03/04/24 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 03 April. Comments are always welcome!

FLYING BY THE SEAT OF THEIR PANTS
Funny how just before we were to start our Easter
holidays, managers came to us at the Parcel Sorting
Machine to ask us if we wanted to start our Tuesday
shift two hours earlier... They asked us to sign a paper
if we did not want to! Obviously we queued up with our
pens ready.

NO TO OT
Yes, there was a time in Processing on Nights when
we'd be set free a little earlier on the shift just before
Good Friday. Now managers have the cheek to ask us
if we can stay longer or shorten our bank holidays.
They cut jobs, they cut the hours of part-timers, they
tried to move workmates to other offices... and now,
surprise, surprise, they find they're short of hands! And
they want us to help them out of the hole they dug for
themselves?

RECRUIT THEM PERMANENTLY
This is the third week that management has been
bringing in casuals. These workmates tell us that they
sometimes get their allocated hours from the agency
only a day before they're supposed to start. It's
obvious managers can't do without them, so if they
don't start treating them better (including by offering
them equal pay and conditions, guaranteed hours and
proper contracts!) they will find themselves in big
trouble!

NOT OUR PROBLEM!
Nowadays, if some of our workmates are off sick or on
holidays, managers ask us to cover these jobs, on top
of our own duties! But we haven't grown 5 pairs of
hands, so this is just impossible. And if the work fails,
they can stop saying it's our responsibility! It's their
problem!

AGAINST THE TOP?
By the way, we do feel (slightly) sorry for low-ranking
managers... They must ask themselves how on earth
they are going to clear the work when top
management's cut so many jobs. So if they want to
fight on our side, no problem.

WE'RE NOT BREAKING OUR BACKS!
Parcelforce work has been going through the DO for a
couple of months already, but now we're seeing some
of it in Processing. Just like our Delivery workmates,
we're expected to handle 30kg parcels... or even
heavier! We're told that we can "get somebody to
help" us. Really? And where are we supposed to find
this giant?

WHAT ABOUT CAMDEN WORKMATES?
And why are we even getting Parcelforce work here in
the first place? In that sell-out "agreement" last year,
Dave Ward and the bosses proposed a "single parcel
network" for larger parcels. And now Parcelforce
depots (like Camden's) are being systematically
closed. Obviously, this isn't about reuniting Parcelforce
and RM as Ward pretended, it's simply about cuts.

SLOW AND SLOWER
Processing managers told us in "team huddles", that
the upcoming Network changes might mean the Late
shift finishing at 9.30pm instead of 10pm. This makes
no sense whatsoever to any of us... Are they going to
ask workmates in Collections to bring in work earlier?
Or are they planning to increase night work? Their 18
March leaflet, which is meant to outline new inward
arrival and new outward dispatch times is utterly
baffling! Do managers even know what they're doing?

UNSOCIAL AND INSANE!
On Distribution managers announced that they want all
night workers to start at midnight from 17 June
onwards. Just like that! Starting in the middle of the
night is bad enough. But what's worse, we'll be right in
the middle of rush hour traffic in the morning. It's
totally out of order. How can we agree? And as for
those of us driving to work, are they offering to pay the
congestion charge?

THEY CAN'T SQUARE THE CIRCLE
Managers are so short of workers in W1, that they
keep asking us if we can work extra hours and extra
days during our week... Since most of us have always
refused to do OT, we take time off in lieu. But we were
meant to use all this time off before April... So this
March the hands-shortage was off the scale!
Undelivered items are still piled sky-high!

NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT!
Union officials updated us regarding the CDC pension
scheme... but their letter said nothing about what the
changes will actually mean. They claim that the new
RM Collective Pension Plan is "good news" and that
the bosses might roll it out by the end of the year - a
full 6 years after this hybrid pension was first proposed
in order to finally get rid of what was left of our defined
benefit scheme. Yet another disgraceful episode
which Ward&co dare to boast about!

OLD SCHOOL
The password system for the RM pay and pension app
is so complicated, most of us can't login any more -
and no one seems to know who we're supposed to
contact in the event of a problem! Bring back paper!

WE ALL WANT TO GET HOME EARLY
We're pleased to see the Elephant's tail disappearing
out of the door on earlies - quite a few minutes before
the end of the shift. Perhaps we should follow him...
to see where he goes?

[postslippete]

Any sale of a site in Camden would be potentially lucrative for Royal Mail as I imagine it's in a very attractive part of London for developers. A single parcel network is only giving us more work to do as we handle more of their work. Trouble is we don't have their vans to put them in!

[SpacePhoenix]

WE'RE NOT BREAKING OUR BACKS!
Parcelforce work has been going through the DO for a
couple of months already, but now we're seeing some
of it in Processing. Just like our Delivery workmates,
we're expected to handle 30kg parcels... or even
heavier! We're told that we can "get somebody to
help" us. Really? And where are we supposed to find
this giant?

The limit for Tracked has been 30Kg for some time now. Large business customers have got a 30Kg limit for Tracked.

With the white plastic yorks you can't get help with a really heavy parcel until you've already lifted it, as the second person can't reach it until you've lifted it out of the york.