15/04/26 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 15 April. We welcome your comments!

IT IS BAD...
The union leaders and RM management published their
"agreement" on Wednesday. We only had time to glance
through it, but we already see the union leaders'
betrayal! Pay is going to be a below-inflation 3%,
backdated to 1 April, when RPI is currently 3.6% and will
likely go up due to the ongoing war in Iran (even the
lower CPI rate the bosses like to use is currently above
3%!). As for the equalisation of new starters (mainly in
Deliveries at the Mount), we're promised a 4.75% pay
rise... But we're on such low wages (£13.06/hr outside
London) that this rise from peanuts is still peanuts
(62p/hr)!

...VERY BAD
We aren't surprised that union officials are going along
with the USO "reforms" - Wishy Walshy has been procuts
since day one. But to sweeten the pill they expect us
to swallow, they tell us that we, on Deliveries, will
"decide" how best to deploy USO cuts. What a joke! In
fact, union officials must be on another planet, if they
haven't realised that USO cuts are already being
implemented and that we're already resisting them!
What we need is to organise our own collective fight
against all cuts to jobs and Ts&Cs!

BRING BACK THE JOBS!
Oh but lo and behold, the union officials promise us that
there won't be "compulsory redundancies"... As if we
were born yesterday! There's not been compulsory
redundancies for a while, and yet the bosses have been
able to cut jobs through retirement without replacement
or forcing some of us out with medical retirement! The
rightful place for this "agreement" is the bin!

CRASHING THEIR BRIEFINGS?
Union officials are having meetings to "sell" their latest
betrayal to reps, up until the end of April. And only then
are we supposed to have a say?! But since we know
when and where these reps briefings will take place:
Thursday 16 and Friday 17 April, 11:00-16:00, Conway
Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL, should we
go together with our reps, to tell the union leaders what
we think of their "agreement"?

PAY UP - WITH INTEREST!
The RMPFS payroll company "forgot" to pay cleaners'
night allowance and overtime hours - leaving us short of
hundreds of pounds last month! And yes, many of us
rely on overtime to make ends meet, due to our miserly
pay. This "mistake" left many of us in serious trouble -
we've not been able to pay our bills nor top-up our
energy meters and travel cards!

CASH IN THE HAND...
We had a meeting with RMPFS managers last week
about this and forced them to sort out a "fast payment"...
but the money that's due to us hasn't been paid yet! And
if we stop cleaning? Maybe then managers will
remember what the word "fast" means?!

PERMANENTLY VACANT?
On Distribution, we're up to 4 vacancies on the night
shift. Yes, we've seen workmates retire or resign, but not
enough new drivers to replace them. Instead,
management does what it does everywhere else: it
claims it's difficult to find qualified drivers... and then fills
the gaps with (qualified) agency drivers!

ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
It would have been nice to have a long Easter weekend,
but many of us on Processing are now working ridiculous
anti-social weekend shifts, which ruined it! In fact,
managers even wanted bank holiday Friday/Monday
overtime on the Platform, the Parcel Sorting Monster,
etc., etc., etc. We still remember when the bosses (and
union leaders) said Sat/Sun work should be "voluntary"...

WE WANT OUR FREE WEEKENDS BACK!
Managers say that weekend shifts are necessary to
relieve Processing loads on Mondays and Tuesdays...
when the real reason is that they've cut jobs and diverted
items from closed ParcelForce facilities. So now, even
with us working weekends, Mondays/Tuesdays are
impossible - and un-processed items just keep piling up!

AGAINST THEIR AMAZONISATION!
By the way, the number of casuals brought-in during
weekends is ever growing. So while managers pretend
that bringing in casuals is a temporary fix, we have a
permanent solution: give casuals permanent jobs - and
on weekdays if they prefer!

WE'RE NOT ROBOTS!
Wanna-be King Etcetera is on weekends, making these
shifts even more anti-social. And his latest stupid
decision is to take our chairs away to try to force us to
work 2 hours in a row standing up! So we're bringing
the chairs back - or going to the nearest chairs to sit
down, wherever they might be!

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT WE REALLY THINK?
About two weeks ago, a crew of reporters (from the
BBC?) visited the Mount in the morning, apparently
following up on programmes highlighting delivery delays
related to USO cuts. When they asked for our views, we
had to be careful - not because managers were within
earshot, but because our unfiltered opinions were wholly
unsuitable for a pre-watershed BBC audience.