Uso agreement

[chickenwittle]

The pilots are clearly not working or making the savings Royal Mail want , so well done to the CWU for standing up and saying so , the majority on here would be slaughtering the CWU if they sat back and let it come in regardless.

It was -plain to see that the pilots were never going to work as how can anybody deliver 3 days posts, particularly when some offices can't even deliver I days mail at present, the CWU should have never backed the plans in the first place, it's interesting that they are only "standing up" now OFCOM have given RM the green light, so the changes will take place regardless of what the CWU have to now say or do.

But it would work if more duties were put back in to make it doable but that’s now obviously the sticking point with Royal Mail , they are seeing their uso savings go up in smoke in order to get things running smoothly.This is an issue for Royal Mail , not the CWU, if they’re not prepared to fund it, they’ll have to come up with different plans.

[chickenwittle]

How about something less convoluted. A 5 day letter service. You barely even need to plan for that, you surely wouldn't even need trials.

Because that would require an act of parliament which might take years if it ever got approved.
The 6 day letter service has to stay to avoid government interference.

Not if first class is still delivered on Saturdays though

The logical first step if not thinking of just how much the business can save, would have been to keep things as they are Monday-Friday and make Saturdays 1st class and tracked only

No act of parliament needed

This is what they are proposing already,

No its not. I said keep things as they are Monday to Friday i.e every duty goes out every day with all products

Or are you saying this plan is what the union are now saying should happen?

But taking things out every day isn’t working across the country now , we’ve been doing this for years and failing, so what’s the point ?

[Acca Dacca]

How about something less convoluted. A 5 day letter service. You barely even need to plan for that, you surely wouldn't even need trials.

Because that would require an act of parliament which might take years if it ever got approved.
The 6 day letter service has to stay to avoid government interference.

Not if first class is still delivered on Saturdays though

The logical first step if not thinking of just how much the business can save, would have been to keep things as they are Monday-Friday and make Saturdays 1st class and tracked only

No act of parliament needed

This is what they are proposing already,

No its not. I said keep things as they are Monday to Friday i.e every duty goes out every day with all products

Or are you saying this plan is what the union are now saying should happen?

But taking things out every day isn’t working across the country now , we’ve been doing this for years and failing, so what’s the point ?

But we'll be able to take everything with double/triple mail and 50% door to doors every other day and it wont fail?

[Trumanity]

IMG_3460.png

So, that's a functional response, not a vicious rumour.

[Pidleypoo]

The people in this thread saying that Royal Mail will bring these changes in because they want to save money.

1. They might just push it all through with poor revisions and it’ll be a massive disaster resulting in more quality failures and loss of business.

2. They only save money if it works.

3. Pretty clear at this point that 3 posties and 4 deliveries doesn’t work in any office above 50 deliveries.

[chickenwittle]

How about something less convoluted. A 5 day letter service. You barely even need to plan for that, you surely wouldn't even need trials.

Because that would require an act of parliament which might take years if it ever got approved.
The 6 day letter service has to stay to avoid government interference.

Not if first class is still delivered on Saturdays though

The logical first step if not thinking of just how much the business can save, would have been to keep things as they are Monday-Friday and make Saturdays 1st class and tracked only

No act of parliament needed

This is what they are proposing already,

No its not. I said keep things as they are Monday to Friday i.e every duty goes out every day with all products

Or are you saying this plan is what the union are now saying should happen?

But taking things out every day isn’t working across the country now , we’ve been doing this for years and failing, so what’s the point ?

But we'll be able to take everything with double/triple mail and 50% door to doors every other day and it wont fail?

No that won’t work either unless Royal Mail are prepared to fund it which they don’t seem prepared to do , so it sounds like it’s back to the drawing board.

[Acca Dacca]

How about something less convoluted. A 5 day letter service. You barely even need to plan for that, you surely wouldn't even need trials.

Because that would require an act of parliament which might take years if it ever got approved.
The 6 day letter service has to stay to avoid government interference.

Not if first class is still delivered on Saturdays though

The logical first step if not thinking of just how much the business can save, would have been to keep things as they are Monday-Friday and make Saturdays 1st class and tracked only

No act of parliament needed

This is what they are proposing already,

No its not. I said keep things as they are Monday to Friday i.e every duty goes out every day with all products

Or are you saying this plan is what the union are now saying should happen?

But taking things out every day isn’t working across the country now , we’ve been doing this for years and failing, so what’s the point ?

But we'll be able to take everything with double/triple mail and 50% door to doors every other day and it wont fail?

No that won’t work either unless Royal Mail are prepared to fund it which they don’t seem prepared to do , so it sounds like it’s back to the drawing board.

Hence they should have just cut Saturdays as a first step until they worked out a viable plan and to bed it in

[kazardaimenu]

Yes cut 2nd class Saturday see how that sits and progress from there. RM think they can push spreadsheets and get the results they require but it’s never the case on the ground.

[Mr Rush]

Hence they should have just cut Saturdays as a first step until they worked out a viable plan and to bed it in

I've been asking recently why Saturdays weren't ditched years ago if we're now in the position where cutting back to five days service is not a viable option. It was consistently pointed out that the removal of Saturdays required parliamentary amendment of the USO specification - yet here we have a technical workaround being proposed for the ODM. So why wasn't 1C-only Saturdays proposed years back?

The union are now (or were) very onboard with this plan whereas pre-pandemic is was always staunchly opposed to losing 1/6 of the subs-paying workforce whenever anyone suggested abandoning Saturdays (driven by ever later last letter times making it more and more unpopular). But then there's been no day off cover since a sixth of colleagues chucked it from 2022 onwards and the union's objection evaporated. Coincidence?

[chickenwittle]

Hence they should have just cut Saturdays as a first step until they worked out a viable plan and to bed it in

I've been asking recently why Saturdays weren't ditched years ago if we're now in the position where cutting back to five days service is not a viable option. It was consistently pointed out that the removal of Saturdays required parliamentary amendment of the USO specification - yet here we have a technical workaround being proposed for the ODM. So why wasn't 1C-only Saturdays proposed years back?

The union are now (or were) very onboard with this plan whereas pre-pandemic is was always staunchly opposed to losing 1/6 of the subs-paying workforce whenever anyone suggested abandoning Saturdays (driven by ever later last letter times making it more and more unpopular). But then there's been no day off cover since a sixth of colleagues chucked it from 2022 onwards and the union's objection evaporated. Coincidence?

The union are about keeping jobs , they’ve always insisted dropping Saturdays would cause to many job losses, you can’t really blame them for that stance , they’ve seen this ODM as the lesser of all evils in that respect.

[TopperGas]

Hence they should have just cut Saturdays as a first step until they worked out a viable plan and to bed it in

I've been asking recently why Saturdays weren't ditched years ago if we're now in the position where cutting back to five days service is not a viable option. It was consistently pointed out that the removal of Saturdays required parliamentary amendment of the USO specification - yet here we have a technical workaround being proposed for the ODM. So why wasn't 1C-only Saturdays proposed years back?

The union are now (or were) very onboard with this plan whereas pre-pandemic is was always staunchly opposed to losing 1/6 of the subs-paying workforce whenever anyone suggested abandoning Saturdays (driven by ever later last letter times making it more and more unpopular). But then there's been no day off cover since a sixth of colleagues chucked it from 2022 onwards and the union's objection evaporated. Coincidence?

The union are about keeping jobs , they’ve always insisted dropping Saturdays would cause to many job losses, you can’t really blame them for that stance , they’ve seen this ODM as the lesser of all evils in that respect.

If true it's strange logic as rather than losing 1 (x2c) delivery out of 6 days they are now content to lose 3 (x2c) deliveries out of 6 days, even if all the 1c & 2c mail wasn't delivered on a Saturday it's still nothing compared to losing 2c mail on alternative days of the week.

[ted_e_bear]

Hence they should have just cut Saturdays as a first step until they worked out a viable plan and to bed it in

I've been asking recently why Saturdays weren't ditched years ago if we're now in the position where cutting back to five days service is not a viable option. It was consistently pointed out that the removal of Saturdays required parliamentary amendment of the USO specification - yet here we have a technical workaround being proposed for the ODM. So why wasn't 1C-only Saturdays proposed years back?

The union are now (or were) very onboard with this plan whereas pre-pandemic is was always staunchly opposed to losing 1/6 of the subs-paying workforce whenever anyone suggested abandoning Saturdays (driven by ever later last letter times making it more and more unpopular). But then there's been no day off cover since a sixth of colleagues chucked it from 2022 onwards and the union's objection evaporated. Coincidence?

The union are about keeping jobs , they’ve always insisted dropping Saturdays would cause to many job losses, you can’t really blame them for that stance , they’ve seen this ODM as the lesser of all evils in that respect.

That was the stance a long time before this odm idea reared it's ugly head, under odm there will be loads more job losses than it would when only dropping Saturdays for everything except parcels+1c.

[Mr Rush]

The union are about keeping jobs , they’ve always insisted dropping Saturdays would cause to many job losses, you can’t really blame them for that stance , they’ve seen this ODM as the lesser of all evils in that respect.

Ultimately, though, they failed because all those people chucked it anyway. They destroyed the village in order to save it. The CWU is always at pains to paint itself as the bearer of hard choices when critical members make demands it sees as overly simplistic - the hard choice here would have been to bow to the inevitable when it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

Not to harp on too much about the union; something else that I've thought about is why was it only relatively recently that the company gave the union a look into its dire finances when we've supposedly been losing a million a day (deja vù) for so long? Wouldn't it have helped to elevate the union's thinking as far back as 2019 when Rico was trying to shake things up?

[Mickeybrowneyes]

How about something less convoluted. A 5 day letter service. You barely even need to plan for that, you surely wouldn't even need trials.

Because that would require an act of parliament which might take years if it ever got approved.
The 6 day letter service has to stay to avoid government interference.

Not if first class is still delivered on Saturdays though

The logical first step if not thinking of just how much the business can save, would have been to keep things as they are Monday-Friday and make Saturdays 1st class and tracked only

No act of parliament needed

This is what they are proposing already,

No its not. I said keep things as they are Monday to Friday i.e every duty goes out every day with all products

Or are you saying this plan is what the union are now saying should happen?

But taking things out every day isn’t working across the country now , we’ve been doing this for years and failing, so what’s the point ?

But we'll be able to take everything with double/triple mail and 50% door to doors every other day and it wont fail?

I assume the problems with the trial offices failing to hit the QOS targets are years in the making.
How many offices have successfully hit USO current targets for the last three years or so?
How many offices have has revision after revision that has made walks unachievable on days when parcels traffic is slightly higher than normal?
How many offices have seen their parcel traffic increase by up to 30%?
No-one has been credited to time back on their duty for all the extra delivery protocols like pins, pictures, in-flight requests, locker delivery and doorstep collections.
The reality is that they had cut deliveries to the bare bones anyway making savings through unachievable duties leading to shocking USO percentages in the past few years.
The environment was created to fail these targets years ago.
Changing the method of delivery and increasing the length of the day slightly to counteract the increase in call rate will not instantly improve the QOS targets because the template for failure was already set in prior revisions.
Duties were always going to have to be put in to hit these targets.

[postslippete]

Ofcom has revised the QoS targets downward - First Class from 93% to 90% and Second Class from 98.5% to 95%, but even these reduced benchmark are massively unrealistic given RM's actual performance over the past 3 years:

2022/23: First Class – 73.7% | Second Class – 90.7%
2023/24: First Class – 74.5% | Second Class – 92.4%
2024/25: First Class – 76.5% | Second Class – 92.2%

These are not minor misses but represent a systematic and sustained failure to meet statutory service standards. One of the root causes has been RM's widespread, un-agreed revisions that were pushed through in 2022, which resulted in unachievable duties and the inconsistent daily clearing of mail across the network. Despite repeated regulatory findings and public penalties the company has done diddly squat to address the core structural issues.

Instead, they appear to treat the ODM as a green light for further cost-cutting without fixing the flawed workload baselines or addressing delivery failures. The only way to hold IDS and RM to account is through a full, transparent financial deep dive to expose the disconnect between declared savings, actual service delivery capacity, and the resources needed to meet even the revised USO obligations.