26/02/2020 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi all, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 26th of February... comments welcome as usual!

ALL OUT STRIKE NOW
RM under the new CEO is obviously trying to bypass
the union. Now it's released a pay offer via the media!
Yes, in the middle of a dispute: our strike ballot is meant
to start next week! But since they don't want to play by
the rules, why should we? Everything they've been
doing is a declaration of class war against us, our jobs,
our conditions. There's no time to lose – let's walk.

RI-GO BACK TO JAIL
And anyway, how can we take seriously the “headline”
pay rise reported in the press? City AM quoted 16%
between 2018-23 – so ~3% a year, over 5 years? Is
this because they average pay over 38 hours instead of
39, or the 37 hours they're not giving us? The only thing
this proves, is that these crooks at the top of the
company are just scam-artists.

CLINGING TO DREAMS
By the way, despite all this s**t, we saw that TeePee
was at it again on Facebook on 20th Feb, asking RM to
negotiate. He's desperate to try to justify his own
existence and that of the union machinery. Because up
to now, RM has depended on the likes of TeePee to
sign up to the serial destruction of our Ts&Cs, while
preventing us from rocking the boat. They even boast
about it!

FUCT 7: IF ONLY IT WAS TRUE
Yes, see the leaflet entitled “London Divisional
Committee Fact Check on Royal Mail and Other False
Allegations” . “Fact 7: Royal Mail have claimed that the
CWU is opposed to any change.” Their answer is that
this is “rubbish” as no union has agreed as much
change as the CWU (!!), and they list the changes:
removal of 2nd daily delivery, creation of OPG, 50%
reduction in MCs and RDCs, merging of DOs, ending
final salary/CARE pensions. Have they no shame at
all? This is why we have to control our own fights.

WHAT ABOUT OUR STRATEGY?
The leaflet also tells us that the “parcel strategy” is
flawed - and then we're given all sorts of reasons why:
the new delivery patterns will be a mess, the Automated
Hours Data Capture will be used against us, etc. We all
know that. But are we to understand that RM bosses
and big shareholders can come up with an “un-flawed”
strategy?
Of course they can't! Whatever strategy the bosses
introduce, with or without the union leadership's
signature at the bottom of the page, is intended to fill
their pockets and empty ours!

WE LIKE TO GO SLOWER
We were surprised to see that the union LDC was
arguing over the question of our productivity, saying it
was higher than RM claimed. Because when our
productivity goes up it means being more screwed! And
when our productivity goes down, it means life is much
easier for us!

ATTACKING BIT BY BIT
So RM thinks it can get away with attacking the smaller
offices first? Some of us in distribution have come
across workmates in offices that are meant to close, like
Holloway. Yes, RM announced the closure of these
offices and the decommissioning of CSS machines. But
our workmates still have no idea as to what will happen
to their jobs if this goes ahead!

YOU CAN'T SQUARE A CIRCLE
Apparently the new HMP boss wants yearly reviews of
our duties. Really? When it took them more than 10
years to put together the last re-sign, now they're
pretending they can have one every year?!

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!
And apparently, the reason why they want yearly duty
reviews is... so that we don't get too comfortable with
our 318s! Which makes us wonder on what planet, far
away from ours, managers live on? There aren't
dedicated duties anymore thanks to all their job cuts.
So from one hour to the next, they try to make us jump
from one duty to the next!

HMP IN NAME AND REALITY
Management (aka the Parole Board) wants to go ahead
with this Automated Hours Data Capture system. It's
aimed at monitoring our movement at all times. So why
don't they just put electronic tags on our ankles and be
done with it?!

SUCH GOOD SAMARITANS!
They even want to spy on our visits to the toilets! The
excuse we heard for this, was that it's just to locate us,
in case we have a heart attack or something - and get
stuck in the loo! Sure, all these measures are because
they care so much about us...

ANY ANSWERS?
Apparently the CDC pension has had it's 2nd reading in
the House of Lords. So it won't be up and running for
some time. And in the meantime, we get a letter from
the Defined Contribution scheme which was very
confusing. It encourages tier 1 and 2 employees to
contribute more and thereby to “grab an extra £1,300 a
year”. But if this scheme is soon to be replaced, we
don't really understand what this is all about..?

JUST £1,000 TO CUT BACK?
Who are these Watch and Win posters aimed at,
exactly? Are they really expecting us to help managers
find “efficiencies”, i.e. to cut our own jobs and
conditions? Or do they mean suggestions like cutting
the RM board, or that Billion-Dollar-Back? In that case,
the £1,000 incentive is peanuts, given what it would
save.