Notes from Dave Ward's visit.

[Big Daz]

As promised my notes from Dave Ward's attendance at a union reps meeting in my branch on Thursday.


Meeting scheduled for the 10th and 11th February with RML
Communications; Cost of letters to mbrs home address expensive, looking to utilise email more to communicate with the membership. RML can counter act five days a week at no cost
Hooper and the government do not understand the difference between profitability and efficiency
All FT/PT to be able to stay FT/PT if they want
No compulsory redundancies
Shorter working week will still be pursued
New pay package behind schedule (phase 4)
D2D into workload
No set target for pay other than £400 as soon as possible DW would be happy with a two year deal to achieve this utlising pay simplification and consolidation of other monies.
Pay should be your basic weekly wage (£400) any OT/SA performed and two bonuses a year (summer and Xmas)
Look at hourly rate and OT rate being the same
Crozier should be embarrassed over the criticisms in the Hooper report
Eternal conflict not good for CWU membership and is not the fault of CWU
Need to calm things down. No IA No EA No savings etc whilst sensible solutions and agreements are developed/found.
Info in Hooper Report will be disproved; CWU has experts/professionals going over the claims in the report.
Bullying and Harassment; mbrs fearful of saying anything RM have encouraged B& H complaints.
Ballot to disaffiliate from Labour by the end of March however we shouldn’t break the link before then as were basically saying we don’t support you anymore but we still expect you to support us.
Joint local HYS
Change the cultures of cars on delivery and not taking meal breaks
Single class of mail to replace 1st and 2nd
Comparison of French and UK mail centre network, French provide a comparable level of service, but with a smaller MC network. People are more important than buildings.
DW would like to see a change to the annual conference system we have at present for making policy, 4 x smaller events each year to make policy. Something like the Northampton breifing were those in attendance can make and vote on policy.

[wolfie citizen smith]

Reads to me that DW is yet another CWU Head requiring a Govenment role in something or another

[rockytony67]

Good post Big Daz, coming from London I've been at many meetings and heard Dave speak countless times, I have a lot of time for him, but was there any mention of the pension issue?

[k979aaa]

One class of mail to replace first and second class (DO WE NOT HAVE THAT NOW)!. No wonder thay the (CWU) cannnot be botherd/afford to comunicate with it's member's at grassroot's!. WE NOW MOST OF THE ONES WHO CAN BOTHERD OR HAVE AN INTEREST IN OUR UNION HAVE PROVIDED OUR INTERNET ADDRESS TOO THE UNION WHY HAVE THEY NOT E-MAILED US ALL WHICH COST'S DIDLY SH*T!. THEY CANNOT BE BOTHERED MUST BE THE REAL REASON!.

[wolfie citizen smith]

k979aaa you may be right there, as unbelievably CWU at levels of Area have no idea within our area that is, as they call an important meeting to tell us things about what happening and in the next breath we find out that they have just been scare mungering and telling the porky of the pies discracfull behaviour and shame on you Our Area Rep. This is just my disappointment of what was told to us and does not refect all Area reps throughout the country

[YEARZERO]

My first post and it is a response to the report by Big Daz.

I work at the Peterborough Mail Centre and I heard Dave Ward speak. I also have some friends who were at the union meeting, but they told me very different things.....

The overriding impresssion I had of Mr Ward was that it was like listening to the politician he undoubtably is...he said little of comfort to us on the shop floor, droning on about the Hooper report....

There was nothing about how to take on Royal Mail, nothing on doing the job properly or any indication of what the union is going to do about our pay and job security. I got the impression he wanted us to be grateful we actually had a job!

The worst bit though was his message of how the only way to beat Royal Mail is "TO LOBBY YOUR MP".

No disrespect to the audience (including myself), but we are posties who want to do a good job with no harassment and a decent wage. For most of them the Hooper Report could well have been called the Tommy Cooper report!!!!!

Lobby my MP???? You are having a laugh Mr Ward.

As for the meeting with the union reps, apparently every man and his dog were there, twice the number that usually attend. Some of these reps apparently never show their face under normal circumstances, but were there to brownnose with the hoi polloi...Mr Ward was questioned about doing the job properly and he "allegedly" said those that cut off "are taking the piss"....

Am I missing something, but isn't the message from Bob Gibson still to do the job properly as THE ONLY WAY TO BEAT ROYAL MAIL??? Let's hope my colleagues misheard him.....

Anyway, we actually beat Royal Mail in court over this, so why the hell are we not making it our number one priority???

Hope this is a useful first post and can start some serious debate on what the hell is going off with the CWU at a national and local level.....lots of us have had enough....