Compulsory redundancies in London MC's?

[POSTMAN]

November 2010

01 11 2010 - Ann McCarthy and Ian Songhust

Dear Anne and Ian

Thank you for your recent telephone calls and paperwork regarding your preferred option.

After careful consideration the London Divisional Committee has come to the conclusion that the absolute priority is to understand whether your preferred option can avoid compulsory redundancies.

During the first 90 days you and your team were at pains to inform us that you believed your option optimised capacity, optimised efficiency, optimised property and met customer specification.

However, at no stage have you demonstrated that you have a sound and structured plan which would meet the over reaching objectives of avoiding compulsory redundancies.

To the contrary, you seem reluctant to give us any information on your phasing plan or indeed the potential impact of your plan.

Instead you seem to want our reps and the outer London reps to plan your preferred option. Considering the time yourselves and your project team have spent planning your one Mail Centre option we do not understand why you see this as a priority in front of understanding whether your plan can avoid compulsory redundancies.

The CWU thinks your tactic is in breach of the 2010 National Agreement.

The CWU in London has therefore reached the conclusion that until you can demonstrate that your one Mail Centre plan for London avoids the over reaching objective of the agreement to avoid compulsory redundancies then we cannot support planning your one Mail Centre option.

We are committed to working with you on a preference exercise and understanding your time line and phasing plans and will meet you in line with the National Agreement.

Until we have a solid and confident peoples plan in place which has at its heart the avoidance of the need for compulsory redundancies and the principle of attempting to meet every individual’s first performance, then we do not believe it is acceptable to plan the one Mail Centre operation.

Therefore until we have an agreed comprehensive plan for dealing with the people issues arising from your preferred option, none of our area reps will be meeting to discuss the operational issues associated with your plan. This includes East, Mount and South London and also Rathbone Place.

We will also be contacting the Divisional Reps and Area Reps for Jubilee, Croydon, Romford and Greenford informing them that we believe that Royal Mail are in breach of the National Agreement in planning their one Mail Centre option without a plan to safeguard the staff affected from compulsory redundancies.

We are available to meet to discuss a preference exercise and a plan which will help both of us understand the people’s impact from closing 2 Mail Centres in London which according to a letter sent from the business on behalf of Moya Greene to an MP estimating 1,000 would be surplus along with 800 who would be potentially transferred.

The scale of change dwarfs other projects. Considering the fact that the 3 Mail Centres which moved to Manchester only totalled 624 full times and 290 part timers, then you can understand the huge potential problem which your preferred option will cause.

In London we do not want to see unresolved surpluses when Mail Centres close as we have seen in Crewe and Stoke. The fact is what happened in those two cases should be unacceptable to both the union and Royal Mail.

Furthermore, the north east plan which closes 6 Mail Centres only has a potential net profit value of £40 million whereas your preferred option has a net profit value of £142 million.

Our concern is that you are attempting to rush forward your plan irrespective of the people consequences and whether it will lead to compulsory redundancies in order to realise your net profit value.

We believe that the National Agreement cannot be clearer when it states that Royal Mail and CWU confirm the over reaching objective is to deliver the transformation without recourse to compulsory redundancies.

We fail to see what you have done so far which can demonstrate with any degree of confidence that you can deliver your one mail plan without compulsory redundancies and compelling individuals to transfer to offices which they do not wish to go to which again is in breach of the aim to meet every individual’s first preference where possible.

We hope this clarifies our position. We are committed to the National Agreement but we believe the main priority at this moment is to understand whether your preferred option will lead to compulsory redundancies.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to meet regarding this letter.

Yours sincerely



Martin Walsh, Mark Palfrey, John Simkins
London Divisional Representatives

cc: Dave Ward
Phil Browne
All London Branches

[POSTMAN]

The duty sets at croydon and jubliee are no way acceptable.
More when i get it.