London starts to make progress

[POSTMAN]

Local earnings should be also be contained in the review every office is having.

I share your frustration and anger at Royal Mail"s breaking all the local pay and mod agreements. However the managers we are dealing with have changed their positon dramatically and that should filter down to every DOM and we have moved more things forward over the last 72 hours then we have in the last 11 months.

This time last week I really did think we were looking at further strike action but with acas involvement we have moved forward in a major way. Still a mountain to climb but intial signs are good.

Unfortnately however the national talks are on a knife edge. Acas will be in the delivery talks on Monday and it will be an important call on Tuesday. Watch this space.

Pleased with the local earnings thing,that should help my place with the hoop jumping and make things much easier.

Cheers

[Ahebban]

What I fail to understand is why so much time has been lost on negotiating a national agreement. Yes, the concerns of London and other areas where change was imposed is quite rightly being given the priority it deserved as the treatment of the membership in those offices was disgraceful. But did it have to be at the expense of national negotiations?

It was the responsibility of senior RM management to get area and local management into line and act according to the Interim Agreement. That should not have interfered with, or been allowed to delay, the negotiations on reaching a National Agreement. If I remember correctly the Interim Agreement states that it was the intention of CWU/RM to make significant progress by early December with the aim of reaching a final agreement by the end of December 2009.

I have seen little or no evidence of significant progress in reference to the national agreement. With that in mind I see little chance of the aim for a final agreement being reached before the end of this year either.

[fishtank]

What I fail to understand is why so much time has been lost on negotiating a national agreement. Yes, the concerns of London and other areas where change was imposed is quite rightly being given the priority it deserved as the treatment of the membership in those offices was disgraceful. But did it have to be at the expense of national negotiations?

It was the responsibility of senior RM management to get area and local management into line and act according to the Interim Agreement. That should not have interfered with, or been allowed to delay, the negotiations on reaching a National Agreement. If I remember correctly the Interim Agreement states that it was the intention of CWU/RM to make significant progress by early December with the aim of reaching a final agreement by the end of December 2009.

I have seen little or no evidence of significant progress in reference to the national agreement. With that in mind I see little chance of the aim for a final agreement being reached before the end of this year either.

Well it did kill a bit of time.got us that bit closer to Christmas etc etc.....

[k979aaa]

What I fail to understand is why so much time has been lost on negotiating a national agreement. Yes, the concerns of London and other areas where change was imposed is quite rightly being given the priority it deserved as the treatment of the membership in those offices was disgraceful. But did it have to be at the expense of national negotiations?

It was the responsibility of senior RM management to get area and local management into line and act according to the Interim Agreement. That should not have interfered with, or been allowed to delay, the negotiations on reaching a National Agreement. If I remember correctly the Interim Agreement states that it was the intention of CWU/RM to make significant progress by early December with the aim of reaching a final agreement by the end of December 2009.

I have seen little or no evidence of significant progress in reference to the national agreement. With that in mind I see little chance of the aim for a final agreement being reached before the end of this year either.

Well it did kill a bit of time.got us that bit closer to Christmas etc etc.....

CYNICAL?

[HootyMacBoob]

There has been movement in our branch area with re-investment and agreement in the offices were RM took exec action, to say London has got their own separate agreement out with the rest of the UK is just rubbish. I’ve looked threw a few different topics now and there is a common theme based on Royal Mails propaganda "the dispute is all about London" there are a few posters who are spreading and misleading forum users that this is the case. IMHO they are either RM managers masquerading as union minded people or they have been brain washed at the WTL sessions. It isn’t all about London it’s about a national deal for the whole UK, the fight started in the east coast of Scotland. CWU HQ asked all the branches not to make any business plan savings deals throughout the UK so when offices in the east coast refused to sign deals RM imposed exec action way ahead of the rest of the UK. This led to the 1st strikes in the UK a good few months before London were involved this fact alone should dispel the doubters that It’s a London dispute. My main issue with the PEC was that they had to wait so long before calling a national ballot leaving many branches who were supporting their campaign of no more savings out on a limb.I would like to thank our comrades in London for their stance and for the amount of strike action they took achieve a national deal that will benefit the whole of the UK and not just London.

[fishtank]

Cynical? Yes it certainly was.
True? Again,it certainly was.

Royal Mail management may look stupid but they are not.They knew they could spin the whole "London issue "out for at least a month.
First play the good guys and sign up to an "interim Agreement".Then play the bad guys and fail to honour it.
Then play the good guys again and sign up to a joint statement to say they will honour the "interim agreement" again.
How many union "man hours" have been used up on this merry go round.
And as a bonus you get a split in the membership.

Hooty grow up everybody is entitled to thier opinion.It does not make them a manager or brainwashed,quite the opposite actually.
BTW I'm in your branch,we had EA and i see no real progress only quick fixes.

[k979aaa]

Me too but as things go we had best let see the so called agreement before we let loose with all we have got.

[Yahoorsur]

There has been movement in our branch area with re-investment and agreement in the offices were RM took exec action, to say London has got their own separate agreement out with the rest of the UK is just rubbish. I’ve looked threw a few different topics now and there is a common theme based on Royal Mails propaganda "the dispute is all about London" there are a few posters who are spreading and misleading forum users that this is the case. IMHO they are either RM managers masquerading as union minded people or they have been brain washed at the WTL sessions. It isn’t all about London it’s about a national deal for the whole UK, the fight started in the east coast of Scotland. CWU HQ asked all the branches not to make any business plan savings deals throughout the UK so when offices in the east coast refused to sign deals RM imposed exec action way ahead of the rest of the UK. This led to the 1st strikes in the UK a good few months before London were involved this fact alone should dispel the doubters that It’s a London dispute. My main issue with the PEC was that they had to wait so long before calling a national ballot leaving many branches who were supporting their campaign of no more savings out on a limb.I would like to thank our comrades in London for their stance and for the amount of strike action they took achieve a national deal that will benefit the whole of the UK and not just London.

Aint a London thing.

[DGP1]

My office has had sweet FA, no meetings, no hours put back in, no going back on the imposed changes, nothing.

[dvbuk55]

Well there is apparently a meeting on Monday in my area - so if the PEC is meeting on Monday and the result of a meeting here isn't known until late Monday how can they take into account if the result of our meeting is negative?

[Big Daz]

Perhaps the PEC will be listening in?

[gerardy]

I dont think it will really matter about a few offices,
as enough progress has been made in some parts of London to keep the talks alive for another week at least


I think after Christmas Royal Mail will wish all us hard working posties a happy new year. (NOT)

[mitzi]

Well there is apparently a meeting on Monday in my area - so if the PEC is meeting on Monday and the result of a meeting here isn't known until late Monday how can they take into account if the result of our meeting is negative?

I know there are meetings going on between the reps and management, but they are only to make sure both parties are engaging at local level.These will have no impact on national negotiations.

[Ernie Shoe]

Wimbledon have double slots.

Been in the job nearly 5 years 90% of our frames have double slots.

Love the option of a 4 day week.

We should have the same opportunities throughout the country.
Localised, fragmented union = CRAP.

[Martin Walsh]

Dvbuk the national PEC can meet at any given time. I would have thought there will be a meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday as they need to review if Royal Mail have not moved their postion in the national talks then I would think that the PEC will make a decison.

All Divisional Reps have regular conference calls with the DGSP department to feed back what is occuring in their divisons.

The National Talks stalled badly this week. Intially it was a result of Royal Mail switching their negotatiors. They replaced Tony Fox with Murphy in Network , they replaced Cameron in Processing with Fox and they put Cameron in with Stockdale in Deliveries. The Union complained that by changing their leads at this stage would make the talks more protracted .

In addition the unions draft proposal to Royal Mail on deliveries was very detailed whereas Royal Mail"s was so short it was taking the mickey. In fact they had just one paragraph of 4 lines to remove the 3.5 hour spec.

So Monday is a big day for us all. Royal Mail!s plans for delivery , processing and network effects everyone in the UK and they tag on this phase world class mails which is basically another continious improvement process.

So lets be clear dont be hoodwinked that this is a London dispute , this is about whether you have a future. Royal Mail"s plans drawfed anything which you have seen before.