25/02/15 Mount Pleasant Bulletin from anna

[anna]

Hi here is latest bulletin. May be some question over whether Atos is still "providing services" for RM?

THE OSCARS COME TO MP
Congrats to the actors who successfully won a tribunal against RM. They'd been playing manager for so long, that they should have been made up and weren't… We guess they'll be getting an award. We hope it won't give them big heads.

CLUELESS
How much are letter volumes down? Moya uses this as the excuse to force cuts on us. But we don’t know how the hell they can tell, given how letters are counted in this place! It's a fix! They’re scanned randomly, at any stage of the journey - and a lorry ¼ full can be counted as full or vice versa. So how can these scans be accurate? Volumes probably have gone down - by a small amount. But they wouldn't even know how to measure it.

MANAGERS’ PANIC STATIONS
It was a real joke to see managers at such a loss, when new ops started earlier this month. On the processing floor we all knew this was going to happen; there had even been a trial the week before! But true to form, on the day, managers just ran around squawking like headless chickens…

HALF-COCKED
Apparently none of the HMP wardens has any kids, because the half-term wasn’t anticipated and we were short of hands again... Yup, sent all over the shop to work, which made the unsynchronised arrival of mail to sort (now it always comes higgledy-piggleldy) an even worse pain in the butt...

BETTER NOT “TRY”
What are these management huddles about? Lately they seem to be getting into a mini-scrum at every opportunity. Are they feeling insecure - or planning to challenge us to a rugby match?

NOT OK!
We're fed up of the way RM treats mates with health problems. We ask to change to jobs that we can do more easily/usefully, or change shifts, but we get no answers for months!
Now they want us to go to ATOS - well known for ruling people "fit to work" when they’re clearly not! They better understand: we won’t tolerate dismissals on the rulings of ATOS-RM… or on ANY grounds, for that matter!

HARASSMENT, PURE AND SIMPLE
And this is beyond a joke: B the B***dy B still can't stop himself from chasing after us, watching our every move, and timing us to the millisecond to make sure we don't go early. And that's him at his best! Does he realise how much the night shift “loves” him?
So much so, that we're doing a collection to buy him one-way ticket to a delightfully restful place… Mars?

BACK TO SQUARE ONE…
Believe it or not, Romec’s changing the cleaning job descriptions… again, even if the 2 fighting Dumbos can't agree over them! So only the grass knows what will happen...
But we're sure of one thing: they're after cutting our numbers and increasing the workload. (And this, after we've already lost £65 out of our 3-monthly bonus!) These bosses have got away with too much already. That's enough.

ROMEC SECRETS
We’re still in the dark regarding Romec’s future … we know RM is keen to sell its shares (51%) to the service company Cofley and we know the CWU is arguing for RM to take the whole thing back in-house - ie., so it’s 100% RM-owned. As we said before - sensible option or not, RM only sees sense when it sees a risk to “business”. From lots of us.

BUY US CARS!
Of course, managers complain when we’re late even when there’s a transport strike… But this refusal to let us leave even 2 minutes earlier so we can catch (infrequent) connections, is pure bloody-mindedness.
Would they understand better if, instead of coming to work by car (and even by cab!), they had to take the same public transport as everybody else?

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME...
What sweetness and light in the latest WTS! So for instance we’re told we must compete with other areas to collect money for the RM Stroke Charity.
Never mind that the NHS should provide for all this - it’s obviously a cause close to management’s heart - and no wonder, given how their blood pressure keeps going up... We make sure of it.

EXPENSIVE JUNK
From RMchat - we see John Lewis sent junk adverts in mistakenly unfranked envelopes to its customers - who were well un-pleased to be charged £1.53 to collect them.
Should we give them the address of Mr Junk Mail Gibson, the CWU’s own unlovable Del Boy, responsible for signing the junk deal with RM? (BTW it seems he’s also officiating over RM’s potential Romec share sale. Bad!).