A couple of questions

[Gill]

Hi i'm trying to understand a few of your problems within the RM.

Can someone please explain what Lapsing is please?
Also IPS?
And finally why are part time staff such a bad thing?

Cheers

[westlondonpostie]

Lapsing= When someone is off sick or on holiday they're Delivery is split among a group of postman to deliver as well as they're own, a lot of the time it means people are being pressured into going over they're time or being unable to complete they're own delivery in the alloted time.

IPS (Inward Primary Sorting) When mail comes into an Office it has to be sorted into specific areas, the next stage is GD (General Dividing) Where the mail is then sorted to the relevant walks for the Postman to prepare his Delivery Frame.

Part Time. Well the problem is in the title, Part Time means less money and less pension contributions and benefits. Royal Mail has been handing out leaflets trying to get people to reduce they're hours saying that they want Delivery to be mainly PT in the future, so what is going to happen to all us Full Timers.

[pinstripe]

Lapsing is also unpaid overtime, ie. extra work on top of your own which is fine if you have the time in your duty to do it. Most don't with the increases already enforced by Royal Mail.

Just because some people do unpaid overtime in their own jobs doesn't make it right.

[IcanthelpthewayIam]

one problem with part timers is this,

(figures for illustration but are pretty close to reality)
say in an office you have ten full time members of staff, in the morning you have 20 hours of ips work to complete, so 2 hours worth of work each, one of the 10 full timers has reached retirement age and retires, management then decide they are not going to replace him and hire a part time delivery only post man,

now we still have 20 hours of ips work to complete, spread amoungst the 9 full timers instead so that is 2hours and 12 minutes worth of ips work for each man now, thats 12 minutes more per man

now that part time member of staff does not usually sort their own walk, so a full time member of staff will have to come off IPS to prep that, say for 1 hour, thats an extra 6 minutes of work per man still on IPS so now we are up to 18 minutes extra work per man

now here is the kicker, a full time member of staff goes sick and we are told to lapse a duty, so now we have 8 men for ips and one of them is sorting up the walk for the part timer,

so 20 hours of ips work divided amounst 8 men is 2 hours 30 minutes each, the man who sorts the part timers walk for an hour's ips work is divided amounst the remaining seven, roughly 8 minutes each, so now each man is doing 2 hours 38 minutes worth of work, due to one man being sick and 1 full time post being replaced with a part time post,

oh but i forgot!!! the guy who is sick's walk wont deliver itself, there are 8 members of staff who this walk must be divided amounst(including the part timer) delivery walks are supposed to be 3 hours 30 minutes long, so divided amoung 8 people evenly, is 26 minutes per person extra,

so now from starting with 2 hours of IPS work each man now has 3 hours and 4 minutes of work

Royal mail claim mail volumes are down 10% but want us to work 53% extra time,

so starting at 3 Hours and 4 minutes we now all have our break,

we are now at 3 Hours 44 minutes,

as with the part timer, we now need to sort our own walks for delivery, lets call that an extra hour to do this

we are now at 4 hours 44 minutes

we are just about to head out the door now to start our walk, lets say it takes 10 minutes to get to the start of the walk

we are now at 4 hours 54 minutes

the walks are supposed to take 3 hours and 30 minutes so that gets added on as well

we are now at 8 hours 24 minutes

time to go back to the office, another 10 minutes, 8 hours 34 minutes

so basically for that 1 person getting replaced with a part timer and 1 person being sick, for that 1 day we are 34 minutes over our time

now that 34 minutes is not realistic, as the times i have used are very basic, and i have missed extra things out that each man has to do, return to sender letters, redirections, wait for bags of mail to be delivered to us for delivery, these other things and more might only be an extra couple of minutes but they all add up, one of the problems is that managers are bullying people into doing this extra work for free and not allowing them to claim over time

[jockstrapp]

Well explained Also if you have three d2d to sort into a frame where half the slots are doubles that takes extra time. but he! the people that come in early, take their cars and run round can do it so why can't you??????

[Pat Ostman]

It's worth adding the part timers perspective. Because of what you have explained, the reality is part time people hardly ever have their whole walk thrown in. This normally means with bagging up, redirections and kill off's the part timer is usually the last out of the office.

With a 25 hour contract (out of which 3.5 is used for delivery, 40 mins getting there and pouching off and a 30 min meal relief). Part timers are only given twenty mins to do everything including prepping D2D's. That is impossible.

Add to that part timers are always thrown on different walks making the throwing off bit a complete nightmare.

It swings both ways, both full timers AND part timers are screwed.

[POSTMAN]

Moved to Blue Shirts Forum.

[StevenC]

It's worth adding the part timers perspective. Because of what you have explained, the reality is part time people hardly ever have their whole walk thrown in. This normally means with bagging up, redirections and kill off's the part timer is usually the last out of the office.

So the question has to be, why do they do it?

Im 22.5 hours, i come in and everyday my mail is sorted and bagged up for me, just like it should be. If it isn't (which it never is on the managers rotational day off) i simply inform the covering manager it will take me x amount of time to do and i stream or cut off.

Whats the problem? I see no reason how this can be confusing or how the part timer should be forced to do it.