They Are Under Pressure!!

[orienteer]

An Email from a Delivery/Collections Director

Reads like a letter from Hi-De-Hi's Joe Maplin.

[Martin Walsh]

Tman the solystics walk sequencing machines were tested in Holland and the fundemental differnece between Royal Mail and TNT in Holland is that we do deliver packets and large flats whereas they dont. This means that mail can be bench merged rather then sorted into frames.

In the UK for example the orginal trials on walk seqencing were under the securing our future agreement. At that point Royal mail were intent on ordering 1000 of these machines however the problem some became that whilst the machines do sort at a good rate they cannot on the present system provide all the waves sequenced to all the cluster offices which the walk seqencing machine provides for. So for example in Stratford delivery office where the machine is located it can maximise walk sequence mail and could make savings of 30 to 40 mins per walk depending on what indoor workload assement you assess it on. However Stratford is meant to serve East Ham , Forest Gate , Plaistow and Bow and because it cannot sequence mail after 0500 for these offices the savings reduce to between 10 and 20 mins. Hardly worth the trouble and costs.

This is why they stopped the roll out and earlier this year decided to introduce one out ward pass per mail centre and then trial walk sequencing in Gatwick and Bristol. I have visted the gatwick mail centre and I know that the trial does not produce the levels of savings they thought would be possible.

The reason for this is that appox 60% of the mail is ready for sequencing from Midnight. This is your second class , mail sort , press stream etc now this can be processed easy enough and can be transported to delivery offices in time for the start of their shift. However the bussiness savings was made on 100BSI and if they sort this work up before the remaining 40% arrives then it will reduce the overall savings targets.

The second 40% of mail is due to clear by 4 40 by workplan this is first class intra , neighbours and distant and this is the real problem as the business case required only one machine operator per machine and the operator cannot keep up with the machine output as each batch needs 3 differnt passes. The 40% of work takes as long a time to complete as the 60% and the machine clears on the basis of dispatching to the nearest offices first. So for the likes of Eastbourne they are not getting their mail till 10 in the morning. You then have to sort up all your work in the frames in sequence order then add your flats and packets and obviously this means mail is getting a later delivery. The savings reduce if you put more operators on the machines as well.

The Bristol trial has been given clearence by Post comm to trail a 3 o clock last letter, so here we have it that automation will provide a later delivery and a worse service then currently ! Is that really progress and modernistation ??

[DGP1]

The Bristol trial has been given clearence by Post comm to trail a 3 o clock last letter

That rarely happens in my office now, it's more likely to be nearer 4pm these days

[dropbag_clone]

An Email from a Delivery/Collections Director

finishing_early.jpg

If anybody dreamed that 'job and finish' was still an option open to delivery staff the quote about "our people rolling back at least an hour early" should make them think twice.

RM management is convinced that there is still plenty of slack in delivery offices, and they are pushing the staff ever harder trying to squeeze that hidden 30, 40, minutes out of them. You’re making the time up because you are fast and efficient, think again, it means you don’t have enough work to fill you day. Long days and short days just cloud the issue, walk absorption is nonsense. The sooner we have more work than we can process and deliver in our contracted hours the better. We will learn to work until our day is over, not race trying to complete before the clock tells us the ‘short’ day or ‘long’ day is finished, and oh look I've finished 25 minutes early, I must be a superduper postman.

Lets forget about having a clear office or a clear frame, you do your eight hours what’s left over gets done the following day, and the day after, and so on.

It’s simple. You get paid the hours you work and work the hours you are paid for.

[Big Daz]

My D.O didnt need long days, so now its created spare time as the goal posts have effectivley been moved with the introduction of longer days.

[norbert]

Apparently the idea is to have a standardized delivery cost for every DO it's all pie in the sky ; bean counters stuff , TNT Holland have standardized super mail centres , you could go to one 100 miles away from you and it would work exactly the same .

RM propaganda plants say the Dutch TNT blueprint is continually adapted , others are not so sure .

The attitude to packets and parcels is that they are " Granny Parcels " , people must have a lot of grannies then ? , doesn't take into account Ebay , Amazon etc

There is one Colonel Blimp type that says the USO stuff is delivered at cost & the Union has too many high minded socialist ideas about public service & expects a government that is obliged to make up the loss , also profit should not be a dirty word - please don't shoot the messenger !

I agree with Belial that the RM idea works Ok on a superficial level if the profit goes up , the problem is when the cracks start to show with service , the argument the RM plants are using is that profit is ploughed into the pensions deficit from the holiday - their attitude is that it was Tory policy at the time - get over it !

[norbert]

An Email from a Delivery/Collections Director

Reads like a letter from Hi-De-Hi's Joe Maplin.

it does like sound like that - so abrupt & off hand - does that Director have Aspergers Syndrome ? - I think :lfo got the idea from the late Sam Walton , owner of Walmart it's supposed to be " simple , clear and direct communication " just like the Plasma Screens which sounds very sales , I know ASDA managers have to sing the company song and there are US firms where the staff have to sing the company song


In my experience you get " Animal House Management " - corruption and clones , clones parroting out all this bizarre and vague sounding stuff or " catchphrases "

The pressure is making the impossible work as everyone knows

[Tman]

the solystics walk sequencing machines were tested in Holland and the fundemental differnece between Royal Mail and TNT in Holland is that we do deliver packets and large flats whereas they dont. This means that mail can be bench merged rather then sorted into frames.

You make it sound like "someone bought the wrong machines" when in reality, it's just a case of differing systems or methods. How well or badly RM integrate these machines remains to be seen, but that's always been the case.

It's dangerous to believe that the only benefit of automation is simple time-saving though. Although CSSs may only appear to save minutes per walk (although that in itself adds up) the real benefit is to RM is removing the unreliable human element.
After all, a CSS won't turn up late, text his mate, go sick, spend 30 minutes talking about how well ManU are doing or even go on strike. There also won't be a employer's NI contributions, no pension contributions to be paid, and no other hidden staff costs either.
Even worse (from a CWU standpoint) is that "anyone" can push that start button and process mail, and in a strike, "anyone" will do just that.

Sadly the CWU(UCW) has a long tradition of either hoping automation will go away if they ignore it, or blocking it in any way possible. Neither option is viable now, but as has been said before, it's a shame the CWU weren't more active when new automation is planned. At least that way they might have got better deals for members rather than the current situation.

[Martin Walsh]

Tman perhaps you can explain and give some facts about this so called long CWU tradition of not supporting automation.

I have been in the job for 26 years and we have never refused to work new automation kits. The only thing we require is a terms of reference and a trial. After all the SFMB agreement of the late 80s was a major automation agreement which paved the way for new ways of working regarding automation.

However in this time I have seen Royal Mail mess up on a frightening scale their automation strategy. They bought the orginal flat machines which had been trialed in France without purchasing the proper soft ware and then wonder why they didt achieve the require targets and savings. Plus when they finished coding in mail centres and transfered it to remote video coding they bought the only self learning machine which didt work and took close on two years to get it functioning. Plus now we have walk sequencing which is now 4 years behind the timescales set by the bussiness and agreed with the CWU. This has nothing what so ever to do with the CWU. Insted it is the thought of senior management who failed to do their research into walk sequencing which is why the likes of Kevin Green , Ian Barrie were removed from their senior management jobs.

Of course it is easy to blame the CWU and OPGs for all the ills of the company but the reality is that the buck stops with senior managment who have failed to deliver automation into the industry in the timescales which they had said they would do.

Plus what I find amazing is your defence of the trials for current walk sequencing , how can you support mail arriving later to customers by automation then it does by the current system. That is madness. Most customers especially business customers want mail earlier not later. With the current trials you can not seperate business from domestic mail so all the mail arrives later then the present delivery times/

I am not opposed to automation. However I do oppose Royal Mail wasting public money on introducing new machinery which neither improves services or provides employees with a future. services for the customer.

[axeman]

Until the enevitable breakdown and then the sh*t hits the fan tman eh!! as your sorters have all gone home , but of course with your preference for suitability you'd have them (machine operators) running around like tw*ts wouldn't you

[Bouncing Souls]

Just read the email sent out by this director,
a few points, very poor punctuation and grammer, it is inappropriate to manage performance by email, i.e giving folk a row, for a man in his posistion it damages his credability to adopt a not only patronising but sarcastic tone to his management team. If this is the standard of director in Royal Mail...
Has he never thought of motivation and support to help his team to succeed?

[drb]

To be honest,I could'nt care less about the fellas grammar or...whatever. Concentrate on his plans and how WE counteract it!!
For christs sake!!! Stop going on about how inept they are..tell me something new.

Get involved.Speak to your rep. Come up with ideas!!

Your working for the most evil employer of all time!!! This we know!!

On that basis what are YOU prepared to do?

Christ!!!! Tell me something PLEASE? Inform me. Educate me. But PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME SOMETHING I KNOW ALREADY!!

(For F***k Sake)

[pickaname]

Just read the email sent out by this director,
a few points, very poor punctuation and grammer, it is inappropriate to manage performance by email, i.e giving folk a row, for a man in his posistion it damages his credability to adopt a not only patronising but sarcastic tone to his management team. If this is the standard of director in Royal Mail...
Has he never thought of motivation and support to help his team to succeed?

I think most RM employees are beyond 'being motivated'. I just want to do the 8 hours and forget.

[Tman]

Tman perhaps you can explain and give some facts about this so called long CWU tradition of not supporting automation.

Many cases, ranging from the third FCT under dust sheets at my old MC "because the union weren't consulted before it came in" and wouldn't sanction it's use, to the proposed operator grade of a few years back; "oh no, we can't have posties earning diferent money from other posties".
Then there's the continuing use of seniority in MCs, resulting in some poor old feller who's never used anything more high tech than his TV remote operating some complex machinery (badly) but because he's higher on the list, the CWU supports this dumb situation.
What other company would allow this to continue?
Good old Fred on Ford's assembly line only gets to screw on three wheel nuts because he's so slow, but no problem 'cos he's number one on the list...........

However in this time I have seen Royal Mail mess up on a frightening scale their automation strategy. They bought the orginal flat machines which had been trialed in France without purchasing the proper soft ware and then wonder why they didt achieve the require targets and savings. Plus when they finished coding in mail centres and transfered it to remote video coding they bought the only self learning machine which didt work and took close on two years to get it functioning.

You'll have to expand on this one. Sounds like it could be another of the urban myths similar to the classic "the Japs never supplied the CFCs with top covers and interlocks because they don't fit them in Japan, but RME/ADST never realised that until the first machines arrived" or "all the CFC manuals are in Japanese because RM wouldn't pay for them to be translated".

Plus what I find amazing is your defence of the trials for current walk sequencing , how can you support mail arriving later to customers by automation then it does by the current system.

I didn't realise I did. You'll need to point out where I said that.

[DGP1]

Maybe the managers need to stand up for themselves, if they would grow a backbone then maybe the whole bullying thing wouldn't be as bad.