Falling mail volumes

[Tman]

As an aside, 70-80% of mail in your big MC's is now counted by the machines, not humans. Are the machines in on the great conspiracy as well ?

Of course they are, ("stats can be fiddled y'know", "wouldn't put it past RM" "hidden agenda" "summat" "FFS" etc etc) along with the various Direct Mail organisations, RM, the CWU, Postconn, and now you.

Hey, you're not a manager/screw/liar/dreamer too are you? Can't argue with the Dave the DO postie; he knows his bag is as heavy as it's ever been,and that proves RM is telling porkies, and and and..............snore.........

[lekker]

As an aside, 70-80% of mail in your big MC's is now counted by the machines, not humans. Are the machines in on the great conspiracy as well ?

Of course they are, ("stats can be fiddled y'know", "wouldn't put it past RM" "hidden agenda" "summat" "FFS" etc etc) along with the various Direct Mail organisations, RM, the CWU, Postconn, and now you.

Hey, you're not a manager/screw/liar/dreamer too are you? Can't argue with the Dave the DO postie; he knows his bag is as heavy as it's ever been,and that proves RM is telling porkies, and and and..............snore.........

glad you have time for all that. we're too busy delivering mountains of mail

[stokes11eg]

As an aside, 70-80% of mail in your big MC's is now counted by the machines, not humans. Are the machines in on the great conspiracy as well ?

Of course they are, ("stats can be fiddled y'know", "wouldn't put it past RM" "hidden agenda" "summat" "FFS" etc etc) along with the various Direct Mail organisations, RM, the CWU, Postconn, and now you.

Hey, you're not a manager/screw/liar/dreamer too are you? Can't argue with the Dave the DO postie; he knows his bag is as heavy as it's ever been,and that proves RM is telling porkies, and and and..............snore.........

glad you have time for all that. we're too busy delivering mountains of mail

This may seem a stupid 'thought' regarding 'falling' mail volumes---I could understand if the amount of dwellings we delivered to diminished. there would be less delivery points, and a need to reduce the number of Posties. but given that we still go to every door that we did before, plus many more, there is no justification for the cutback in staff?

[Martin Walsh]

Orsis and Tman I for one recognise that in mail centres as a result of down stream access we have lost a condisidable amount of up stream contracts. However all of the down stream access items connect with the final Royal Mail delivery.

Royal Mail delvier to all 28.5 million uk adressses and whilst in every recession we lose work and I have seen more recessions during my time in Royal Mail then i care to remember. When ever we go in to a reccession companies immediately cut back on mail postings. When compainies start moving forward and out of a reccision they decide to increase the amount they advirtise and post.

The problem i have is when Royal Mail removed WLA by weight in delivery offices and replaced it with MIST ( traffic recording in mail centres ) they said that delivery offices were over stating traffic by up to 17% and traffic and revenue did not match. The agreement talked about parrell recording to viafy traffic figures in delivery offices and in mail centres this did not happen. In fact when you refer back to previous traffic data, the loss of traffic claimed is often the traffic which Royal Mail said we were over recording and was never there in the first place. So the arguement could be that we are still delivering the same amount of traffic as we used to its just being recorded more accuately.

The other issue is that IPKs have not been changed to take into account the new type of mail which fulfilment traffic brings. In any case Royal Mail changed their pricing regime when they bought pricing by weight to take in to account the increase in flat and packet traffic which in delivery offices often result in more knocks on doors etc and time spent on delivery.

Post comm take Royal Mail`s figures as do the Government so it not the case that we are saying they are all in cahoots. The Government bill also recognises that Post comm have compained to both Royal Mail and the Government that Royal Mail have been less than helpful in allowing for Post Comm to examine both traffic and revnue. This is why Ofcom will be given more access.

[Puppetmaster]

Flats and Catoluges,
To me , everybody excepts been a massive increase in packets ,but what about all the A4 STUFF all the thick Catoluges,to me,I seem to rember 3/4 years ago not geeting
anywhere near the volume we get today,and beeing told by MANAGEMENT,they did not want A4 flats as they would not go through the machines.
Now every day we get loads of Cataloges.

[Tman]

Orsis and Tman I for one recognise that in mail centres as a result of down stream access we have lost a condisidable amount of up stream contracts. However all of the down stream access items connect with the final Royal Mail delivery.

DSA mail is still processed through the machines, but the total mail (of any/all types) processed is down. Whether it's DSA is irrelelevant.

The problem i have is when Royal Mail removed WLA by weight in delivery offices and replaced it with MIST ( traffic recording in mail centres ) they said that delivery offices were over stating traffic by up to 17% and traffic and revenue did not match. The agreement talked about parrell recording to viafy traffic figures in delivery offices and in mail centres this did not happen. In fact when you refer back to previous traffic data, the loss of traffic claimed is often the traffic which Royal Mail said we were over recording and was never there in the first place. So the arguement could be that we are still delivering the same amount of traffic as we used to its just being recorded more accuately.

But DOs no longer (if they ever did) collate and send stats back "up the line" to get a picture of the day's traffic. Machineable mail (which is something like 70-90% by volume) is counted by the automation, and those stats and figures are used.

[Martin Walsh]

Tman you have not answered the point of if we were orginally being told in deliveries that we were overstating traffic by doing wla by weight , and machines could be more accuate in recording traffic then how much can we reliably believe we have lost.

For example if a delivery office use to say a traffic figure was 100K but when a machine records the same amount of traffic it says its only 80K , that does not mean we have lost 20 K of work it just means it was never there in the first place and that WLA was a crude method of recording traffic.

This is why delivery staff are at best weary of Royal Mail statements on trafic loss.

[Tman]

Tman you have not answered the point of if we were orginally being told in deliveries that we were overstating traffic by doing wla by weight , and machines could be more accuate in recording traffic then how much can we reliably believe we have lost.

For example if a delivery office use to say a traffic figure was 100K but when a machine records the same amount of traffic it says its only 80K , that does not mean we have lost 20 K of work it just means it was never there in the first place and that WLA was a crude method of recording traffic.

As I said to TBT etc just recently, from MY standpoint mail volumes have dropped off dramatically recently (to the point where last Friday's early shift actually finished at about 10.30am!) and I have no case or point to make regarding how much DO blokes carry or deliver. WLA and the rest doesn't concern me, but machines that once worked 24/7 now aren't, and that does concern me.

This is why delivery staff are at best weary of Royal Mail statements on trafic loss.

Understandable, but in this scenario the dire predictions happen to be true, unfortunately.

[axeman]

And where are the direct bags counted then ours come via the mail centre but are not processed by them ? might be that some of these are trayed up and assumed they are run through the machines at the local mail centre

[dvbuk55]

Tman you have not answered the point of if we were orginally being told in deliveries that we were overstating traffic by doing wla by weight , and machines could be more accuate in recording traffic then how much can we reliably believe we have lost.

For example if a delivery office use to say a traffic figure was 100K but when a machine records the same amount of traffic it says its only 80K , that does not mean we have lost 20 K of work it just means it was never there in the first place and that WLA was a crude method of recording traffic.

As I said to TBT etc just recently, from MY standpoint mail volumes have dropped off dramatically recently (to the point where last Friday's early shift actually finished at about 10.30am!) and I have no case or point to make regarding how much DO blokes carry or deliver. WLA and the rest doesn't concern me, but machines that once worked 24/7 now aren't, and that does concern me.

This is why delivery staff are at best weary of Royal Mail statements on trafic loss.

Understandable, but in this scenario the dire predictions happen to be true, unfortunately.

I'm still waiting for a response to the question of the DFS mail which arrived in great quantities in brown boxes - was it processed or was it not? If NOT then how much more is getting in to DOs withing being processed - now we may be getting to the nub - processed mail is down but delivery mail isn't. If you don't know, say so, that way we will know exactly how accurate your statements are.

[Tman]

I'm still waiting for a response to the question of the DFS mail which arrived in great quantities in brown boxes - was it processed or was it not? If NOT then how much more is getting in to DOs withing being processed - now we may be getting to the nub - processed mail is down but delivery mail isn't. If you don't know, say so, that way we will know exactly how accurate your statements are.

Same old type of response then?

I don't know what mail you're talking about, and I wasn't there to see it, was I? Have a look at the mail; if it's got a code on it (ie, CBC, or tagged and/or route coded) it's been through RM automation and been counted as such.

Why would "great quantities" turn up at a DO anyway? It would need to go through the MC to be broken down by plan and then walk-sorted.
PHGs are gone now, and DO posties wouldn't be able to manually sort it.....

[TrueBlueTerrier]

DFS came in as Mail Sort in sealed Brown Boxes - No tags no CBC, no route code - some boxes were walk sorted some were not - some bundles inside the boxes were walk sorted some were not. They came stacked in Yorks and yes we sorted them, just as we sort RAW flats and RAW letters everyday at my DO - as least 1/2 Yorkie or 12 Perstops of Flats and 6 Perstops of letters on average every day. (Thats each post code section and there are 8 sections)

[dvbuk55]

I'm still waiting for a response to the question of the DFS mail which arrived in great quantities in brown boxes - was it processed or was it not? If NOT then how much more is getting in to DOs withing being processed - now we may be getting to the nub - processed mail is down but delivery mail isn't. If you don't know, say so, that way we will know exactly how accurate your statements are.

Same old type of response then?

I don't know what mail you're talking about, and I wasn't there to see it, was I? Have a look at the mail; if it's got a code on it (ie, CBC, or tagged and/or route coded) it's been through RM automation and been counted as such.

Why would "great quantities" turn up at a DO anyway? It would need to go through the MC to be broken down by plan and then walk-sorted.
PHGs are gone now, and DO posties wouldn't be able to manually sort it.....

So what are you saying tman - if it hasn't gone through MC, then it doesn't exist and it doesn't count? I can't be 100% certain but I think every house got one.

[not me]

aye we had all the DFS
as said some were in walk sort bundles but the bulk were manual

[TrueBlueTerrier]

This is a post to help clarify the Unions position on "falling mail volumes".

In their "FOUNDATIONS FOR A NEW MODERN DELIVERY MODEL" they say:

1.Delivery work is changing. Automation in delivery offices will alter the balance of indoor to outdoor work1. Evidence suggests that letter volumes are declining2, packets are on the increase and door-to-door work is likely to become a more important part of deliveries. All this means changes in working practices; changes which must be agreed in line with a clear vision for a future delivery model.

The highlighted portion is then referred to on the same page with the following extra text:

Evidence suggests that mail volumes are declining. A view that is shared by a number of postal administrations. However this does not significantly reduce the workload in delivery offices or across the outdoor element. The CWU reserves judgment.