12/11/25 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 12 November. Comments welcomed!

SCHEDULED ATTENDANCE SCAM
Despite the fact that RM needs extra overtime to be
worked at Xmas, it's at least the third year in a row
that there's been no S/A! Instead, it appears that
most of this (pressure!) OT will be given via their socalled
"foreseen" and "unforeseen" system. Why?
Do managers think that by changing a name, they
can change the nature of the work? The union says
the "old" S/A agreements still exist. Why not enforce
them?

SAVE OUR BACKS!
As for the heavy parcels (increasing in numbers as
we approach Xmas!) the only solution managers
have come up with is... to get temps to help us!
Aren't temps just as prone to get sprains and strains
from lifting these heavy parcels as we are? We hear
from mates in other MCs that they do have electric
lifting equipment. We need this in here ASAP!

THIS IS NO "SOLUTION"!
We read in Royal Mail Chat that RM HQ are
apparently going to use something called a
"plasticiser additive" to soften the white plastic
sleeves to "reduce cuts and abrasions". Yup, a
stupidly complex solution, when the red sleeves
could be brought back for use in those cases where
the white sleeves represent a cutting hazard.

TEACHING GRANDMA?
M&S seems to have some trouble understanding
that we've been doing our jobs much longer than he
was selling underwear. So he insists on breathing
down our necks over the POCL belts! It's obvious
there aren't enough hands to clear the work - and
he's just making everything worse...

P*&S OFF!
And by the way, we'd prefer it if he didn't try pushing
any yorks either, since he hasn't a clue what he's
doing! We want him in an office, on another floor, in
another MC, on another planet. Thank you.

XMAS PRESSURE ALREADY TOO HIGH!
We can already see what a mess DOs will be in, as
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc., approach. All
around the country, we hear the turnover of new
starters is sky-high. If DUMs think the rest of us will
rush around to deliver all these mounting packets,
they can think again!

PRETTY DISASTROUS ASSISTANTS
And by the way, the Postal Delivery Assistants
(PDAs) cannot be relied on - they sometimes send us
down a dead end, and they organise the order of
delivery in a very illogical way! Those of us who've
been delivering long enough to know our way don't
use them, but agency workers and new starters are
expected to trust these bloody things?! No wonder
the turnover of new workmates is so high!

WE'RE COLOUR BLIND!
We thought the Optimised Delivery Method, which is
part of the change in USO, was to be binned? Yet
we hear from other DOs that the frames are still
labelled pink, yellow or blue according to their
Outrageous Delivery Madness priority code. We
might be lucky in EC that all of our frames are pink -
and apparently just because we're part of the City of
London DO. But this didn't prevent DUMs from
trying to bring in the rest of the rainbow!

WE WANT THE INTEREST TOO!
RM-PFS cleaners are still waiting for our backdated
pay - we're told we'll see the lump sum in our
November pay... That is, 7 months late!! And since
it comes as a lump sum, it'll be taxed... so how much
of the back pay will actually end up in our pockets?

WATCH THIS SPACE!
This raises another question: apparently it's taxed
more because it'll push our monthly pay above a
certain threshold, but since our whole yearly pay is
still peanuts, does it mean that the taxman will give
back part of what he's taken at the end of the year?
We need to chase this up, all together. We can't
allow either the boss, or the taxman, to make us
even poorer!

BAH-HUMBUG
So the "Excess Profit" Group have shown what they
think of us: giving us fifty 2nd class stamps this year,
instead of fifty 1st class! Some of us calculated EP
Group saved £41.50 per worker by doing so: £4.15
million over 100,000 of us! But in fact it's a pathetic
"Xmas bonus". As if we'd even bother to post a 2nd
class card/letter! Actually we don't want these
stamps at all! But even if they gave us the monetary
value of 50 first class stamps, it would still be an
insult!

WHERE'S OUR 3rd CLASS?
And by the way, some of us haven't received the
stamps... were these sent second class? So they're
just lost under a pile of undelivered mail
somewhere?

[Mesque1899]

BEST CHRISTMAS SONG

MINES: GREG LAKE, I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS

[Tman]

Plenty about Gaza and Israel, nothing, as ever, about Darfur, Sudan or Nigeria.
The selective anti-Semitic grievances of the Left.