25/01/23 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 25 January, comments are welcomed!

PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED
Many of us attended those round-the-clock meetings on
Tuesday to hear union officials asking us to vote YES in
the strike re-ballot... And of course, we will vote YES!
We know better than anybody else, including the top
union leadership, how much we'd lose if the bosses get
away with their plan of attacks against our Ts&Cs! No
need to remind us about that!

WHAT FIGHT DO WE WANT?
We were told by the CWU official who came on Tues that
the HQ guys are worried that fewer of us might vote for
strike action this time round... But for us the main
problem isn’t the ballot but the fact that after 18 days of
strikes, most of RM’s attacks are still on the table and
some are already implemented! What we need to
discuss (at the gate or anywhere else!) is what sort of
strategy we can use to fight Thompson&Co!

CUT OFF FROM US
It was worrying to hear this union official talk about
“future” attacks, as if he really didn’t know what was
happening on the ground: e.g., he said RM wants to cut
allowances… Sure, but they’ve already done away with
the delivery driver allowance. He said they want to use
our PDAs to check on us, but they already do so. He also
made out that RM would accept voluntary Sundays, but
we know they want them to be compulsory. These guys
could do with coming “down” to the shop floor
occasionally...

REDUNDANCIES ARE REDUNDANCIES
As for the talk about us having won a victory by forcing
management to back down on compulsory
redundancies: this is a red herring if ever there was
one… Anyway so-called "voluntary" redundancies
without replacement are job cuts by another name!

PROVOCATION
According to a Work Time Sleeping briefing on
Processing, managers are going ahead with what they
call a "realignment". And they have the cheek to say
they want to implement it by mid-Feb, while we're still in
the middle of the dispute! And yes, that means they'll
be offering more VRs - as if we were not already short of
hands. But whether they’ll get them, with that lesser VR
package they're offering, that's another question...

DEAD SILENT!
What on earth is happening with our strike on RM-PFS?
Us cleaners are the worst paid in this place and yet
we've heard nothing about our dispute! Whose door do
we need to break down so we can find out what’s
happening?

TOILET PAPER
Well done to management, who showed us they can
publish a glossy anti-strike leaflet... They've even
proven that they can count, since they correctly point out
that we’ve taken 18 days of action. And we could say
that we even agree with them when they write "it's time
to get a deal done"... Yes! It's high time they dropped
all attacks on our Ts&Cs, gave us the above-inflation rise
we need and reinstated the union reps and workmates
who’ve been suspended during the dispute!

ANOTHER OF OUR DEMANDS!
As for the "around £1,800 in lost pay", do they think that
this is going to be an argument for us to vote NO in the
reballot? We know we'd be losing far more if the bosses
get away with their cuts... In fact, we should include in
our demands that all strike days be paid!

A SECOND CHANCE?
Now we hear that Simon Thompson screwed up his
appearance before MPs so badly, they've asked him to
come back to "clarify" certain things. Like whether
managers track us via the PDAs, or what sick pay we get.
If they really wanted to know, they could just ask us…
Perhaps they just want to give him a second chance to
come across better?

OUT WITH THE SHAREHOLDERS!
Meanwhile the CWU calls for him to go… and to be
replaced by whom?! Bosses are all the same - aiming to
maximise profit for the shareholders. If we
renationalised RM, however, there wouldn't be any
shareholders...

NOT MUCH NEW UNDER THE SUN
Thompson sat in the committee claiming that it was not
RM policy to prioritise parcels… and then was presented
with one of his management's own posters, which
clearly explained that letters were the last thing on the
list of what should be delivered. Oops! Of course, MPs
may only have just discovered that letters weren't being
delivered, but it's been the case for ages!

WORSE THAN IT’S EVER BEEN
Worse, that poster says we are not expected to deliver
all our letters… every day! Clear, isn’t it? And an
admission that there aren’t enough of us on deliveries!

WHATEVER NEXT?
On Primary Letters, we hear the late shift might be
changed, so it would finish at 2am! Really? We know
managers always come up with these hair-brained
schemes. How would we get home at that sort of hour?
They’d have to pay for our taxis...

TERRIBLE TODDLER
Baby Boss is all grown up it seems, and is off to
Parcelforce for his next big adventure! They grow up so
fast! It makes us wonder what he spent most of his time
doing… sucking up to the higher-ups (when not sucking
his thumb)?