LTB 108/26 - RESOLUTION OF RMG & CWU DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESSES - DEPLOYMENT OF USO REFORM AND EQUALISATION OF NEW ENTRANTS’ PAY, TERMS & CONDITIONS

[Thommo44]

Seen this on Facebook, explains it a bit better.

What about the town rounds with 16 loop?

As far as im aware duties are intended to be done with larger ~40 minute loops. Hence 6 loops. You can of course split this up further, but clearly no duty has 16 40 minute loops!

So we split 16 loops into 6 and carry 3 sacks at a time?

Someone is going to say use a trolley now

[Thommo44]

Seen this on Facebook, explains it a bit better.

What about the town rounds with 16 loop?

As far as im aware duties are intended to be done with larger ~40 minute loops. Hence 6 loops. You can of course split this up further, but clearly no duty has 16 40 minute loops!

So we split 16 loops into 6 and carry 3 sacks at a time?

Someone is going to say use a trolley now

6 x 40 minute loops would make sense, but of the 16 I have now, only 3 are 30 minutes or under. That’s why people aren’t getting mail for 3 weeks. The 16 is one half of a paired duty.
Surely it’s not that difficult to model a round to include time to get to the first delivery point and back from the last, but chances are there won’t even be a revision

[TopperGas]

Incorrect, I can't remember the last time I saw a 1c in first wave, all 1c comes in small second wave or manual.


It's the same at my DO, what logic would there be including 1c in every tray of MECH as that would mean it would have to be look through for any 1c even if it wasn't going out that day?

Your local MC isn't doing things properly. For wave 1 ALL available mech mail is meant to be run whether it's 1C or 2C. The DTS system decides what 2C is due for delivery, it releases what is due for delivery.

Maybe ours are already compliant with odm and yours isn't?

Keeping 1c separate makes far more sense than combining it in a full tray of 2c?

Additionally I can't recall any suggestions by RM that 1c & 2c will both be delivered to addresses on 1c delivery days i.e. Saturdays.

I don't think that RM or the union have any understanding about how either MCs or DOs work.

Dont take what this lot say as the truth. You are spot on with what you say. The traffic comes out as you describe. The CWU aren't telling the truth. The workload on the day will be whatever has to go.

RM have been clear that no second class is to be delivered on Saturdays whether it arrives at the DO or not on the Friday or the Saturday

What’s not to understand about that? They have been clear from the outset

The due mail for that day will be part of the workload. It could be anything. Then include all the other tasks. The idea that it will simply be two products is nonsense and the CWU know it.

The only "due" mail will be 1c including Articles for the Blind plus NHS letters along with Tracked and Specials, nothing else will delivered, if a postie is covering two duties they wouldn't have the time to deliver anything else anyway.

This from a document within the USO Reform section of Robin, entitled 'Delivery Model 26 - How will it work?', 'Key Features' paragraph.

Town routes

• DM26 will involve three posties covering four routes
each day. The four routes will alternate between high
call rate and low call rate (Mon-Fri).
• Two colleagues will van share and the other will work
alone in a van or HCT.
• The van share partnership will work together, as they
do now, to cover all delivery points – sharing workload
fairly between them. They will also take specific loops
from two adjacent routes, 3 and 4, which become part
of their delivery. The singleton van will take the rest of
routes 3 and 4.
• Each postie will deliver approximately eight loops compared to six loops today but these loops will be
balanced between high and low call rates.
• Each postie will cover the same area each day.
• Only parcels, First Class and coincidental mail will be delivered on a Saturday.
• High call rate routes are around 70% of delivery points whereas low call rate routes are around 20% of
delivery points.

Rural and firms duties

• Using a 50/50 delivery model, singleton rural and firms duties will deliver to their standard route each day.
• Half the route will be high call rate (all products) and half will be low call rate (parcels, 1c and coincidental
mail).
• On Saturdays it will be low call rate only.
• The purpose is to create extra capacity and flexibility so that these posties have time to assist colleagues
on other routes with fluctuating volumes or to add extra resource to the indoor operation.

Clearly states 'coincidental mail', which to me means any 2nd class going to a DP that has a 1st.

Or it could be letters for the blind and NHS letters? If it's 2c why not say so?

Regardless who's going to find time on a shortened Saturday to fully prep two duties, sort and scan all the Tracked parcels for both duties, then tie up all the 1c and coincidental mail, load their van with two duties parcels and mail, then deliver it all in a roughly 4 hours delivery span? As the business even piloted the idea to see if it's remotely doable?

[Pimpempem]

I am one that postie that is doing 65+ to 70 hours a week on new t&c because I have a financial plan and needs.

I was hoping the agreement would have brought back the weekly pay for us and equalise the gap that in London is almost 320 minus of the old terms and condition. Some offices with very old contract and Wellington week get 136 quid every three weeks of bonus bumping the annual salary to £37k instead £30k of new term and conditions. Also we have the Sunday, no meal relief and no supplements. Not exactly an appealing offer

I was a Union rep but it was impossible to recruit anyone of the new entrants because they don’t see the value of Cwu.

Now I moved to Deputy manager and it’s even worse. I made more money as a postie until you get a Com position is slavery in disguise

[SpacePhoenix]

Incorrect, I can't remember the last time I saw a 1c in first wave, all 1c comes in small second wave or manual.


It's the same at my DO, what logic would there be including 1c in every tray of MECH as that would mean it would have to be look through for any 1c even if it wasn't going out that day?

Your local MC isn't doing things properly. For wave 1 ALL available mech mail is meant to be run whether it's 1C or 2C. The DTS system decides what 2C is due for delivery, it releases what is due for delivery.

Maybe ours are already compliant with odm and yours isn't?

Keeping 1c separate makes far more sense than combining it in a full tray of 2c?

Additionally I can't recall any suggestions by RM that 1c & 2c will both be delivered to addresses on 1c delivery days i.e. Saturdays.

I don't think that RM or the union have any understanding about how either MCs or DOs work.

Dont take what this lot say as the truth. You are spot on with what you say. The traffic comes out as you describe. The CWU aren't telling the truth. The workload on the day will be whatever has to go.

RM have been clear that no second class is to be delivered on Saturdays whether it arrives at the DO or not on the Friday or the Saturday

What’s not to understand about that? They have been clear from the outset

The due mail for that day will be part of the workload. It could be anything. Then include all the other tasks. The idea that it will simply be two products is nonsense and the CWU know it.

The only "due" mail will be 1c including Articles for the Blind plus NHS letters along with Tracked and Specials, nothing else will delivered, if a postie is covering two duties they wouldn't have the time to deliver anything else anyway.

This from a document within the USO Reform section of Robin, entitled 'Delivery Model 26 - How will it work?', 'Key Features' paragraph.

Town routes

• DM26 will involve three posties covering four routes
each day. The four routes will alternate between high
call rate and low call rate (Mon-Fri).
• Two colleagues will van share and the other will work
alone in a van or HCT.
• The van share partnership will work together, as they
do now, to cover all delivery points – sharing workload
fairly between them. They will also take specific loops
from two adjacent routes, 3 and 4, which become part
of their delivery. The singleton van will take the rest of
routes 3 and 4.
• Each postie will deliver approximately eight loops compared to six loops today but these loops will be
balanced between high and low call rates.
• Each postie will cover the same area each day.
• Only parcels, First Class and coincidental mail will be delivered on a Saturday.
• High call rate routes are around 70% of delivery points whereas low call rate routes are around 20% of
delivery points.

Rural and firms duties

• Using a 50/50 delivery model, singleton rural and firms duties will deliver to their standard route each day.
• Half the route will be high call rate (all products) and half will be low call rate (parcels, 1c and coincidental
mail).
• On Saturdays it will be low call rate only.
• The purpose is to create extra capacity and flexibility so that these posties have time to assist colleagues
on other routes with fluctuating volumes or to add extra resource to the indoor operation.

Clearly states 'coincidental mail', which to me means any 2nd class going to a DP that has a 1st.

Or it could be letters for the blind and NHS letters? If it's 2c why not say so?

Regardless who's going to find time on a shortened Saturday to fully prep two duties, sort and scan all the Tracked parcels for both duties, then tie up all the 1c and coincidental mail, load their van with two duties parcels and mail, then deliver it all in a roughly 4 hours delivery span? As the business even piloted the idea to see if it's remotely doable?

There can't be any "coincidental mail" for there to be some the CSSs would have to be run. Any 2C or DSA which has hit the time limit for its product will get released. Any 2C for a DP where 2C is being released will also be released. There isn't a separate mode for Friday nights, we've been running the trial method for ages now. The only difference is that there's approx a 50% release rate each day rather than a 30% release rate.

[Mr Rush]

Someone is going to say use a trolley now

Whether you are carrying a bag or pushing a trolley, rolling over letter workload and making the loops longer will result in more than just the one bundle in hand. Every additional bundle will mean less space for packets in the bag(s). Every packet that has to be passed onto a driver requires additional time.

Sending callrates back to 2006 means bags with only as much space available for the number of packets we had in 2006. We're at max capacity on every loop precisely because letter callrates are so low, which is what fuels RM's vaunted low CO2 emissions per packet.

And on that subject, I'd love to know the measured effect of delivering the 1C on foot versus driving around in a van on the off-day side. How many trees per Evie!?

[clashcityrocker]

There isn't a separate mode for Friday nights, we've been running the trial method for ages now. The only difference is that there's approx a 50% release rate each day rather than a 30% release rate.

Are you trying to set a record for the most text quoted before responding?

Is it possible other MCs are running other trials methods?

[SpacePhoenix]

There isn't a separate mode for Friday nights, we've been running the trial method for ages now. The only difference is that there's approx a 50% release rate each day rather than a 30% release rate.

Are you trying to set a record for the most text quoted before responding?

Is it possible other MCs are running other trials methods?

AFAIK there has only ever been one trial method, the one we've been running for ages. The mail gets run through the CSS machines like it always did, and the DTS decides what gets released each night. Overall across a week (including Friday) it's an average of a 50% release rate. There are days when it can be a lot more getting released when a load of DSA hits the limit. No batches can be run during the day after a certain time of the morning, think it's something like 08:00, after that no batches can be run before about 23:30 as to do so messes up the DTS data nationally. The occasional exemption to turn the DTS off is given to allow really big bulk postings like council tax to be run on the CSS machines during the day, but apart from that the DTS has to remain on at all times, managers have had bollockings in the past for turning it off.

There isn't much stamped mail these days either 1C or 2C (in previous Xmas Pressures we'd have at least half a dozen days on night when the CFC would have to be run to process the collections, Xmas Pressure just gone, there was no need run it, at most there'd be a couple of bags). Meter mail tends to be going to addresses within the area covered by the MC whilst PPI tends to be heading out of the area covered by the MC. I'm starting to see the 1C DSA product being used more often.

Any 1C that enters the MC on nights that hasn't been seen by a machine (iLSM or IMP) before and gone through one of them machines on an outward sort plan, has to be run on the basic office breakdown plan as without the data encoded in the orange barcodes the DTS software on the CSS machines treats it as 2C. Probably around 95% of the time it's Moonpig and Funky Pidgeon as they originate from the Channel Islands. We have a cut-off time for running wave 2 stuff to allow the CSS machines enough time to run, anything after that also gets run on the basic office breakdown plan at the same time as the mail that hasn't seen a machine before.

To not run the CSS on a Friday night would mean that on a Sunday just about everything would get released, so DOs will be massively blown out on a Monday. It wouldn't be worth even turning the CSS machines on if we just did 1C only, we'd probably just send everything as manual to the DOs.

In the leaflet posted in another thread:

Processing, collections and local distribution

The DM26 model won’t change any of the planning or deployment for other functions in the pipeline that has already been undertaken and the DTS alogorithm will continue to deliver the mechanised segregation through the CSS machines.

To me I interpret that as there'll be no changes to how we currently run the CSS machines. If any changes ever did result in batches becoming too big, we'd have to push our dispatch times back to allow the batches to be run. 6,000 to 7,000ish items tends to be around 40-50 mins run time depending on what gets released. Anything above that and you're looking at about an hour or more run time, and we'd have to push the dispatch times back to allow for an hour runtime per batch, which would then push wave 2 back by the same amount of time and wave 2 is getting busier than to used to be, probably averaging around 50% more mail.

[POSTMAN]

The trial method for CSS is for 1C and 2C to be run together on both waves, with the DTS releasing any 2C where there's a 1C item for a DP, any 2C that has hit the time limit and any 2C where other 2C is being released for the same DP. Wave 1 is sequenced, wave 2 is walk sort. Any wave 2 up until a certain time goes to the CSS machines, anything after that gets run on the basic office breakdown plan on the iLSM.

Any 1C which arrives for wave 2 that hasn't been through an iLSM or IMP before has go be run on the basic office breakdown plan on the iLSM as without the data encoded into the orange barcodes the CSS machines chuck it out to the deferred.

We've been running the trial method for months, before we did we'd average about 30% of mail being deferred, now it's about 50%. The volume of deferred is determined by when the DSA arrives at the MC.

What point are you trying to make, as it doesn't matter what arrives in a DO as if it's only a 1c deliver day then any 2c which arrives won't be delivered.

If for some bizarre reason the company decides 1c & 2c needs to be delivered on a 1c day under DM26 then they are going to have to make the duties shorter so it can all be delivered, or just accept mail will be brought back.

People have been saying that the 1C doesn't get run on wave 1 when it does. We don't give a s**t what DOs attempt to deliver, we've done our bit, if the DOs fail it, it's their problem.

Why are you getting so uptight about something that doesn't involve you, when you can send as much 2c as you like to DO's on a daily basis as it won't be delivered on a 1c only day, unless it's an NHS letter and they are still getting priority the same post DM26.

Just curious, is it still what comes in DO's MUST go out like now, or is everything sorted and sent to DO's and managers have to sort it out?
There's a possible flaw there.

[SpacePhoenix]

The trial method for CSS is for 1C and 2C to be run together on both waves, with the DTS releasing any 2C where there's a 1C item for a DP, any 2C that has hit the time limit and any 2C where other 2C is being released for the same DP. Wave 1 is sequenced, wave 2 is walk sort. Any wave 2 up until a certain time goes to the CSS machines, anything after that gets run on the basic office breakdown plan on the iLSM.

Any 1C which arrives for wave 2 that hasn't been through an iLSM or IMP before has go be run on the basic office breakdown plan on the iLSM as without the data encoded into the orange barcodes the CSS machines chuck it out to the deferred.

We've been running the trial method for months, before we did we'd average about 30% of mail being deferred, now it's about 50%. The volume of deferred is determined by when the DSA arrives at the MC.

What point are you trying to make, as it doesn't matter what arrives in a DO as if it's only a 1c deliver day then any 2c which arrives won't be delivered.

If for some bizarre reason the company decides 1c & 2c needs to be delivered on a 1c day under DM26 then they are going to have to make the duties shorter so it can all be delivered, or just accept mail will be brought back.

People have been saying that the 1C doesn't get run on wave 1 when it does. We don't give a s**t what DOs attempt to deliver, we've done our bit, if the DOs fail it, it's their problem.

Why are you getting so uptight about something that doesn't involve you, when you can send as much 2c as you like to DO's on a daily basis as it won't be delivered on a 1c only day, unless it's an NHS letter and they are still getting priority the same post DM26.

Just curious, is it still what comes in DO's MUST go out like now, or is everything sorted and sent to DO's and managers have to sort it out?
There's a possible flaw there.

Manual letters and flats each go in separate 1C and 2C trays to the DOs and from outward MCs to inward MCs. Flats and letters format Tracked also goes out to DOs in trays, there is that much of it now.

[TopperGas]

Our DO doesn't seem to be getting any tracked in trays it all comes in yorks? Whilst 1c flats may arrive in separate trays it's all sorted into the same slots as the 2c on the sorting frame.

What I can't understand is why do oversized parcels and packets all arrive in the same Yorks, why can't they be kept separate?

[Thommo44]

Seen this on Facebook, explains it a bit better.

What about the town rounds with 16 loop?

As far as im aware duties are intended to be done with larger ~40 minute loops. Hence 6 loops. You can of course split this up further, but clearly no duty has 16 40 minute loops!

With between 2 and 3 weeks of mail, every loop is a minimum of 30 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes, that’s why only 4 or 5 loops plus 1st class across 2 jobs are being delivered. Throw in a rest day for 2 post person that are not covered.
For the model to work, a full revision is required with clear and consistent round parameters including distance to first delivery point and return to the office.

[ted_e_bear]

Seen this on Facebook, explains it a bit better.

What about the town rounds with 16 loop?

As far as im aware duties are intended to be done with larger ~40 minute loops. Hence 6 loops. You can of course split this up further, but clearly no duty has 16 40 minute loops!

With between 2 and 3 weeks of mail, every loop is a minimum of 30 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes, that’s why only 4 or 5 loops plus 1st class across 2 jobs are being delivered. Throw in a rest day for 2 post person that are not covered.
For the model to work, a full revision is required with clear and consistent round parameters including distance to first delivery point and return to the office.

Absolutely, is this happening in the new trial offices ?

What about the rural/firms that are supposed to rotate half their duties with a view to assisting elsewhere, ours have already decided they won't have time for any of that nonsense and will go even slower, what about revising them to be bigger permanently to allow for rotating half the mail ? Wouldn't that be a better approach.

[buchanpeter]

Absolutely, is this happening in the new trial offices ?

What about the rural/firms that are supposed to rotate half their duties with a view to assisting elsewhere, ours have already decided they won't have time for any of that nonsense and will go even slower, what about revising them to be bigger permanently to allow for rotating half the mail ? Wouldn't that be a better approach.

The ODM original model was a huge failure due to massive workloads. Even with the 50/50 in the town it's not going to work because a third is being added to each duty. Which means if Ur getting 3-4 cages of parcels just now then it's gonna be even worse.
The union knows that.
I'd say the pink duties doing cages of parcels off the town in the morning is the only way this system can work.
Same with IPS. Town posties will have zero time to do IPS due to sorting multiple frames at once.
So yet again it falls on the support of pink duties to do the majority of IPS.
I'd say management will use the lapsing technique to deal with ppl wanting to go slow.
They'll say town parcels have priority over Ur own duty and must be completed before starting Ur own 50/50.
Workload spread over all the pink duties.

[SpacePhoenix]

Our DO doesn't seem to be getting any tracked in trays it all comes in yorks?

Every MC by now is supposed to be sending Tracked flats in letters in trays to the inward MC or the DOs.

Whilst 1c flats may arrive in separate trays it's all sorted into the same slots as the 2c on the sorting frame.

Is the 1C and 2C always being sorted on the same frames at the same time? If it is then what's the point of keeping the 1C and 2C separate.

What I can't understand is why do oversized parcels and packets all arrive in the same Yorks, why can't they be kept separate?

That'll be down to what the outward MC sorted them as, which is what they'd have been scanned into the system as. If the york header car is purple and white then it's a direct york to your DO from one of the superhubs. We don't touch the direct yorks in processing, they get wheeled straight off the lorry and onto the bay for the relevant run to a DO.

The USO stuff is due to start being rolled out next month yet there's been nothing official about how RM intend to implement it with he CSS machines. For a communications company RM really sucks at communicating stuff to staff. From what I've heard over the last couple of days, the current pan is for anything that would get released due to hitting the time limit on a Friday for Saturday delivery will instead get released on Thursday for Friday delivery. 1C and 2C will still get run together on a Friday but only 2C where there's a 1C item will get released, any other 2C will get deferred to the Sunday (could potentially be over 90% deferred, by which time most of it will then have hit the time limt and get released.

I've no idea if that'll end up being what actually gets implemented but basically in DOs Fridays and Mondays will soon become heavy days for mech.