Outdoor Assistant Secretary Tony Bouch addresses the issue of rogue managers at Royal Mail acting outside the agreed terms of reference in relation to the USO pilot schemes.

[Pidleypoo]

I think people are rightly getting annoyed/past the point of caring to be constantly told that something that they know about is happening, is getting raised higher/fixed/stopped only to go back to square one.
It's draining.

Tell me about it, quite a few at our place hoping the only positive about the upcoming changes is a full office rehash to get the duties more equal even if it is equally s**t but oh no our manager already saying some will just stay on their piss easy singletons no need for a repick or anything

I thought Martin Walsh said on his YouTube video from a couple of days ago that when this comes in , every office will have to have a repick ?

Duties unaffected by major change would not necessarily be included in any repick.

I think our office of about 150-ish duties the rurals , hct and firms probably take up about 30 of them.

So you’d think ours which has had a repick in the last year would have to have another because way more than half of the duties would be affected.

[Woody Guthrie]

If a rural or firm or any duty is unaffected by the USO reform/major change it can stay out of the repick process.

However if the duty holder wants to benefit from any new attendance patterns and more Saturdays off they would obviously have to take on more work (longer days=fewer days etc).

If the duty is then adjusted to allow that duty holder to move to the new attendance patterns then that duty has been affected by major change and therefore would go into the pot for the repick.

So it might be a straight choice for the duty holder, keep the duty and probably a basic 1 in 6 and lose the extra Saturdays or throw in with the rest of us.

I have to add none of this is set in concrete yet, the trials are still in the early stages but Royal Mail want to avoid the upheaval of this change triggering full revisions at least until next year.

[Martin Walsh]

The issue of the resign and whether rural or firms will be exempt from a resign will come down to two issues :

1. Has the unit always had one resign to allocate duties including rural duties

2. Is there is going to be a surplus on full deployment of the USO and if there is are those surplus more senior than those on rural or firms duties.

3. Is the surplus going to result in voluntary redundancies and if it is , are those on rurals and firms entitled to apply or is it ringfenced for just those on duties impacted by the change.

My overall view is that the potential USO change is the biggest change to Deliveries in over 60 years and therefore a resign of duties with a unit is appropriate.

[Woody Guthrie]

Maybe you can answer the question then Martin.

How does someone on a rural or firm duty that is out of scope for USO reform move to the new attendance patterns?

[Martin Walsh]

Woody of course I will try Newton Mearns the rural duties have the same 2 in 5 attendance pattern as the rest of the unit.

Cumbernauld has no rurals. Girvan I believe has done the same.

Will check on Ayr , Antrim and Ballymena.

Rural duties have the same spec on a Saturday to delivery just 1st class and parcels so providing the rural duties are achievable then they can have less Saturdays.

It is early days in Pilots and we should from May when they roll out across England and Wales start to see if there are differences in how the ODM works.

[Woody Guthrie]

I'm struggling to understand how the rurals can have the same attendance patterns as the rest of the office if they haven't had an uplift in workload Monday to Friday.

The increased workload from the town duties comes from the increased calls rate but that doesn't apply to the rurals or firms so unless these duties have had something added to them to make up the shortfall something doesn't add up.

If that's the case we really should know as soon as possible because adjusting rurals is messy and time consuming and will obviously reduce the numbers.

This has to be fair Martin.
There can't be another two tier solution.

[Martin Walsh]

Woody I totally agree that it has to be fair. The rural duty holders were asked and they worked with the rep and manager to design to the rural routes to achieve the 2 in 5 Saturdays off.

We will be also reviewing whether this can be done in other rural routes or is the square route mileage unmanageable on some rurals?

We are only 6 weeks into the Pilot with one site and two weeks with two others.

One site went live last Monday and two will go live on Monday.

Due to the Easter Bank Holiday period no further pilots will go live until May. The remaining 31 will be phased on over the month or May and early June.

[ted_e_bear]

Thanks Martin for coming on with more info.

Going by what our manager is saying we're going to be well in the two tier situation that woody mentioned, like I suspect many offices are we've got low seniority people on "prime" duties some rural some just singleton but nice area that have simply landed on them, some when people have retired and the duties got downgraded to part time some not but most not even advertised.

Imho this major change to the way of working should have it absolutely set in stone that a full office repick happens regardless no ifs or buts.

[Acca Dacca]

I know you are saying Woody that RM would rater this didnt trigger a full revision but surely the duties will have to be revised in order to account for the higher call rate? We were sold this way of working partly on the idea that the duties would have higher call rates but less delivery points.

Or would putting back in the duties that were taken out in the last revision count as table top?

[postslippete]

If they are putting duties in to allow for those delivering 2 or 3 days worth of mail then there will surely have to be some sort of revision around these duties because they won't be fixed duty holders anymore. Also, a lot of posties who have either not signed for a duty or picked a duty which was originally part-time and have recently had an uplift to their hours would surely mean that a re-pick is due?

[jessicarabbit]

I've seen the future....

Trials are declared a success despite all evidence to the contrary. RM are forced to make the changes by executive action therefore bypassing all agreements. A ballot will take place with an embarrassingly low turnout and support for industrial action under the guise of protecting the service to the public. 18 days of IA will be called saving the business the £300 million it predicted and by this time next year it will be agreed that the only viable option is a 4 day USO. Game set and match.

Good night Vienna

[Pidleypoo]

You can’t bring this in our office with the duties as they currently are.

We’d be under ridiculous pressure and would have absolutely no chance without a full revision.

[Robk80]

Woody I totally agree that it has to be fair. The rural duty holders were asked and they worked with the rep and manager to design to the rural routes to achieve the 2 in 5 Saturdays off.

We will be also reviewing whether this can be done in other rural routes or is the square route mileage unmanageable on some rurals?

We are only 6 weeks into the Pilot with one site and two weeks with two others.

One site went live last Monday and two will go live on Monday.

Due to the Easter Bank Holiday period no further pilots will go live until May. The remaining 31 will be phased on over the month or May and early June.

Our office (which isn’t a pilot office) has just had a full revision and re-sign. The rurals have been carved up to hell with split villages, split post codes and all far too big. Rurals have never been smashed up like this in any revision in memory. Surely we can’t have another re-sign in a few months as this one has caused a major headache with no sign of things being fixed properly. Also begs the question if there is to be another re-sign due to uso changes - why was there a revision at this point?? You big boys also need to come to local offices where staff are working in absolute chaos due to incompetence of managers and planners alike.

[Londonsburning]

Woody I totally agree that it has to be fair. The rural duty holders were asked and they worked with the rep and manager to design to the rural routes to achieve the 2 in 5 Saturdays off.

We will be also reviewing whether this can be done in other rural routes or is the square route mileage unmanageable on some rurals?

We are only 6 weeks into the Pilot with one site and two weeks with two others.

One site went live last Monday and two will go live on Monday.

Due to the Easter Bank Holiday period no further pilots will go live until May. The remaining 31 will be phased on over the month or May and early June.

Our office (which isn’t a pilot office) has just had a full revision and re-sign. The rurals have been carved up to hell with split villages, split post codes and all far too big. Rurals have never been smashed up like this in any revision in memory. Surely we can’t have another re-sign in a few months as this one has caused a major headache with no sign of things being fixed properly. Also begs the question if there is to be another re-sign due to uso changes - why was there a revision at this point?? You big boys also need to come to local offices where staff are working in absolute chaos due to incompetence of managers and planners alike.

Mr Walsh has already been to at least one local office (Cumbernauld DO) in the last week Robk80. And that was chock-full of more chaos and incompetence than you can even imagine even though it is a small DO.
The new pilot scheme is already a cut and dried, done and dusted, concluded, settled, agreed upon, done deal by CWU. These people only care about protecting their own very cushy jobs, not ours.

[Robk80]

Agree with you. Which would indicate that our office has basically already had the USO revision done way before pilots have even ended. Otherwise what would be the point in creating a chaotic revision in our busy large town & rural office at this stage? The union at this point are a complete waste of time locally as our local rep and area rep have had no support from the union big boys.