18/03/26 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 18 March. We welcome your comments!

WE DON'T LIKE THESE CHEFS
Talks between EP Group and the CWU officials have been extended... again! So now they tell us their cosy chats about cutting/ending USO, and keeping all new starts on 2nd tier, will carry on until 30 March. Union leaders say it's "difficult to communicate the full detail of the negotiations". Oh no it isn't! They just don't want us to know what they're cooking up! But even from behind the closed doors, it smells bad!

MIS-COMMUNICATION WORKERS' UNION
CWU leaders further excuse themselves by claiming that "nothing is agreed until everything is"... So they're waiting in order to agree to "everything" before they tell us how they sold us out? We can help them "communicate" properly, by opening the doors they're hiding behind... and taking those "negotiations" into our own hands! Outside.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
And by the way, we urgently need a real boost to our low pay! And on time: that is, by next month! They told us that there will be that agreed re-negotiation over pay because inflation is now over 3%. But how long will that take? Another year? We can't afford any delay! Prices are already up... and climbing!

STUBBORN AS A MULE
Unfortunately, the Lost Sheep found his way back to the Platform... Where he immediately started pushing two yorks. We thought that when the shift manager told him not to do this, he'd stop. But then next day, he was at it again! Does anyone know where his "off" switch is?

GO BACK TO YOUR PENS
In fact everywhere managers are attempting to do our work! They are de facto proving there aren't enough of us, trying their best to act as OPGs, without much success... Yet they still persist in telling us there are too many of us! What would it take to get them to go back to their offices, out of our sight?

CUT DUTIES AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
Mr Witless on PSA might be afraid of getting told off by his own boss if items aren't logged correctly, but rushing us at the end of the shift won't help. Everyone knows that Mondays on PSA Lates are busy - and that the final dispatch takes longer than usual. But this is nothing new, is it?

AS IF THEY WERE "FIRST RESPONDERS"!
The way RM's Angard agency behaves with casuals is disgusting: we've heard that some of them have been asked to come in for duties just one and a half hour before the shift starts! So they're supposed to be literally "on call"?!

WE NEED BATMAN?
It isn't just a few of us that can't make sense of the new Robin app... So many of us are facing issues that some more tech-savvy workmates are trying to help on Royal Mail Chat or Reddit... And by the way, how much did EP Group pay for this (cheap) junk?

OUR "JOB" IS TO CHANGE IT!
The BBC radio 4 program "You and Yours" on Tues morning again exposed EP's rotten postal "service" and its attempt at opting out of the USO - despite the presenter's naive questions. Mates phoned in to confirm that Tracked is prioritised, DUMs already "not fussed" about 2nd class. And how 2nd-tier workers do the same job for less... But of course, radio/TV coverage ain't gonna change a thing...

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS, NOTHING CHANGES
The coverage in the media of the postal delays, did result in the government carrying out a "snap investigation". It found the company was delivering 219m letters late over the course of a year... i.e., what postal workers and the public already knew! And what's it going to do about it? The same as before: RM bosses will be called to answer questions from the Business and Trade Committee (on 26 March). They'll get a "good grilling" and that will be that...

AND LATE AGAIN!
RM CEO Cochrane already wrote a letter to the chair of this Business and Trade Committee, trying to explain. He blames the government's regulations (USO!) for not keeping pace with the times and the CWU for dragging out negotiations. By the way, his letter was dated 2 March, but was only received by Parliament on 10 March... we wonder what delayed the post?

KILLING THE POST
The price of 1st and 2nd class stamps are going up again, to £1.80 (+6%) and 91p (+4.6%). Before privatisation, they cost 46p and 36p! So in 14 years of greedy profiteering bosses, 1st Class stamp prices have quadrupled and 2nd Class has tripled. And today, you've got a 1 in 4 chance that your letter will be delivered late, according to RM's own figures! Yes, these are the wonders of privatisation!

[britwrit]

Maybe they have already but any other business would have quietly gotten a tax break/subsidy out of the government for the USO,