again.

So all of the above are the issues which will be discussed next week and decisions will be made. Clearly if there is no agreement by conference then it may be that an industrial action ballot will be called. Of course this will follow a campaign and members will decide by an indivdual ballot.

next week is important but engagement with the members must be even more important moving forward.

[DB1100]

All this emphasis on the growth of parcels and the decline in letter's and the vans we have are too small to cope now,amazing makes me wonder if the MOD was behind the procurement of the vehicles.

[Ahebban]

MOD = Ministry of Dunces

[britwrit]

Just from... well, a completely uninformed standpoint... won't putting bar codes on everything eat up time? Sure, it only takes a second to scan in one parcel but add those seconds up....

[Cut Off King]

I just don't see delivery staff voting for I.A. again... the vast majority feel that they were shafted with BT2010.
It feels like deliveries were sacraficed in order to protect mail centre staff.
This may not be true, but thats the way it feels to us !

And why now ? Deliveries have had P&L revisions based upon 100 + BSI for the last three years, yet only now ( after many "Joint statements" ) the CWU say's that this is unacceptable.
Where were you ( CWU ) during this time while we were all suffering ?

The CWU were complicit with RM in the impementation of P&L, unlimited D2D's , 100% BSI, the removal of allowances.......

And now with the extention of the mail centre closure program announced by Moya, your power-base ( Mail-centres ) is slipping away....You need the backing of delivery staff

Well just remember, we backed CWU-HQ, but they abandoned us

Just don't think that you can whistle, and like a dog we'll come running.
You'll have to EARN that trust.

[arnold cheshire]

deliveries were sacrificed in order to save the CWU

[RTP]

Thanks for the information Dingo. Quite a few points in there that I was hoping for, but was worried had been swept under the carpet.

[Phantom]

Too angry to even make a comment

[Martin Walsh]

Ok I have not got time to respond tonight , but let's clear the bar code issue up which someone raised about would it not delay things ? The issue is a barcode will now mean a customer can say I want a parcel delivered at say 17:00 when I will be in and I want to track by Internet the progress of that parcel

Phantom let me know what issue your angry about .? We don't determind what Royal Mail want to do but try and get the best deals we can. Sometimes our members are not joined up with the pace or direction of the business change and sometime this is bacause the Communcations of the CWU is not good enough.

The rest I will respond about tomorrow but don't forget you would be oblivious to where royal mail are going but for the likes of me who take time to reveal things you would only learn a few weeks or months later.

[midegarelu]

Just from... well, a completely uninformed standpoint... won't putting bar codes on everything eat up time? Sure, it only takes a second to scan in one parcel but add those seconds up....

How much time is eaten up by a Packet (oops PARCEL) passing under a scanner on a conveyor belt which then sorts it according to the instructions on the bar-code,
as opposed to us manually trying to de-cipher a cryptic address and then giving up and throwing in the nearest sleeve!

[SpacePhoenix]

Just from... well, a completely uninformed standpoint... won't putting bar codes on everything eat up time? Sure, it only takes a second to scan in one parcel but add those seconds up....

How much time is eaten up by a Packet (oops PARCEL) passing under a scanner on a conveyor belt which then sorts it according to the instructions on the bar-code,
as opposed to us manually trying to de-cipher a cryptic address and then giving up and throwing in the nearest sleeve!

The bar codes will most likely function just like the current Tracked/Special barcodes, with machinable items being sorted by an appropriate machine and manual items being sorted by hand. Machinable items would get their barcodes scanned by the sorting machine (either just a software upgrade or new hardware installed), manual stuff and stuff where the machines can't read the barcode would be dealt with by someone with a pda.

Deliveries voted BT2010 in as there ware way more delivery staff then there are MC staff.

[Lincox]

Dingo, I am sure we all appreciate the information that you provide on this forum, but this is the problem that we all have with the PEC. I assume that you are a member of the PEC or at least a party to what goes on. Why are we not being given updated information on a weekly basis either direct to each DO or to be passed on by local reps. Take your comment on the bullying and harassment. You say that this is being moved forward. What I want to know is exactly how this is being moved forward, at what point have we arrived at with these discussions, and I want to have this information provided in a weekly news sheet that is open and can have value added by the membership, so that the negotiators have an ongoing feel of what is happening out here at the coal face. You talk about a vast number of staff not knowing exactly what Royal Mail are up to. Well, quite frankly the information you have provided to us in this thread, should have come from the CWU and if they haven,t got the savvy to even give us this amount of update, then christ knows how they think we are going to support industrial action.

[dvbuk55]

Managers and CWU officials were invited to this soiree where RMs Moya Greene and CWUs Dave Ward addressed the assembly each putting the case for their respective positions within their organisation. By all accounts DW did reasonably well but my information is that it looked insufficient to galvanise any real grass roots support. The CWU need to engage the membership NOW - a letter to each member setting out their vision of the way forward and how they intend to combat the failed revisions, the bullying et al and how the campaign to fight off privatisation is going to be waged - and please no harking back to prior campaigns that was then and this is now - a totally different kettle of fish altogether in a totally different financial background.

Is this leadership up to the task? Well judging from past recent performance...................

[fishtank]

Managers and CWU officials were invited to this soiree where RMs Moya Greene and CWUs Dave Ward addressed the assembly each putting the case for their respective positions within their organisation.

Any truth in the rumour that a senior director was spotted "resting his eyes" during Moya's speech?
It must indeed be tough at the top.

[dvbuk55]

Managers and CWU officials were invited to this soiree where RMs Moya Greene and CWUs Dave Ward addressed the assembly each putting the case for their respective positions within their organisation.

Any truth in the rumour that a senior director was spotted "resting his eyes" during Moya's speech?
It must indeed be tough at the top.

I didn't hear that but who knows - I have a tendency to nod off watching CWU TV so .................