THE AGREEMENT

[dvbuk55]

Great spin on what is simply a joint statement - the modernisation has moved leaps and bounds in the provinces and is one person going to oversee the fairness of any "local" negotiations for reversal and the reinstatement of lost hours. These are stalling tactics nothing more, nothing less.

As for the wording of moving forward D2D etc - yes we have seen them before but commonly known as Stage 4 - there is nothing new here. As for halting revisions in London etc Higson had said two weeks ago that the modernisation program for 2009 was complete and no changes were due until January 2010.

[Cut Off King]

At the end of the day RM have just given you WORDS, there is nothing concrete.

As far as RM stalling, you seem to think that we will all go back on strike again if you call - Well, in my office EVERYONE ( inc. the rep ) thinks we have been sold out. They will NOT be going out again if called. ( after all, why lose money again for weeks on end , only to have RM by the balls then THE CWU LEADERSHIP LET THEM OFF AGAIN FOR ROUND 2 TALKS )

RM managers read these post! What do you think they will be thinking now? They will be rubbing their hands with glee. the CWU leadership has handed RM an early XMAS pressie, No not a stop to strikes , but a membership who were nearly 100% solid behind the strikes REDUCED to membership that has turned on its leaders.

RM will string things out till after XMAS. then they will WALK AWAY knowing that the members will NOT be willing to supporting the strikes !

Every Unit has about 20% of members who will always walk when instructed to
But for a strike to hold, you need to convince the other 80% that they will gain from supporting the action.

Your losing your support, It will take a lot to gain it back again

I hope that dingo is right and that I am wrong

But RM are not to be trusted, so I fear the worst.

[Martin Walsh]

Dvbuk its not spin it is facts. Higson has retracted the letter about no going back. But the proof is in the eating and we will know early this week if Royal Mail are going to move on the local disputes.

Now in regards to the D2D issue well its coming into workload and there will be a delivery supplement paid to delivery workers. But the details of how it is incorporated into work load along with agreed standards and a whole range of other issues have to be neogiated in the next few weeks. You and I are never going to agree with regards to local agreements. However I remain convinced that Dave Ward , Bob Gibson , Ray Ellis , Martin Collins and Terry Pullinger cannot agree what happens in all 1500 offices, it simply would not work. Thats why all National Agreements allow for local talks so you can decide what suits your members in your office as you know them.

Cut off King I have heard all the stuff about we will never get the members up again after every dispute and every settlement , and I think its important that some of negativity on here is countered as some of you are misleading the membership. In any conflict there is an agreement be that in the Northern Ireland peace process or in this case our long running dispute. If we dont think Royal Mail is honouring the agreement we will be back on strike. But lets be honest the terms of what Royal Mail have committed too is what we wanted from day 1 and also means that we now will have someone independent to oversee the talks at both local and national level which will expose if Royal Mail are beaking the agreement.

I realise that it will be an important job to explain to our members in detail what has been agreed and we will be doing this by meetings with members.

If you feel betrayed then thats your opinion but even if Royal Mail conceded on every issue it would still take 4 weeks to work up the detail. For instance on simplified pay all money which is in the wage bill is being examined and some caputured from 2007 and then how best to target it to improve everyones basic pay. Now there are 124 different allowances so its not something you can do in a day or two.

I am not going convince you that I am right and you are wrong and neither will you convince me but what will convince me is when I meet Royal Mail during the week whether they now want to agree a resolution at all the local offices which our members would vote on and find acceptable in line with the words in the national agreement. If they do then fine if they dont then we will be back to taking action fairly shortly.

[Stormproof]

I'm sorry to sound naive, but why are there local agreements? The same work is being done all over the country so why is'nt there just a national agreement? All this local stuff is cr@p.

[thehappyones]

DINGO....Listem mate i have great respect for you as you seem to know your onions ,but in respect of local issues these are going to be hard to do maybe not impossible but difficult as already we have seen Glasgow Mail Centre management break the National Agreement already and its only hours old ,so its these situations that get the rank and file rattled and we end up with wildcats and then were back to square one

[Sci_Dog]

I'm sorry to sound naive, but why are there local agreements? The same work is being done all over the country so why is'nt there just a national agreement? All this local stuff is cr@p.

Divide and conquer.

[dvbuk55]

Dvbuk its not spin it is facts. Higson has retracted the letter about no going back. But the proof is in the eating and we will know early this week if Royal Mail are going to move on the local disputes..

Can we categorically say the joint statement, I refuse to classify this as any form of agreement allows for revocation of imposed duties/hours before 2009. Could you explain how the disputes from all the offices involved are going to be solved in the two week time scale. Could you say what would trigger a recall to strike - if you could get people to respond and if it could be triggered before christmas. As for the Northern Ireland issue - that took 25 years to solve by which time I will be nearly 90 - I may even have retired by then.

The question still begs an answer though - why did we call off the strikes when there was so much more to be gained.

[fishtank]

I'm sorry to sound naive, but why are there local agreements? The same work is being done all over the country so why is'nt there just a national agreement? All this local stuff is cr@p.

Divide and conquer.

Pick off the weaker offices first.
Then use these offices against the stronger.
It worked in 2007.

[Martin Walsh]

The reason why there are local agreements is that local agreements cater for what is in their offices. For example some offices like to have a 5 day rotating day off, some like the 1 week off in 6 , some like a fixed day off and some like 4 day weeks, some like to start at 5 some due to transport issues 6.15. Some like to finish early on Saturdays some like a later Saturday. Some office like good overtime levels some dont , some like to have only full time jobs some a mix. It would be wrong for CWU HQs to impose a one size fits all on all offices. Not only would it be wrong it would lead to chaos.

Happy one we have had some problems today as well but I think its a combination of things happening as the agreement was not released till 12 yesterday. The regional managers were briefed yesterday and then on monday the mail centre managers and DSMs will be briefed. The test will be once that happens have they changed their position or not.

Like I say you can have the best words in the world on paper it is not till you meet with them that you understand if they have now changed their position. We will soon know one way or the other. Pehaps we should all judge this agreement on what happens this week.

[Geezer]

I'm sorry to sound naive, but why are there local agreements? The same work is being done all over the country so why is'nt there just a national agreement? All this local stuff is cr@p.

Divide and conquer.

Pick off the weaker offices first.
Then use these offices against the stronger.
It worked in 2007.

Which is why we are where we are today and no further forward.
WELL SAID !

[spilie]

dingo you talk the talk now lets see you walk, i went on strike because of exec action which raped my office of hours, all unagreed we were balloted on this and took strike action because of it, so ££££ lost later, are they going to put those hours back in? will they be put back in the next week? or as i suspect "we will talk about it" wiil be the answer, so when you and the educated ones meet, remember me and the rest who came out for a promise not a bogus journey

[dvbuk55]

This forum represents a small proportion of employees who took IA but it will be interesting to see what the general feeling is next week when all those offices who have had change foisted on them realise that nothing has changed - what price then the joint statement.

[Martin Walsh]

Spile I can assure you that as someone who has led the London dispute and have stood in front of thousands of members in over an hundred offices there is no way we will accept any kind of sell out to our members/

However as much as I dont trust Royal Mail , there is a time you have to test if they are going to reverse change. Now I dont think anyone seriously believes that in offices like EC Deliveries where they have removed 75 jobs from the office that we will get 75 jobs back. But what we do expect is that we sit down and can get jobs back where the office is failing to meet quality of service and we restore earnings , plus we trap a share of savings and we have a proper resign in that office. If for instance management tell us when we meet that nothing will change then we will immediatley state that the agreement is flawed and will demand further action.

However I know that the imposition of revisions wont be resolved overnight as we have not been involved in any of the planning of these revisions and we will demand to see all the proper facts on what they introduce the revision on ie traffic , call rates , attendance calls , earning opportunites etc. But the key to this is whether they accept change I know in some of our offices like Wimbledon , Islington , SE1 , Streatham management have already accepted walks will have to come back for the revision to work. The question is do we agree on the number of jobs returning.

But like I said before what was the alternative continue striking till what was achieved ? At some stage whether it was this week or a month later or 3 months later we would still have to get back into local talks to resolve the imposed revisions.

[spilie]

ok dingo i am not having a go for the sake of it, the way i see it we are where we were when we were advised to ballot for strike action,by that i mean we have lost money and more importantly confidence, for what? blah blah blah, you are already conceding most of the EA that was taken will stay but wow wee we will get one or two posts returned where it was obvious even without strikes we would have got that, i would never question your integrity but you talk with the tounge of a politician and that scares me

[thehappyones]

Well ...ok Dingo i know where youre coming from but are you telling me that no senior managers etc. dont know whats in that agreement they havent e-mailed it out faxed (do you still get faxes??)out etc. i am on the fence here but with most agreements that get done between us and them they seem open to interpritation ..that ,personally speaking,will determine this agreement but we will all have to wait and see and not all jump to conclusions and not hope for the worst .