Mount Pleasant Bulletin 3 June 2015

[anna]

PENNIES FOR YOUR PIGGY-BANK
What a lot of boasting in the new Courier - “a good year”, “we're number one”. In fact profits have increased by £11m to £740m! So sure, the bosses and big shareholders can be pleased. As for us, we're getting a dividend amounting to £3 a week – if we're full-time that is. It's less – about £1.50 - for part-timers. Privatisation worth it? Certainly not for us and certainly not for the general population. We still have miserly wages, are delivering mailboxes full of junk and can't afford to post a letter ourselves, not any more...

FROM ONE DIVERSION....
Why these diversions again? It’s a mystery. Anyway, it caused chaos on one platform where there were not enough of us to cope, while on another, mates had little to do... And of course it was quite beyond the responsible managers’ ability to re-organise man- and woman-power accordingly.

... TO ANOTHER
Small things... When a manager-trainer was meant to be showing mates from Greenford how one of the unused machines works, since it’s meant to be moved there, he took the belt off and put it back on the wrong way. The machine complained loudly, we chuckled, and the engineers had to come to his rescue...

LET'S COUNT TOGETHER
We keep noticing that the number of duties and our numbers just don’t match… whether it’s the platform or sorting, or anywhere. You’d think it would be simple to understand that 1 duty = 1 worker. Managers come and tell us that the “mismatch” is due to some of our mates on holiday or off sick. OK, they don’t want to employ enough workers to cover the normal ups and downs of the job? Then the job won’t be done.

JUMBO PROBLEMS BREWING
In Romec it’s the same story: the Dumbos don’t hire enough of us and then harass us if we’ve been sick, throwing around stage ones like confetti. It’s a sick policy! And by the way - the grass isn’t laughing any more. The feuds and “favouritism” are making us feel very, very, prickly...

EQUAL CONDITIONS FOR ALL...
We all know how RM has tried to stop the “finish and go” practice – by keeping us in as if we were naughty schoolkids until the “bell goes” even if the work is cleared. But some managers on Lates aren’t so silly and let us go - except if we’re unlucky enough to work in the bullrings... There they want us to sweat to the last minute. Have these managers been taking buzzing lessons from nightshift's prize obsessive B the B?

BULLYING RING
Yes! Stop this interference! This job is bad enough – but managers keep crowding in behind our backs and then they dare to ask us to stay behind and do even more of this hazardous packet-throwing. “The bull is not an aggressive animal, and the reason he is angry and attempts to charge at the matador whilst in the bullring is mainly because he has been horrendously abused for the previous two days” : from “Bullfighting, the facts”.

QUICK REMINDER
Has Romec forgotten to tell us the results of the discussion between Cofely, Royal Mail and the CWU? They said they’d report back at the end of May. What we’re waiting to hear is that Romec is being taken back in-house by RM... because nothing else will be acceptable.

VAMPIRES
We can’t understand why the hell RM bosses have excluded night shift mates from working on the machines on mornings/lates! Are they playing a nasty game of keeping us on nights forever? Yeah, even when we’re OK to lose night allowance for the sake of our health, these bosses refuse us the possibility of changing from nights to days. They are real bloodsuckers.

ONE IS NOT AMUSED...
Why had the bosses here not even anticipated the cordoning off last week of the whole of the Westminster area during the Queen's Speech? Drivers were confronted with absolute chaos, and as a result everything was late. Shame hey, they can't think ahead, but we wonder, can they actually think at all?

TEL-US!
We see the telemetry is already in our cabs, but it's not being used yet. Well as far as we are concerned, if it there for the purpose of assisting us – and not to spy, it shall remain that way. And we want the full facts!

SURE, WE ALL HAVE BILLS TO PAY...
So Moya’s pay rise of 13% is now decided for definite – she will have £1.52 million! This includes full basic of £547,800 plus various incentive payments. The chair of the RM “Remuneration Committee” says it's all justified because she never got a pay rise since 2010 - whereas we got about 11% since then. So fair's fair! Yes indeedy! Well let's not hesitate, when we find ourselves a bit short, we'll send her a collective “request” for a generous contribution...

ANOTHER CHALLENGE
We see that the local councils – Camden and Islington have put another challenge in against the Mount Pleasant redevelopment on the grounds that there still aren't enough affordable homes included; they want at least 42% while Boris' scheme only allocated 24%. But even these “affordable” rents, being based on the average rent of the area, will be 2-3 time normal council housing rents.

[baldrick]

Thanks for posting Anna. It always makes me feel really glad I'm not there anymore!

[Budfrog]

No matter what ... The Mount will always be The Mount ... thanks Anna ;)

[rainbowwarrior72]

Keep up the good work Anna and say hello to B the Builder

[barbario]

Thanks for posting Anna. It always makes me feel really glad I'm not there anymore!

Some of us are not so lucky.

[baldrick]

Thanks for posting Anna. It always makes me feel really glad I'm not there anymore!

Some of us are not so lucky.

Yeah I know. I feel your pain!