Fao Martin Walsh / New start times

[LouBarlow]

The obvious thorn sticking in my side is how can anybody vote on something that is not set in stone and open to future interpretation and changes not in the original proposal?

Agreements, by design, have to give certainty and responsibilities on both parties to that agreement.

Previous agreements have had more holes in them than the Titanic. This negotiators' agreement is no different and ripe to be abused.

How can any union man/woman ever consider this as they doom it to failure like previous agreements following the same scenario?

And talking of planes

What about Northern Ireland?

That is a valid opinion but not a reason to vote against the deal. As Martin says, these changes are coming in regardless of the result of the vote. At least with an agreement you have union involvement and some degree of mitigation.

Ah Lou and Red, Slymans two errant children, for once i agree with Len you cant vote on a agreement not etched in stone, you would think the CWU would have learned that unless its fully shown how it will work, not "we will have a look after", it leaves it open to interpreting it whatever way they like. You know we are right and yet you go ahead with it.
Get the process in writing on paper to even consider it. And even then i dont think i would trust them.
Also true what about Northern Ireland how will us ones over here be affected, is it all coming over by boat?

I’m genuinely interested to hear how you think voting down this agreement will somehow make them stop these changes coming in. You might not trust them to honour it, but having no agreement in place guarantees they will carry on regardless. Engage your brain.

[Burghboy]

What Martin describes (meeting with RM to discuss) sounds like a lengthy project, I think they may have given more unrealistic promises when stating all offices will know their new times prior to the ballot.

This is my fear with most of the agreement that’s not set in stone it’s all dependant on working groups/trials ect, we are effectively at the mercy of the negotiators, the same negotiators that promised so much over the last 9 months and delivered so little.

[scotchy1962]

The obvious thorn sticking in my side is how can anybody vote on something that is not set in stone and open to future interpretation and changes not in the original proposal?

Agreements, by design, have to give certainty and responsibilities on both parties to that agreement.

Previous agreements have had more holes in them than the Titanic. This negotiators' agreement is no different and ripe to be abused.

How can any union man/woman ever consider this as they doom it to failure like previous agreements following the same scenario?

And talking of planes

What about Northern Ireland?

That is a valid opinion but not a reason to vote against the deal. As Martin says, these changes are coming in regardless of the result of the vote. At least with an agreement you have union involvement and some degree of mitigation.

Ah Lou and Red, Slymans two errant children, for once i agree with Len you cant vote on a agreement not etched in stone, you would think the CWU would have learned that unless its fully shown how it will work, not "we will have a look after", it leaves it open to interpreting it whatever way they like. You know we are right and yet you go ahead with it.
Get the process in writing on paper to even consider it. And even then i dont think i would trust them.
Also true what about Northern Ireland how will us ones over here be affected, is it all coming over by boat?

I’m genuinely interested to hear how you think voting down this agreement will somehow make them stop these changes coming in. You might not trust them to honour it, but having no agreement in place guarantees they will carry on regardless. Engage your brain.

Feck all to do with engaging my brain, i am voting on what is in front of me, not on what might or might not happen.
In a free society we are entitled to vote how we feel. Get over it!
I am not scared of any of the threats or intimidation, and i dont mind how you vote and will not criticise you over it.
This is the difference in me and you.

[SpacePhoenix]

4. The anticipated impact from taking flights out will be that mail centres will be dispatching 95% of work to Delivery units by circa 5.40 but the remaining 5% will not be ready for dispatch until after 08.00. The aim will be to review whether more work be advanced to increase the 95% and reduce the 5%.

9%% of work on wave 1, dream on, it's never been anywhere near that, it's always been closer to 50% on wave 1. For one thing it'd be physically impossible to get it on one lorry.

5. In addition the amount on the final wave in delivery units may be mitigated by having a sweeper delivery service instead of moving the whole delivery units start times back.

Deliveries will have to provide the staff and vans as we won't have either

We have the start times now for the up to 3 hours , the up to 90 mins and the up to 60 minutes but we want to meet Royal Mail first as these have been done exclusively by Royal Mail without union involvement and we want to understand some anomalies from the modelling in which some units start and finish times were better under the up to 3 hour modelling compared to the up to 60 minutes model.

Remember the modelling has been done based on

A Wednesday and based on your main DDS duty on a Wednesday

The headlines on up to 60 minutes based on actual finish times are :

There are 1252 Delivery Units

330 will finish before 14.59
798 will finish before 15.30
1145 will finish before 16.00

Just 106 units will finish after 16.00 totalling 3872 walks.

The aim over the next few months is to try and better this position.

However a no vote won’t mean Royal Mail just go back to flying mail over the main land.

The reason is

Flying is 6 times the impact on CO2 emissions to road and rail.

Flying is 8 times more the cost

Flying is 13 times worse on quality of service as Royal Mail don’t own planes they hire them in advance and have no in put in to air traffic delays etc.

Plus when traffic is higher they cannot suddenly hire more planes and of course the growth in parcels is based on a better carbon footprint.


Royal Mail wanted the cheaper up to 3 hours model. Now for 93% of units it will be less than 60 minutes change.

Someone mentioned that their MC is looking at a 07:30 final dispatch, assuming that their current final dispatch is 06:30, that'll be 93% of DOs starting over 60 mins later as you'll need to add additional time on top to allow for all the traffic the lorries will get caught in

[Martin Walsh]

Northern Ireland , Gurnsey , Jersey and Isle of Man will still come on planes and Northern Ireland will be least impacted with 60% of Delivery units continuing to finish before 15.00.

Every agreement allows for work to be done after it has been agreed. Every unit will know the worst case scenario based on up to 60 mins and rate default position of up to 90 minutes. This is based on Wednesday traffic and we are confident of reducing this further over the next few months as any change to start times will not come in until after March 2024.

[Martin Walsh]

Space maybe in your mail centre but the modelling has been done in every mail centres bearing in mind the Midlands Hub is going to reduce inward work further for example

Greenford mail centre will when flights come out have 95% of wave 2 ready for dispatch by 05.20 but won’t have 100% until 08.00 so that is work that needs to be carried out and reviewed.

[SpacePhoenix]

Having 95% of wave 2 ready by 05:20 is just someones wet dream. Both the union and RM are deluded if they think it's physically possible

[LouBarlow]

Feck all to do with engaging my brain, i am voting on what is in front of me, not on what might or might not happen.
In a free society we are entitled to vote how we feel. Get over it!
I am not scared of any of the threats or intimidation, and i dont mind how you vote and will not criticise you over it.
This is the difference in me and you.

I don’t care how you vote, but at least apply some logical thinking to the situation beforehand. Voting no is not going to stop these changes from happening. If you insist that it will, you have no idea how agreements work at all.

[77SAMPOST77]

Feck all to do with engaging my brain, i am voting on what is in front of me, not on what might or might not happen.
In a free society we are entitled to vote how we feel. Get over it!
I am not scared of any of the threats or intimidation, and i dont mind how you vote and will not criticise you over it.
This is the difference in me and you.

I don’t care how you vote, but at least apply some logical thinking to the situation beforehand. Voting no is not going to stop these changes from happening. If you insist that it will, you have no idea how agreements work at all.

Doom and gloom Lou at it again ,

You roll over and vote yes if you want but stop trying to convince everyone else to vote yes ,

It is a pathetic deal and I am voting no everyone else can vote as they please .

[Acca Dacca]

Feck all to do with engaging my brain, i am voting on what is in front of me, not on what might or might not happen.
In a free society we are entitled to vote how we feel. Get over it!
I am not scared of any of the threats or intimidation, and i dont mind how you vote and will not criticise you over it.
This is the difference in me and you.

I don’t care how you vote, but at least apply some logical thinking to the situation beforehand. Voting no is not going to stop these changes from happening. If you insist that it will, you have no idea how agreements work at all.

How do agreements work then?

I thought an agreement was “we wont put up a fight against that in return for this”

“We will give you this if you agree not to fight that/give us this”

If Royal Mail we’re going to steamroll in everything they want agreement or otherwise - why don’t they? What’s the point in an agreement at all for them?

Unless of course it isn’t as easy as you paint it to do so of course

[CRIBMAD]

The Communication Workers Union

"Early next week we will be releasing a document so every delivery unit will know their proposed finish times under the terms of the agreement. These will also be worst case scenarios that the CWU believe can be improved.
This will mean you will have an idea (worst case) prior to any vote - as we have committed to."

Absolute Joke ! worst case scenarios , an IDEA ? so basically accept this crap deal and RM can do what they want to delivery times as the union is now spineless !

VOTE NO !

[POSTMAN]

Early next week we will be releasing a document so every delivery unit will know their proposed finish times under the terms of the agreement. These will also be worst case scenarios that the CWU believe can be improved.
This will mean you will have an idea (worst case) prior to any vote - as we have committed to.

[Woody Guthrie]

There are a couple of strange responses on this thread.

People wanting things written in stone and deals that aren't open to interpretation will be striking until the end of time.

There's actually only one reason to vote no, because you think we can actually guarantee a significantly better deal.

That's a brave thought and I'm still waiting to see anyone come up with a coherent plan to achieve that. People will argue that this is not our problem and the national officers will just have to do better but that argument doesn't really hold water.

We ask the national officers to negotiate the best possible deal, they feel they've reached that point so you can't ask the same guys to go back for more.

I'm not a fan of the deal and my branch has recommended a rejection but do not for one minute think that rejecting this agreement will simply result in more negotiations and a better deal because Simon has gone.

There is a civil war going on at the top of Royal Mail and It is far more likely that after 12 months of talks that have led nowhere the hawks will take control completely, impose a sub par pay rise as they did last year and move on with their change programs at greater pace and without the involvement of the CWU.

Royal Mail is about to announce huge losses for this year and projecting another loss making year next. They don't have time for another six months of talks and in my opinion will simply cut their losses and move on with their business recovery plan trusting that any industrial action will inevitably run out of steam.

So for all the no voters how do we deal with that scenario?

[scotchy1962]

There are a couple of strange responses on this thread.

People wanting things written in stone and deals that aren't open to interpretation will be striking until the end of time.

There's actually only one reason to vote no, because you think we can actually guarantee a significantly better deal.

That's a brave thought and I'm still waiting to see anyone come up with a coherent plan to achieve that. People will argue that this is not our problem and the national officers will just have to do better but that argument doesn't really hold water.

We ask the national officers to negotiate the best possible deal, they feel they've reached that point so you can't ask the same guys to go back for more.

I'm not a fan of the deal and my branch has recommended a rejection but do not for one minute think that rejecting this agreement will simply result in more negotiations and a better deal because Simon has gone.

There is a civil war going on at the top of Royal Mail and It is far more likely that after 12 months of talks that have led nowhere the hawks will take control completely, impose a sub par pay rise as they did last year and move on with their change programs at greater pace and without the involvement of the CWU.

Royal Mail is about to announce huge losses for this year and projecting another loss making year next. They don't have time for another six months of talks and in my opinion will simply cut their losses and move on with their business recovery plan trusting that any industrial action will inevitably run out of steam.

So for all the no voters how do we deal with that scenario?

Woody nothing wrong with wanting a agreement that actually does what it says without room for these half-wits to do what they like.
And theres always a reason to vote yes/no its your choice, saying "can you get a better deal" is just a cop out.
We pay our subs and are entitled to our opinion.
As for a alternative. You have given us one where the company go nuclear and do what they want, its what they have done already, so nothing new there.
If we vote no, nobody knows what RM will do, maybe they will see sense and come up with something different, maybe not.
If this is the best the union can do, then if its a No they will have to deal with it as that is why we pay our subs, not up to us to find a alternative.
Thats a bit like RM giving away a shitload of money, then finding they are losing money and making us pay for it!!
Oh wait thats already happening as we speak!!!

[Acca Dacca]

There are a couple of strange responses on this thread.

People wanting things written in stone and deals that aren't open to interpretation will be striking until the end of time.

There's actually only one reason to vote no, because you think we can actually guarantee a significantly better deal.

That's a brave thought and I'm still waiting to see anyone come up with a coherent plan to achieve that. People will argue that this is not our problem and the national officers will just have to do better but that argument doesn't really hold water.

We ask the national officers to negotiate the best possible deal, they feel they've reached that point so you can't ask the same guys to go back for more.

I'm not a fan of the deal and my branch has recommended a rejection but do not for one minute think that rejecting this agreement will simply result in more negotiations and a better deal because Simon has gone.

There is a civil war going on at the top of Royal Mail and It is far more likely that after 12 months of talks that have led nowhere the hawks will take control completely, impose a sub par pay rise as they did last year and move on with their change programs at greater pace and without the involvement of the CWU.

Royal Mail is about to announce huge losses for this year and projecting another loss making year next. They don't have time for another six months of talks and in my opinion will simply cut their losses and move on with their business recovery plan trusting that any industrial action will inevitably run out of steam.

So for all the no voters how do we deal with that scenario?

With you being a rep, I am assuming you know the reasons why your branch are recommending a rejection. What are they?