Mail Centre Closures:Protect Jobs First!

[flyingfish]

VOICES FROM THE FLOOR
Mail Centre Closures + Mergers: CWU negotiators must protect jobs first!
And ensure no compulsory redundancies!

In this time of economic crisis workers have to stick together and defend each others' interests because nobody else will

Having a job is essential – there are very few jobs around and most similar jobs will have worse pay, conditions, and pensions

Both full-time jobs and part-time jobs must be protected

Keeping your job means you keep paying into your Royal Mail pension which is essential for your retirement

It doesn't matter if the jobs in question belong to workers in Milton Keynes, Coventry, or Northampton, or Reading, Swindon, or Oxford, or Liverpool, Warrington or Crewe or whoever else is next on the list to put 3 Mail Centres into 1

Part-timers must offered the chance to go full- be time

It is immoral to give some people over-time or S/As at the expense of other people’s jobs

Only after protecting jobs and offering part-timers full-time jobs should any excess hours be offered for S/As

If there are no excess hours then people will have to apply for ad-hoc over-time and think about getting part-time second jobs

Redundancy should be voluntary and only on the best possible terms

Any Union negotiator, local or national, who goes down the road of looking after S/As and over-time for some workers at the expense of other workers' jobs is acting divisively, weakening the unity of workers and actively assisting Royal Mail

[NWpostie]

Can't say fairer than that.

In all expenses I have alway used my basic to work from, any overtime is extra to put to one side.

Jobs first everything else second.

[Martin Walsh]

I can understand and agree in parts to your post and i totally support the 14 mail centres and one rdc who are being ballloted to force Royal Mail into negotations on a range of issues including improvement to MTSF, each of those mail centres have earning packages including SA which members have become use to and some rely on. Overtime and SA is not an evil it is something which is a benefit and considered a major factor in whether members back a local agreement especially in a mail centre.

This union has never had and can never accept complusory rednudancies and lets face it with the introduction of flat machines and the increasing number of big posters who have taken up the option of down stream access work is decreasing workload across the mail centre network.

The question is can the mail centres which are earmarked for clousre and the ones recieving the mail save their own offices. The fact is only 4 mail centres have successful fought clousre plans in the past Dartford, southend, Liverpool and Gloucester. However in the case of Southend and Liverpool both are once again earmarked for clousure.

I have to say I am not totally convinced that our national strategy on what we want from a yes vote is correct . My other concern is that whilst it is logical and understandable that some of the offices which are earmarked are asking for an OVO ( outward vouching office ) to remain in their citys or towns this protential will mean other mail centres come under threat as places like Northampton and Swindon still have capicity to take more work.

I dont think this union will ever accept complursory rednudancies so i dont see that as an issue. However what some members in mail centres are concerened over is being compursory moved to nearby delivery offices which they have never performed any work in previously.

We should all support these branch`s in their fight and realise that the next few weeks will be very intresting and protentially lead to wide spread unoffical action if Royal Mail choose to move their work around the country.

The other thing which no one should deny is that whether your in the pension scheme or not the current deficit which is growing every single day is driving Royal mail plans to close more mail centres and cluster delvery units and increase the ammount of staff who are part time. We cannot allow Hooper or mandleson to delay the report which is being rumoured at the moment.

[F0zziebear]

The person you need to lobby is Alex Smith. He is the Strategy and Commerical Director. He is the brains behind Royal Mail Group. You need to construct a compelling business case that can persuade him of an alternative approach. None of the senior execs. seem concerned about unofficial or official industrial action. sometimes I get the impression that Leighton revels in this situation.

The government and postcomm are ultimately driven by what RM management provide. The reason for this is that these other people do not really have alternative sources of info and find it hard to challenge RM's point of view.

1. If the government remove more business from the Post Offices then RM say well they are not viable and we have t oclose them.
2. If the government open up the market to competition and have a strategy of removing x% of mail and business from RM then jobs, mail centres etc. have to go as volume goes down.

When the impact of these policies are laid out in black &white (red & white RM colours) then it's hard to argue against.

I'm sorry to sound detached, but I am. My only ray of light for you lot is that the nuclear lobby managed to persuade govt. of a change in direction so anything is possible!

[paul_skinback]

Would it be too much to ask that a top man from the top of CWU could tell us what they are doing to save this crap from hapening and all the other crap thats going on cos my rep is dumb and we hear nowt at all! I would get more info out of a Klingon!

MurDoch sacked 6000 workers in 1985 and got away with it so why cant Royal Snail? how safe is my/our job these days?

CWU WAKEY WAKE KEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[F0zziebear]

I would argue that no job is safe. I can offer small consolation and say that half of the marketing directors lost their jobs this year when they had to re-apply. It is not just a case of frontline people feeling the pinch of a shrinking Royal Mail, it is across the business and quite rightly so.

In theory if you are working in a major city mail centre then your site won't necessarily close down unless they plan on re-locating to an out-of-town road transport hub site. However, jobs would not be lost in that instance. Smaller regional outlying mail centres are at risk over the next few years.

Further consolidation is inevitable as the walk-sorting machines are implemented. Any new machine that processes more quickly etc. or is designed to do the job of humans means that jobs will go.

The CWU can posture all they want about saving jobs, but the likes of Dave Ward are relatively pally with senior HR management in RM and know the score. Job cuts without compulsorary dedundancy is the bottom line. That is the reality how RM or the CWU dress it up is upto them. Almost like the Northern Ireland peace deal. Everyone claims victory on their terms.

Pension deficits. You've seen the articles about BT today, same will be for RM. there will be a hole which needs filling somehow. Someone will pay or the terms will be reduced to average earnings over your working life. It's a bitter pill to swallow and may lead to unrest but the pension gravy train has left, and the terms that you hold dear are also under considerable threat. This may cause another strike and you can bash Al&Crozier all you like, but the money has gone. Only the tax payer can bail you out and labour don't seem to be interested. And with the prospect of convseratives in power within 18 months it isn't looking any rosier.

[Martin Walsh]

Fozzy bear I think its a cheap shot to say that dave is friendly with HR bosses. Wheres your evidence as I will supply evidence to the contrary. Anyone who knows Dave knows that. remember this is a bloke who when he was a local rep was displined numeous times for carrying out his union activites and almost sacked and suspended for 9 months.

Off course when you meet Royal Mail bosses you have to treat eachother with respect. Anyone who knows what happened the night they resolved the unoffiial dispute in 2003 which was the biggest since the miners will know of the icident with crozier.

With regards whether mail centres will close off course thay will. The fact is in London in 1993 there was 10 mail centres now there are 3 . But a decesion was taken that you couldt protect bricks and mortar but must protect people. In the end we achieve a code of praticse in London which then became MTSF. We had no complusory transfers and ensure as far as possible through VRS to get everyone their first choice in their perference exercise

The CWU know that mail centres will close due to mechinsation and downstream access they want to know what Royal Mail`s plans are the rest of the mail centre network and they want improvement s in MTSF which will assist anyone in the effected mail cnetres and protect anyone who dosent want to be complusory moved to a delivery office.

Surely that is something we can all support
Al

[Thorby Bislam]

Anyone who knows what happened the night they resolved the unoffiial dispute in 2003 which was the biggest since the miners will know of the icident with crozier.

I dont know what happened. As long as it's not libellous, what was the incident with Crozier ?

[BELIAL]

To this day I still can't work out how he managed to get that armadillo back out of there

[TrueBlueTerrier]

To this day I still can't work out how he managed to get that armadillo back out of there

I think the elephants trunk may have helped on this occasion.