London Unit Rep and members meeting

[Martin Walsh]

All Unit Reps and members within the London Region are invited to a mass meeting at Friends House 2.30 next tuesday 17th February on the Euston Road.

The purpose of this meeting is to up date local reps and members on the following issues.

1. The Governments privitisation plans and the CWUs opposition.

2. The CWUs policy of no savings and no peagsus revisons.

3. London`s seperate policy of no agreement to phase 3 of pay and mod.

4. How we combat Royal Mail`s future delivery strategy which is a part time charter.

5. How we protect mail centres in the future and distrubiton jobs

6. London Weighting

7. Making sure the London motion E6 is carried out by the National executive.


The following guest speakers have been invited Billy Hayes , Dave Ward and Bob Gibson.

Remember all London Branch`s have carried the following policy.

That no office in London will agree any savings until we have a national agreement in place which covers our pay claim , shorter working week and a permant share of the savings. In addition a longer term agreement which protects full times jobs in mail centres , delivery offices and disrtubution. If Royal Mail attempt to take executive action in any office in London then the whole of London will be ballotted for strike action.

We expect to have to action this motion within the next few weeks as Royal Mail become more desperate to make savings and cut costs.

Please make every effort to attend. This is your meeting !

We look forward to seeing you.

Start the fight back next tuesday !!

Martin Walsh Mark Palfrey John Simkins
London Divisional Reps

[Martin Walsh]

Billy Hayes , Dave Ward and Bob Gibson have all confirmed their attendance at next tuesdays London meeting

[Malatesta1954]

ATTENTION
• HOW MUCH DO YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR JOB?
• HOW MUCH DO YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR CONDITIONS?
• ENOUGH TO ATTEND THIS MEETING?
• ENOUGH TO JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST ROYAL MAIL’S SLASH AND BURN APPROACH TO TERMS AND CONDITIONS?
• ENOUGH TO LOBBY YOUR MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT?

CWU Members are facing the worst attack on our jobs and terms and conditions ever.

Be it from Royal Mail’s job cuts under the guise of modernisation or be it from Mandelsons plans to partially privatise Royal Mail which is designed to cut more jobs and terms and conditions.

Royal mail has welcomed Peter Mandelsons partial privatisation plans, which is quite frankly, a disgrace.

Joint Ventures and Privatisation have always been about one thing only; cutting jobs and services.
The difference this time is that the joint venture will be with a foreign postal administration, the favourite candidate being TNT.

How is it acceptable for TNT to be allowed to take the profit from Royal Mail but pay a dividend to the Dutch Government?
You only have to look at how our Catering and Cleaning Members have suffered from a joint venture to see what the future holds for Royal Mail workers.

Moreover, Royal Mail has welcomed the fact that Hooper believed that Royal Mail could afford to cut half of the Mail Centres and close up to a third of Delivery offices.

Royal Mail has taken the Government’s endorsement of the Hooper Report as a green light to push ahead with their crash and burn modernisation plans. Let us be totally clear about this, Royal Mail’s so called modernisation plans have nothing to do with improving the service to the customer. Far from it. Unless they change the manner in which companies post their mail, then the introduction of walk sequencing will simply mean that the mail will be delivered even later than it is at present. Whilst walk sequencing may mean job reductions it will also result in the further deterioration of postal services. Is that really modernisation and progress?

Royal Mail claim that the union is resisting modernisation and is partly at fault for the financial crisis that the industry is in. Once again, Royal mail is distorting the truth. The fact is that Royal mail has cut 50,000 jobs within the Postal industry over the last 7 years. Further to this, deliveries have been reduced from 11 per week to 6 a week and collections from pillar boxes have reduced from 7 a day to just 2 a day in some areas. In addition, in the London postcode areas since 1994 there has been 7 Mail Centre closures.

It is Royal Mail’s plans that are not justified. It is simply about reducing jobs, cutting terms and conditions and slashing services.
Let’s examine Royal mail’s plans for Mail Centres; it is rumoured that that their ultimate aim is to get down to 33 Mail Centres from the current figure of 68. This plan will mean that we ultimately see our Members in Mail Centres compulsorily transferred to Delivery Offices. Furthermore, the numbers of full timers and levels of overtime will reduce drastically. Additionally, some Mail Centres are struggling to reliably clear at present and the new state of the art flat machines are simply not working at the speeds Royal Mail believed they would.

Royal Mail is still ultimately a Public Service which has a responsibility to the social network of the country. The closure of these Mail Centres will affect employees in a massive and ultimately life changing way and will not improve the service at all.
With regard to Distribution it is clear that they see this function as a part time job in the future. Be it those who work in Mail Centres or those who work in Distribution Hubs. Yet due to Royal mail cuts some vans in London are having to double up on collections whilst others are struggling to complete.

Royal Mail’s plans for Delivery Offices are probably the most detailed of the lot. Royal mail’s vision for Delivery Offices is based on the Dutch TNT model which works on the basis of a ratio of 10 Part Timers to 1 Full Timer. The Full Time staff do not go out on Delivery but prep the work for Part Timers. Royal mail has a similar vision which is based on jobs being designed for 20 hour weeks and then fitting Full Timers around the Part Timers. Their plan is based on a 5 phase strategy. The initial stages are to ensure that everyone has a Pegasus revision and an indoor workload revision. The second phase is to impose a longer delivery span. The third is walk sequencing and later starts. The fourth phase is team working and further savings and the final phase is to amalgamate offices and maximise savings by asking delivery staff to cross current postcode boundaries to deliver.
Finally, Royal Mail’s strategy is based on standard operating procedure which is basically planned around making all delivery offices the same. For example: ensuring that everyone, in every part of the country, is on the same attendance time and has the same overtime opportunities. Their plan is to bring everyone down to the lowest cost per item Delivery Office.
All of these proposals are unacceptable to the CWU and will be opposed. Royal Mail is threatening to bring in their plans by executive action. The CWU has carried a policy of no further savings until we get the right agreement on all the issues that affect the Members.

It is vital that you the Members understand Royal Mail’s plans and support the union’s desire to resist Royal Mail’s crash and burn modernisation. In our view industrial action is a real possibility if Royal Mail attempts to implement their plans by executive action.

Please ensure that your unit is in attendance at the Unit Reps meeting next Tuesday to hear about the very real challenges that we face over the coming weeks. Lay members from your office are also invited and are welcome to attend.
TUESDAY - 17TH FEBRUARY 2009 - 1400 HOURS - FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE - EUSTON ROAD- LONDON NW1 2BJ

[shimmyrule]

Cant disagree wi any o that, yid better git doon there, or the chimp`l shoot ya.

Some hellish changes to the business eh?

[johnnyp]

About 100 bods turned up,all the boys on the top table spoke,billy is not the greatest speaker ive heard but Wardy,Bob Gibson and the London Divisional reps explained why this fight is a must win for us and our customers.Ive been in this job 23 years this year and been involved like alot of you in our fair share of disputes,but this colleagues is by far our biggest challenge and one we must win because if we dont then the way our job is now will change forever and not for the better.We must all play our part in what could become the biggest battle this union has ever been involved in and make sure we do our best to defeat the government and Royal Mail and get an agreement that moves the industry forward with the CWU right in there.

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[weetrogg]

Im sure if London go the rest will follow, people up and down the country in all functions have just about had enough of this aggresive, incompetent and damn right dishonest management style that exists in RM, couple that with the obvious effects that privatisation will bring(a rapid decline in our terms and conditions and further reductions in QofS) i think is a fight or die issue for this union and its one us members need to play a lead role in

[k979aaa]

Im sure if London go the rest will follow, people up and down the country in all functions have just about had enough of this aggresive, incompetent and damn right dishonest management style that exists in RM, couple that with the obvious effects that privatisation will bring(a rapid decline in our terms and conditions and further reductions in QofS) i think is a fight or die issue for this union and its one us members need to play a lead role in

Well said and seconded ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!.

[Martin Walsh]

John there was 140 people at the meeting not bad for a tuesday afternoon.

We believe we needed the meeting cause as you say we are fast appoaching the biggest dispute we have ever had and that is the final agreement on modenasation. Lets face it pay and mod was a fudge deal Royal Mail wanted far more and I speak to senior managers ie above DSM and MCM level and they scream they thnk the CWU took the money and strictched them up. In the word of those managers they say we have only really got phase 3 into the areas where they believed they would anyway.

The areas they need to get it in to maximise savings they havnt got any change from and have little prospect of doing so in the future fact.

With regards to savings there was a conference call last monday of divsional reps and that reconfirmed the national policy that no savings should be given up in any office in the cwu until we get an overall modenstation deal which covers the unions aspritations of a sww , a committement to a full time job and improvements in pay.

Royal Mail at this moment in time are desperate to make savings within the bussiness. They are trying every trick in the book whether thats trying to get offices to agree to savings by recuiting part timers to full time in return for further savings or allowing vrs within the office. But dont be fooled and dont be tricked Croziers idea of modensation is to cut jobs and serivices year in year out. More over Mark Higson`s strategy is based on the simple factory appoach which is that no office should cost any more per item then any other and thats why the new regional structures have been set up to introduce standard operating procudures.

At the meeting on Tuesday all unit reps were infromed by the London Divisonal Reps that a number of stage 3 disagreements were pending in London including in W1 , WC1 , EC1 -4 , E3 ,E13,E14 with a few others fast appoaching stage 3. If management decide to take executive action in any office in London then the whole of london will be balloted for strike action. This policy has been endorsed by the whole of London and its a policy which will be activited.

This fight is not about whether an indivudual office can get the right deal for them this year. This is about whether we have the right deal across the uk for the next 5 or 10 years in every unit in the country. Be in no doubt every office who takes the easy option of doing a deal on savings is making part times jobs in delivery more likely. It might take the pressure off of that office but it is betraying the rest of the membership who are standing firm.

It is time to stick together and fight. Its also time to forget pay and mod as if you continue to focus on that you will not be concentating on Royal Mail s more sinster proposals.

Those of us who acitivly opposed the way forward moved on and succesfull fought Royal Mail`s SDD proposal including leading the biggest unofficial strike since the miners which achieved the biggest pay rise in cwu history as well as introudcing the 5 day week meaning a protential 48 days more leave on average across Royal Mail.

Are you up for the fight as we in London are !!

[BELIAL]

Yep and I want my pension back too,cos it was in my contract of employment, and If they can bail out bankers to the tune of £500 billion and still have to pay their bonuses cos it was in their contracts ,then they sure as shite can afford my deferred wages ie contracted pension obligation

[rowdogg]

i may be being stupid, but does this mean that london posties still hae job and finish etc, is that stage 3??

[johnnyp]

i may be being stupid, but does this mean that london posties still hae job and finish etc, is that stage 3??

Yes mate we still have job and finish,no deals were ever done on phase 3 of pay and mod,but we as good as work to our times at my place,nights went,walks went and good will went as well.

[savo]

I am going to print off dingo's post from 21:27 yesterday

Then take it to the office to show my colleagues that we did not have to accept the savings plan at our office...

Will probably get branded a trouble-maker there now

[johnnyp]

I am going to print off dingo's post from 21:27 yesterday

Then take it to the office to show my colleagues that we did not have to accept the savings plan at our office...

Will probably get branded a trouble-maker there now

Nice one mate
Get your rep to put in a dissagrement and say NO to any savings untill Royal Mail start to talk to our union at National Level.

[DGP1]

I am going to print off dingo's post from 21:27 yesterday

Then take it to the office to show my colleagues that we did not have to accept the savings plan at our office...

Will probably get branded a trouble-maker there now

You'll get used to it

As the saying goes 'It's better being on the outside p****** in than being on the inside being p***** on'