London says yes to further strikes

[Martin Walsh]

Yesterday the Divisonal Reps reported back to the London Divisonal Committee that dispite having over 30 hours of meetings with the regional directors and indeed two meetings at national level with Dave Ward , Bob Gibson , Dale Handon and Paul Tolhurst , Royal Mail still refuse to honour the full terms of the interim agreement.

In our view managment and in partiuclar Paul Tolhurst are still carrying out a war with the London membership.

They continue to settle old scores taking indivuduals of pay and bullying indivuduals.

In London they have imposed over 70 revisons and contary to popular belief they have imposed geo route revisons in which walks go much longer than 4 hours , they have introduced car derived vans which dont work and in many cases only one driving key per van , where they have only imposed part of a revison now got 3 different ips sorting arrangements, new walks , old walks and alpha sorting performed by casuals.

In 20 offices in London there is huge backlogs from failed revisons some where management have removed 10 hour days and replaced with 8 hour days which simply fail every day. Plus casuals remain in most over offices stopping overtime being performed. In additon to this 130 casuals remain in two mail centres the mount and south london to perform alpha sorting of 7 delivery offices instead of that returning work to the parent delivery office.

Plus Royal Mail are now saying that they want to only go to a last letter of 2 o clock which prevents any improved duties 4 day weeks or 9 day fortnights etc. This is despite the fact that the duties they have imposed go past 2 because they do 3.5 hours 1st to last delivery point and then build replinshment time in above this so basically walks are longer than 3.5 and therefore go past 2 now. Royal Mail have never kept to this spec in fact longs and shorts , 30 mins flex are all signs that they have played lip service to it. Plus in January they want to move the last letter to 3.

In distribution they want to collaspe wave 1 collections and make most part time. In addition they want to issue further effercincies savings in all offices in Decemenber. Then in Juanuary they will put proposals for further bussiness plans in all offices across the country for further savings which include savings against traffic loss. Plus they revealed that Royal Mail want to standardised all performance levels in the country to the best over a 3 year plan all offices have to make a journey torwards 100 BSI and to achieve parity with the top performing office.

We have done everything we could to make this agreement work but Royal Mail are not serious with carrying out the full terms of 2.3 and are only intrested in the bits they want further efferincies etc.

London is not alone other area regions are finding this to be the case. When offices enter into reviews in line with 2.3 they will find this to be the case.

So we now want national strike action to recommence as Royal Mail have broken the terms of the national agreement. This is a national agreement which they have broken and therefore needs a national response.

The Union owes places like London, Scotland , Plymouth , Bristol , Network , Peterborugh and others a huge debt as if it was not for us striking there would of neither been national talks or a national ballot and there would of been a lot more national strike action as national talks were taking place from prior to the national ballot announcement.

Its now time to take strike action again and force Royal Mail into a better agreement which they cant wiggle out off. The biggest traffic week for christmas is the week begining 7 the December and in our view action has to start again quickly.

Lets all lobby the PEC for Tuesday . One Union one strike.

[downbye]

PMSL. So everyone was right too say the union had stabbed us in the back.

[mydaily]

I know personally how hard it is to tollerate the way RM are being but I don't think hurting businesses and customers further on the run up to Christmas is the right way to go. that being said if the Union did call us out again I'd be first on the picket line!

[johnnyp]

PMSL. So everyone was right too say the union had stabbed us in the back.

Its not the union we cant trust ,allthough some on here will say different,its Royal Mail management.
By the end of the day this thread will be full of "i told you so" and yes it does look like they were right,but lets not aim our anger at the CWU, its not them who are out to destroy our terms and conditions along with the service its management and by there failure to move forward with the interim agreement it is they who will be seen as the villains by the public the media and everybody else on the outside of this dispute.

[teesdale]

I think middle and junior management are to blame. They want to stir up trouble to prevent change. Their doing very well out of the current system,eg. minimal job description, salary and boosted bonus.

[norbert]

I think middle and junior management are to blame. They want to stir up trouble to prevent change. Their doing very well out of the current system,eg. minimal job description, salary and boosted bonus.

eventually though - the chickens will come home to roost , because Senior management will want a cull after they've served their purpose . Just look at the bullying tone of Higson's letter .

No private firm would tolerate glorified administrative layers - they'd say the chain of command is too long and gets in the way . It would be that obvious there's too many chiefs and not enough Indians when the self inflicted cracks start showing .

More fool them - seen loads of Senior / middle managers ( Empire Builders of the worst kind ? ) and the lackies that fed them or made them feel safe , get shown the door with privatization - some thought they were God's Gift / Fireproof and practically had to have their hands prized off the door handle . Reps were saying - " There is a God " .

[goinpostal]

Its not the union we cant trust ,allthough some on here will say different,its Royal Mail management.
By the end of the day this thread will be full of "i told you so" and yes it does look like they were right,but lets not aim our anger at the CWU, its not them who are out to destroy our terms and conditions along with the service its management and by there failure to move forward with the interim agreement it is they who will be seen as the villains by the public the media and everybody else on the outside of this dispute.

yes lets not blame the union after all we are the union. But we should blame those that speak in our name, Ward, Hayes and the PEC that called off the strikes for a crap deal that did not commit RM to a single thing. Restart the national strike!

[westlondonpostie]

I was well pissed off after the strikes were called off, but as we all know Royal Mail management don't give a monkeys about the service or the customers and definately don't give two sh***s about us the workforce,
They were sticking to the call off the strikes and we'll go to ACAS stance, well the Union called they're bluff and did just that, something Royal Mail did not want to happen!
Now in the past 2 weeks the Union has been abiding by this interim aggreement, but from what my Union Rep has said Royal Mail have not, whether it be Area managers or DOM's following instructions from above or they're own interpretations of the aggreement,
The Union hasn't been idle since the strikes were called off, they have been collecting evidence and also listing names of all managers and Offices who are refusing to abide with the aggreement, and this will then be presented to ACAS and the TUC and will no doubt prove to be a massive embarassment to Crozier, Higson and Tolhurst when the truth comes out, and I fully expect them to start passing the buck to try and save they're own necks,

[Lincox]

If that is the case and they have this load of evidence, are they then going to give RM another two weeks to sort this out. If this is what is going to happen, then Royal Mail will continue to ignore the agreement and Christmas will have been and gone and we will be up the creek without a paddle.

[kwikpost]

although i've lost well over £1500 yep i'll go back out again but................with the backlog mostly cleared and people already worried about the way this union is doing thing's. they must know that if they tell us to go back to work again with only a promise to continue talking instead of a real deal it will be the last straw for alot of us. you got a yes to strike vote now have the balls and use it.

[DGP1]

PMSL. So everyone was right too say the union had stabbed us in the back.

Its not the union we cant trust ,allthough some on here will say different,its Royal Mail management.
By the end of the day this thread will be full of "i told you so" and yes it does look like they were right,but lets not aim our anger at the CWU, its not them who are out to destroy our terms and conditions along with the service its management and by there failure to move forward with the interim agreement it is they who will be seen as the villains by the public the media and everybody else on the outside of this dispute.

Just to make you happy..........................'I told you so'

Seven days from today then for the first strike?

[chewi]

this is like beating fog into a corner with a whisk. We all know management have one aim. Yet the union is flailing around lashing at this,that and the other. The end result should not be a "union in being" but a service in being We are nothing if our customers don't support us and despite the sterling efforts of delivery staff to explain the obvious, all this faffing only confuses the issues. Please give us a clear,consise and easy to explain reason why we are in dispute. Managers are lying bastards is acceptable(and true)

[fishtank]

PMSL. So everyone was right too say the union had stabbed us in the back.

Its not the union we cant trust ,allthough some on here will say different,its Royal Mail management.
By the end of the day this thread will be full of "i told you so" and yes it does look like they were right,but lets not aim our anger at the CWU, its not them who are out to destroy our terms and conditions along with the service its management and by there failure to move forward with the interim agreement it is they who will be seen as the villains by the public the media and everybody else on the outside of this dispute.

It is not the union i distrust,it is those i TRUSTED to negotiate a fair and decent agreement for it's members.
I now distrust it's motives,it's beliefs and it's ability to see beyond it's own survival.
Do you honestly believe "the public the media and everybody else on the outside of this dispute" will see management as the villians
If we break what they consider to be a "No strike agreement" 4 weeks before Christmas there will be only one villan.
Or do you believe the CWU PR machine will finally get our message across.
I would derive no joy from stating "i told you so" because it is not the outcome i wished.

[Reserve]

Many CWU members in our office have voiced their reluctance to go out on strike again; and I can see where they are coming from.

The CWU isn't keeping us up to date on what is going on, this shouldn't be the case - when they called us out on strike we responded... and what now that the strikes have been called off? We don't hear anything. The majority of us have no idea what the CWU achieved by calling the strikes off. The CWU need to get their act together and tell us what's going on, because I'm telling you now if the CWU doesn't win it's membership back then it's game over.

I myself am ready to go out on strike again; but I get the impression that many aren't.

[Martin Walsh]

I have to say as leaders of strikes you have to make decisons not just on the basis of your own opinion but taking into account all the members opinions you represnt whether that be as a rep of an office , a Branch , a divison or as a national union.

when on the 5th November the deal was reached we had a choice to make did we take what was on offer both in the regagement at local level and the national process for negotations or did we continue to strike in order to attempt to get more concessions.

At this stage the vast majority of members had lost just two days money , however in some parts of the country some of the longest and most bitterest disputes in Royal Mail history had been going on for months with up to 23 days of strike action having being taken.

The words of the interim agreement allowed for the first opportunity for local talks on imposed revisons since the strikes began.

Well we decided we needed to test whether Royal Mail were going to negoiate and look for pragmatic solutions to end the local disputes and also whether at national level they were going to change their long running policy of allowing the CWU to alter their plan for the future of the industry.

Well they have failed on the local committments and cannot not now be trusted to honour the national committements and thats why when the review takes place next Thursday we should announce immediate strike action with a plan right up to Christmas.

Now lets examine some of the doom and gloom posters on here , first they stated that the union had given away their right to strike before Christmas, now when we are now arguing for strike action again they are complaining and moaning that its too late. Why ? We have tried to resolve the issues in good faith without losing members further money. However Royal Mail have refused to negoaite in line with the terms of the agreement and are now introducing further savings in what was meant to be a period of calm.

We in response now must hit them hard with further strikes. Lets see if those who talk the talk on this site are now willing to walk the walk. We in London have tried and failed to make Royal Mail honour the agreement as we are meant to do in our roles of reprsenting the members. Now its time for action and that action has to be national and quick and with a program of action.

Are you up for it ?