Agreement to extend national talks

[fishtank]

dingo wrote
"I do agree that the strength of some offices mean that terms and conditions can be better in some offices than others. But surely that is an encouragement for others to take a hard postion."

No,what it leads to is division.
It does not raise the bar and encourage the union to fight for better conditions for all.I would have thought you would have realised this over the past 18 months dingo.It encourages management to reduce our conditions to the lowest common denominator.
What it leads to is the whole "It's a London issue" thing which Royal Mail just love.

dingo wrote
"Thats why in every area you have offices with better conditions then others. "

If i was a senior union official and some of my members had poorer working conditions than others i would be deeply ashamed.
After all is that not one of the founding principals of the trade union movement.
Equality for ALL.

[POSTMAN]

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Thats why the interim agreement insisted that annex a and b applied in regards to absorbtion

What exactly are these?

The agreement is here...
http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... 18&t=21675" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[stevie247]

Fishtank wrote
dingo wrote
"I do agree that the strength of some offices mean that terms and conditions can be better in some offices than others. But surely that is an encouragement for others to take a hard postion."

No,what it leads to is division.
It does not raise the bar and encourage the union to fight for better conditions for all.I would have thought you would have realised this over the past 18 months dingo.It encourages management to reduce our conditions to the lowest common denominator.
What it leads to is the whole "It's a London issue" thing which Royal Mail just love.

dingo wrote
"Thats why in every area you have offices with better conditions then others. "

If i was a senior union official and some of my members had poorer working conditions than others i would be deeply ashamed.
After all is that not one of the founding principals of the trade union movement.
Equality for ALL.
FANTASTIC post mate spot on HQ are passing the buck to local reps with no time and shark DOM'S cut T&C because of VAGUE national agreements.

[smokerjim]

The only reason RM went after London was because they want London to enjoy the same conditions that most of the rest of the UK dont enjoy but have to put up with. More local agreements will just mean that London WILL be attacked again no matter how strong the devision is at the moment, if i was a London local or div REP i would be after HQ to streamline a new national agreement with minimum standards set in stone for both the CWU and RM with a small ammount of lattitude to take care of local conditions. Only by forcing up standards for the whole can any section expect the Union to at least maintain the terms they now enjoy.

I think the reason RM has gone after London is it might take them weeks, months or years to smash resistance in one of the strongest areas in the country - but once it is smashed, some areas will be ready to collapse immediately, and many others will lower their resistance from the shockwave ( "If they can smash London, what hope have we?" )......what will be left will not be enough to ressurect a strong union - if you take out the head or a major organ, the rest will follow

[BELIAL]

In short ,Local Agreement = s**t deal. Local agreement =leadership cop out. Local agreement =we will come for you in the end,absolute lunacy,a strategic f**k up par excellence .
How in the name of sweet Jesus does anyone get convinced otherwise? Nice in theory ,but in terms of practice ,the death knell of the CWU. Gobsmacked

[fishtank]

In short ,Local Agreement = s**t deal. Local agreement =leadership cop out. Local agreement =we will come for you in the end,absolute lunacy,a strategic f**k up par excellence .
How in the name of sweet Jesus does anyone get convinced otherwise? Nice in theory ,but in terms of practice ,the death knell of the CWU. Gobsmacked

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."

[Cut Off King]

I feel like some pantomine villian but here we go again.

** Your NOT the villan in this, Royal Mail senior management are! - we might not agree about the detail, but were all after the same thing, a RM that people are once again proud to work for.

Now believe me if the CWU wanted to get a no vote then all they needed to do is to say that every office would have to have the same working conditons , the same start and finishing times and the same attendances and they would have no local flexibility. The way forwarded attempted that and there was for a time so much in fighting in the union it was open warfare at times believe me.

It is not the way to go that everyone has to work the same, why would you want to ingnore the members opinions in an office ? Thats dictatorship and is wrong.

** In fighting would only come about if THE DEAL DIDN'T RAISE ALL OF THE MEMBERS T&C, If a deal only raised SOME members T&C then you can understand why a NO vote & infighting would be obtained .

We need to look at the BEST T&C office/MC that currently exists in RM, and raise EVERYONE upto & beyond their T&C.

As for ignoring members opinions in a MC/office - That my friend already exists.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

The only reason RM went after London was because they want London to enjoy the same conditions that most of the rest of the UK dont enjoy but have to put up with. More local agreements will just mean that London WILL be attacked again no matter how strong the devision is at the moment, if i was a London local or div REP i would be after HQ to streamline a new national agreement with minimum standards set in stone for both the CWU and RM with a small ammount of lattitude to take care of local conditions. Only by forcing up standards for the whole can any section expect the Union to at least maintain the terms they now enjoy.

In complete and absolute agreement with this post.

[Martin Walsh]

linkin would not disagree with your post at all. They did try and smash us in London and I think they under estimated our members strength 20 times they supported the call for strike action , even Royal Mail were shocked that 95% of members were still supporting the union. Lets be honest they thought they would have defeated us in August when traffic was light but our members showed amazing strength and knew that others were fighting in the UK and soon the national ballot would kick in.

Yes Royal Mail do want standirsed operating procedures , for example they want every office to have to be working at 100BSI in the next 3 years. Some offices are already in excess of this figure. They also want everyone to have the same delivery methods car derived vans , and to cost roughly the same.

Thats why the union is addressing these issues in the talks including attempting to agree standards so we all know that the standards are fair. Remember the indoor workload tool which Royal Mail are using now persumes you have no missorts within your mech bundles , persumes you have no secondary IPS , no prep which has to double sorted ie double slots , persumes the manager has updated all the information including the number of new redirections etc..

Thats why we want agreed standards which are accurate and fair

Now please understand the agreement will put in mandatory requirements for all units ( no unit will be an exception ). But it will also allow offices to consult with their members on how they introduce these measures. For instance , start times , finish times , plus the length of spans.

One of the reasons for that is not every office will have walk sequencing at the same time , some will have sequening by legacy equipment which will not have a 60 /40 split. Plus car derived vans will be phased in over the next 12 -18 months.

So every office will have to consider the circumstances which their office is facing when they decide what type of deal they do.

Look why dont you attempt to work out how long at 100BS! it should take you at IPS in an office or prep and then work out if you stayed at 3.5 hours how many full time jobs you would have. Or even at 75BSi 1000 per hour on ips and between 10 -14 prep miniute depending on prep frame. Remember 100 BSI is their target.

Of course you dont count your mech in the ips figure , but you do on your prep. You then get a figure of how many hours you need to clear the ips and of course your prep based on that.

This is even before we get to the change in the work plan and walk sequencing.which will mean that some of your ips does not come into the office as now and that a lot of your letter work will in the future be sequenced in street and numurical order.

Nationaly the cwu want to allow offices to agree the duties base d on what are the evidence on the ground in their offices based on walk sequencing , or any other measure from the new delivery framework.

If as some believe walk sequencing will not produce the goods then that allows offices the ablitiy to argue on that basis.

[RedRich]

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Thats why the interim agreement insisted that annex a and b applied in regards to absorbtion

What exactly are these?

Yes i,d like to know too as we are getting shafted in our office with regards absorbtion.

[dvbuk55]

The reason for strike action was two fold:

The 2007 agreement wasn't working because of the failure to standardise the move to the agreed practices and Royal Mail took full advantage of the discrepancies and when they tried to impose they changes on strong union areas they encountered resistance. This went on for 6 months and RM was not for moving.

Those areas where EA had been imposed was calling for individual ballots and a third of offices had this status. This then became a national ballot and was supported overwhelmingly.

We do not want a repeat of the 2007 agreement. The sorting out of some loosely worded agreement should not be left to individual offices. In any area there is going to be a weak office which agrees to extended deliveries, for example - this is then used as a lever to weaken stronger offices and you then get a domino effect over time until we replay the situation we have just been through.

[Big Daz]

At my D.O walksorted mail is in the D.O early enough to allow OPG's and mbrs to come in early and have it all sorted into their prep frame by 0610 when IPS.


Is a new national agreement(s) likely to contain a clear policy that start times will be based on the reality of mail arrival times rather than some daft figure RM pluck out of the air?

My DO could easily manage all IPS staff in at 0530 official start time as walksorted mail is on site by this time, and it's because walksorted mail is on site that people come in early as there is work for them to do, if there was not any work they would not come in early at my D.O.

[pickaname]

No work should be on frames until youve started your shift.

At my office we now have to distribute the bundles of mech. Theyre no longer there when we get in.

This stops people from coming in early, although some idiots still do it.

[fishtank]

At my D.O walksorted mail is in the D.O early enough to allow OPG's and mbrs to come in early and have it all sorted into their prep frame by 0610 when IPS.


Is a new national agreement(s) likely to contain a clear policy that start times will be based on the reality of mail arrival times rather than some daft figure RM pluck out of the air?

My DO could easily manage all IPS staff in at 0530 official start time as walksorted mail is on site by this time, and it's because walksorted mail is on site that people come in early as there is work for them to do, if there was not any work they would not come in early at my D.O.

To be honest Daz and in my humble opinion i would doubt if the new national agreement(s) are likely to contain a clear policy about anything.

Take your pick of daft figures 100Bsi,60/40 split,3pm last letter,4.15 and 4.30 delivery spans.The list is endless.

There was no need for my office to move to later starts in 2007 either as nothing has changed in our feed times but we were told by both the union and Royal Mail that these later starts were required to protect full-time jobs as there would be no work in the office at 5.00. Sound familiar?

[Big Daz]

That mistaken policy from CWU has created the pefect conditions for something the CWU is against

The start early brigade have increased their numbers since the 6am starts came in!!! The irony is when we had the office vote on going back to normal saturday times as per the 2007 agreement the mbrs chose to not to go back saying that if RM can have them starting back at 5 an o saturday they can do it all week. They seemed to think by doing this they were getting back at RML and CWU

6am starts I think it was in 2006 we were told that mail arrival from the MC would alter so I had proposals to alter start times given to me from the DOM. I was able to significantly counter act his proposals by poining out that IPS staff could simply go on their frames if we ran out of IPS work, and non IPS duties were movedf to 0530 start . What happened the walksorted mail arrived at normal times so was there on frames at 5am thus angering those who went to later times. In the end they went back to 5am untill 6am starts were imposed.