Reaching an agreement by 22nd January is still the target by all those involved.
However the talks have been hampered by the fact that two of Royal Mail"s lead negotiators who were frontng up the delivery talks and in charge of the processing talks were taken into hopstial last week, which meant that Steve Cameron Royal Mail"s other lead operations director was having to lead up two strands of the talks which slowed things down somewhat.
Progress has been made on a lot of issues but some major issues still remain including longer Saturdays, and the benefits package and the impact of workplan across the pipeline.
The union made a major mistake when we agreed to walk seqeuencing trails in that we never trialled the true impact in delivery units to anaylise the total impact instead we agreed that no hours or adjustments would be made in the delivery units so we have never trailled the impact of the new workplan.
None of the two recent trails trailled walk seqencing on Saturdays either so we dont have any experience of what it looks like but equally neither does Royal Mail.
Talks are going to be very intense this week as all sides want to reach agreement this week , what will be so important is whether Royal Mail have enough to offer in the way of benefits to convince the union that its a deal worth doing.
In my own view there will be a deal to put to the members whether it is next week or the following week there will be a deal. However dont be surprised if after all the unions best efforts that the union belive the deal is not good enough. If this is the case they will put it out to the membership for their vote recommending rejection.
Equally if they believe that the deal is good enough they will recommend for acceptance.
With regards to 75 / 25 full time to part time split , well if that is within any agreement then it is an improvement of the current national postion which is around 63% with a number of divisons well below 50%.
With regards to the merits of the interim agreement. well at the moment it has been succussful in resolving offices who had execuitive action in 2009 , it has resolved a lot of displine cases arising out of the dispute. The final measure of its sucuss will be if it allows for an agreement to be reached and whether that agreement is accepted by the membership.
It is likely to be a very intresting week ahead with our negotatiors confined to an hotel for two or three days.
The Union is playing hardball , they all know this is the biggest agreement in a generation and they will all be juduged on its contents. Equally Royal Mail are adamant that any deal must include walk sequencing on Saturdays and therefore will mean later Saturday finishes for delivery staff.
The only FT positions will be indoor, sorting up the stuff the machines cant sequence, and then throwing in 3 walks each which part timers will deliver. To do this they will need to get about 70% of our current staff out the door completely, or buy down hours to part time (to join the delivery crew) All this was unveiled while talks on a new agreement are on -going.
