Flexibility/Lapsing

[snoddy]

This is an agreement shown to me by our rep it only came out on Saturday so it looks like absorption as a national agreement is alive and kicking. If you read the part about planned departure times versus actual times you will notice that this advocates increased delivery spans.
Thats the North West shafted, best of luck to the rest of you.

FLEXIBILITY – LAPSING IN DELIVERY OFICES

It is agreed that the best way to ensure that the lapsing element of Phase 3 of the pay and Modernisation Agreement is done fairly and equally the following will apply in all Delivery Offices in the North West Region;

• Weekly resourcing meetings are mandatory and will be prescheduled.

• The issues to be discussed are cover for planned absence in the following two weeks, any staffing problems that arose in the previous week and contingency plans to avoid recurrence of problems.

• In addition to the above the DOM & Rep will meet each morning to discuss the unit absence /daily traffic figures and any unforeseen staffing issues.

• Based on the above conversations and anticipated office departure time both parties will agree what lapsing opportunities that are on the day based on the plan agreed in the mandatory resourcing meetings.

• If the arrival profile dictates that the unit cannot lapse to the agreed level the manager and rep will discuss how to resource any uncovered duty.

• The measure is the office departure time - v - planned departure time, eg if the planned time is 09.30 and the unit will leave at 08.30 then there are obvious lapsing opportunities. As per Phase 3 Pay and Modernisation agreement (All paid work hours will be utilised) equally if the departure time is on or after the planned time the level of lapsing opportunities will not be available. In this event the DOM and Rep will work together to cover off any USO issues.

• DOMs and Reps can agree the fairest way of doing this. This agreement is not about forcing people to work over their time it is about working all paid hours.

• To comply with the spirit and intent of the agreement opportunities for increased A/L will be explored and honoured where there is scope to do so. This includes short notice leave requests.

In summary, lapsing will take place as per the national agreements where time permits and within normal duty hours. This agreement is about common sense and working together to ensure there is fairness and equity and that all duties are covered wherever possible.

[taxi4leighton]

it doesnt matter what time you leave office at
3hrs 30 mins is the maxium delivery span you can be forced to work
we had absorption last year
and were going out after 8am
starbursting a walk delivering 5to 10 mins each
then coming back
having a break,before going out with own delivery
2 bad points re this method are
when you add conveying to and from walk 10 mins become 30 mins
and the blue-eyed boys managed to body-swerve this most times
it was the same mugs who went out all the time
divide and conquer

[clashcityrocker]

[quote="snoddy"]This is an agreement shown to me by our rep it only came out on Saturday .....

If your rep only got it on Saturday it must have got lost in the post.
Some of us have had it for the past two years.

[REDLETTER]

it doesnt matter what time you leave office at
3hrs 30 mins is the maxium delivery span you can be forced to work
we had absorption last year
and were going out after 8am
starbursting a walk delivering 5to 10 mins each
then coming back
having a break,before going out with own delivery
2 bad points re this method are
when you add conveying to and from walk 10 mins become 30 mins
and the blue-eyed boys managed to body-swerve this most times
it was the same mugs who went out all the time
divide and conquer

I have told management to get me out to the "Flex" as they call it, and get me back, 10 mins each way, plus the "flex" itself. I have said I do not have the time to do this and my contracted duty hours, therefore I don't do it!

[robd]

Actually although the content is nothing new,i would argue the structure is,i imagine RM are not happy
that individual offices are not producing a saving by not entering into the 'spirit' of the agreement.
This appears to clear up any ambiguity,and is more concise,one of the main points of contention is should
absorbtion carry you beyond an agreed maximum delivery span?
This would suggest that you should erode the indoor work by walking longer,i.e. as long as RM pay you for 7hours you
can be out delivering for 7hours.
in summary,if this document is official,you could have your own duty to deliver,but if that is not going to take you
3 1/2 hours you could absorb some more,plus if you leave the office early enough you could lapse some on top of it
all!!

hmm,perhaps bump this thread to the union room Teebs?

[Big Daz]

The problem is phase 3 makes no mention of delivery span, IMHO that was a mistake.

Managers see that as meaning that your duty as in first stop to last stop will be planned on 3.5 hours, but if you still have any spare duty time after completing your daily work then doing more delivery work is within the the terms of phase 3 document which was a aggrement never put to a vote!!!


Aftyer pay and mod was voted in there was some trials and from that CWU and RMl rustled up the phase document and basically said here you go this what your doing from now on!!


If that had ben put to a vote as it is in essence a further agreement then i belive we would have spotted the non mention of delivery time and voted no!!!!!

To this day , I am not aware of a CWU statement that says if you have spare duty time after doing 3.5 hours delivery absorption must be indoor work. If anybody is please post it up, i would love to se it!!!!

[cedric]

No mention of delivery spans was made because they were not changed! To the best of my knowledge SDD still holds the field. QUOTE. "Town residential routes will be planned on a 3.5-hour delivery span. All routes will be planned on the basis of equalisation, and a fair and managable workload!. There is no ambiguity with that statement and that is how our office is run, if the flyers want to go out early they are the Ones that do the lapsing, those that do the job properly and go out at the correct time can book it as O/T or not do it as they wish. Not hard here and it works, just do your job properly leave at the correct time and dont carve up your walk and the lapsing gets heaped on the creeps and flyers as it should be.

Absolutely spot on and that is the message that needs to be got across to all our members. Unfortunately I believe that management will spot this and do their best to accelerate the indoor work probably with the use of early morning ips and draconian crackdowns on ips standards.
It isnt good that agreements are being made outside of the national talks, this can only lead to splits in the divisions and serve as a further excuse for management to bully our members.

[fishtank]

No mention of delivery spans was made because they were not changed! To the best of my knowledge SDD still holds the field. QUOTE. "Town residential routes will be planned on a 3.5-hour delivery span. All routes will be planned on the basis of equalisation, and a fair and managable workload!. There is no ambiguity with that statement and that is how our office is run, if the flyers want to go out early they are the Ones that do the lapsing, those that do the job properly and go out at the correct time can book it as O/T or not do it as they wish. Not hard here and it works, just do your job properly leave at the correct time and dont carve up your walk and the lapsing gets heaped on the creeps and flyers as it should be.

I understand your position linkin but the 3.5hr delivery span only relates to continous delivery.
Depending on the structure of your D.O. it is unfortunately possible for RM to send you out on absorbtion and then bring you back for your break and then send you out for 3.5 hrs.
There is NO protection in P&M2007 for TOTAL delivery span only continous delivery span.

[fishtank]

It's not a matter of the walk being "too easy" it's an unfortunate result of a reduction in indoor workload due to WSM.
That coupled with the fact that some managers have been clever enough to realise if they overload the IPS they can accelerate the start of your prep and have you ready to go up to an hour before you are due to leave the office.
It doesn't and can't happen in every office but there is evidence that this is the tactic they will use to maximise absorbtion.

[dvbuk55]

This is an agreement shown to me by our rep it only came out on Saturday so it looks like absorption as a national agreement is alive and kicking. If you read the part about planned departure times versus actual times you will notice that this advocates increased delivery spans.
Thats the North West shafted, best of luck to the rest of you.

FLEXIBILITY – LAPSING IN DELIVERY OFICES

It is agreed that the best way to ensure that the lapsing element of Phase 3 of the pay and Modernisation Agreement is done fairly and equally the following will apply in all Delivery Offices in the North West Region;

• Weekly resourcing meetings are mandatory and will be prescheduled.

• The issues to be discussed are cover for planned absence in the following two weeks, any staffing problems that arose in the previous week and contingency plans to avoid recurrence of problems.

• In addition to the above the DOM & Rep will meet each morning to discuss the unit absence /daily traffic figures and any unforeseen staffing issues.

• Based on the above conversations and anticipated office departure time both parties will agree what lapsing opportunities that are on the day based on the plan agreed in the mandatory resourcing meetings.

• If the arrival profile dictates that the unit cannot lapse to the agreed level the manager and rep will discuss how to resource any uncovered duty.

• The measure is the office departure time - v - planned departure time, eg if the planned time is 09.30 and the unit will leave at 08.30 then there are obvious lapsing opportunities. As per Phase 3 Pay and Modernisation agreement (All paid work hours will be utilised) equally if the departure time is on or after the planned time the level of lapsing opportunities will not be available. In this event the DOM and Rep will work together to cover off any USO issues.

• DOMs and Reps can agree the fairest way of doing this. This agreement is not about forcing people to work over their time it is about working all paid hours.

• To comply with the spirit and intent of the agreement opportunities for increased A/L will be explored and honoured where there is scope to do so. This includes short notice leave requests.

In summary, lapsing will take place as per the national agreements where time permits and within normal duty hours. This agreement is about common sense and working together to ensure there is fairness and equity and that all duties are covered wherever possible.

My word someone has put a great deal of work into a load of bullsh*t.

The Rep and the DOM will meet daily? Get real.

Resource meetings? In order to actually have a resource meeting that amounts to anything you need to have the correct staffing level and that is a separate issue.

I am not surprised that this is from the North West because I happen to work in the North West and when they say that this agreement is about common sense, I haven't heard anyone accuse the Area and Divisional Reps being over endowed with that. It seems more like an all pals together - YET AGAIN.

What about if the Rep and DOM do not agree? Does the lapsing go ahead, does it go to disagreement? How about park and loop whose delivery is already 4+ compared to a town walk of 3.5 do they both do lapsing. How often does the lapsing fit into current duty delivery time? How can an early leaving time be achieved when the missort run is not until after 9 a.m. Under the sequenced walk scheme about to be rolled out the work is not going to be ready until after 10 a.m. and will then have to be prepped and bagged, the revisions will presumably have ironed out any anomalies, the increase in D2D will have taken any further slack - so where is the time for lapsing coming from?

This strikes me as a paper compromise to allow managers to load the members up with lapsed work ad infinitum. It's time these blokes got down to the shop floor and had a go at delivering a normal duty let alone one that has to do packets, parcels, tracked, specials, part of another duty, and the bulk calls from a previous "lapsed" - or more to the point disappeared duty and then do part of a lapsed duty.

[Big Daz]

9am missort run

About 7am at my D.O

[Big Daz]

Spot on fishtank with indoor workload

Thursday IPS was done at 7am started at 6.10 am, yet go back to when we set up our current IPS structure opon the removal of nights (April 2004) and IPS used to last 90 mins and quite often went over that.

The simple reality is more mail is now walksorted rather than done by Hand at IPS.

The problem is also compounded by longs and shorts, the time increase on the long days is not needed and there isnt a increase in work to match the longer day.


As fishtank mentioned a few days ago my D.O is overstaffed, thats because we havent reduced the IPS manpower to match the reduced IPS mail levels. The question is how do we do that and maintain/sustain FT jobs? The obvious way for my D.O is to reduce the number of Rural duties. We have 15 of them of which 7 do IPS, so if we make them bigger by swapping IPS for delivery work the urban duties will be on IPS for longer thus filling out their working day a bit more. One of the rural duty holders retires this year so its possible to absorb at least one delivery without anyone losing out on their rural duty.

[dvbuk55]

9am missort run

About 7am at my D.O

You might be happy now but yours is just the sort of office they are looking to make the savings from - when the agreement comes in I'd hold on to your hat if I were you. Because by your account you ain't seen nothing yet.

Offices like ours have been under change and review for over 18 months, there ain't much more they can do. Park and Loop trials to start in April - ha - we've been at it for 15 months, we didn't like it then and we don't like it now, there is an element of unfairness to the system but no doubt you'll find out for yourself.

[Big Daz]

Overstaffed on the IPS, not overstaffed overall due to the mail centre processing a greater percentage of mail as walksorted rather than sending it IPS.

FT IPS duties were set in 2004 on the IPS workload at the time. IPS workload is now reduced, disbelive me if you will boys and girls but i know what i see with my own eyes day in day out and it aint a pretty sight!!!

Still with 1800 new delivery points rapidly coming intio play im aiming for redployment rather than savings, even the DOM is talking about redeploying the 80 hours a week from the oversized packet/repelnishment duties to cover housing growth if the aforementioned duties become obsolete due to a change in delivery methods.

[Big Daz]

Our missorts come from a neighbouring DO 20 mins up the road and are collected during IPS time.

And yes savings willbe expected especially with the amount of time mbrs make, they have been warned so many times about not carving the job up and now they are set to reap what they have sowen.

When i started in 91 I was told to look after duties/deliveries, sadly that philospy has gone out the window even with the ex rep who was the rep when i started.

If RM get their savings and cut offs galore happen then the mbrs will still be working later, sadly the days of super early finish are numbered.