Working for free and the agreement.......

[Dave made me a slave]

Where to start.....

Firstly to all those people (especially the ones in my office) that over the years have come in early, used your cars, not taken your breaks, not claimed over time and thrown mail in the previous day for the next day I would like to say a big thank you. You I believe are a massive reason why we are in the state we are in. You maybe work 50 hours a week for 40 hours pay. I'm not even going to ask why you do it. But Royal Mail with their facts and figures will show you can do all the work required of you within time the time allocated. Obviously you clearly can't as your coming in early to make up for it. Think Royal Mail will take that on board? Think again!

In my office the the agreement has not even been voted in yet (Lord forbid!) but the managers are working of some flexibility agreement. They are splitting up duties and adding bits and pieces onto other duties. My rep told me the reasoning for this is quite simple. A senior manager knows that if he adds more onto certain duties people will come in even earlier and if their over their time will not claim! So whenever Joe Bloggs says his duty is big enough and can't take anymore, management will say but Tom's duty is the same size as yours and he is taking the extra. And Joe says but Tom comes in early and doesn't claim overtime. He might as well be talking to the wall. Royal Mail know people come in early and don't claim overtime but this is never took into consideration when sums are being done.

Until this problem is addressed those who do their job right will always be on the losing side. Yes I know this agreement has a ban on cars which is a solid start. It's not enough though. Anything and everything which Royal Mail get for free has to come to a complete stop. Probably too late now though. As I have already said if people get more added on to them some of them will come in early or/and not claim overtime.

How can we win when there is so many people working for free up and down the country? I dread to think what the actual hours nationally a week are worked for free!

How can we get an agreement to benefit us all when so many people will still work for free?

[mdm]

i could'nt agree more, the number of times i've told people to work to your correct time, well i've lost count. Why would people work for nothing? Sheer bloody stupidity.

[realmichael]

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

[Straight4ward]

If I can play Devil’s advocate for a moment:

If our office is anything to go by there must be quite literally thousands of posties throughout the country putting in hours upon hours of unpaid work. What is the value of that to Royal Mail?

Just plucking a figure out of the air, suppose it’s 25,000 posties and each hour is worth £8+ to RM then that would be in excess of £200,000 a day! Would RM be able survive without the generosity of those prepared to work an hour or more for free?

I'm not saying that it makes it right but food for thought, maybe?

[Just_My_Opinion]

If I can play Devil’s advocate for a moment:

If our office is anything to go by there must be quite literally thousands of posties throughout the country putting in hours upon hours of unpaid work. What is the value of that to Royal Mail?

Just plucking a figure out of the air, suppose it’s 25,000 posties and each hour is worth £8+ to RM then that would be in excess of £200,000 a day! Would RM be able survive without the generosity of those prepared to work an hour or more for free?

I'm not saying that it makes it right but food for thought, maybe?

Say £50M a year there or thereabouts?

[tojobevred]

Where to start.....

Firstly to all those people (especially the ones in my office) that over the years have come in early, used your cars, not taken your breaks, not claimed over time and thrown mail in the previous day for the next day I would like to say a big thank you. You I believe are a massive reason why we are in the state we are in. You maybe work 50 hours a week for 40 hours pay. I'm not even going to ask why you do it. But Royal Mail with their facts and figures will show you can do all the work required of you within time the time allocated. Obviously you clearly can't as your coming in early to make up for it. Think Royal Mail will take that on board? Think again!

In my office the the agreement has not even been voted in yet (Lord forbid!) but the managers are working of some flexibility agreement. They are splitting up duties and adding bits and pieces onto other duties. My rep told me the reasoning for this is quite simple. A senior manager knows that if he adds more onto certain duties people will come in even earlier and if their over their time will not claim! So whenever Joe Bloggs says his duty is big enough and can't ta
ke anymore, management will say but Tom's duty is the same size as yours and he is taking the extra. And Joe says but Tom comes in early and doesn't claim overtime. He might as well be talking to the wall. Royal Mail know people come in early and don't claim overtime but this is never took into consideration when sums are being done.
well said but bob gibson reckons we wont get bullied again by rm management he reckons all the bad bosses will get the push
just if
Until this problem is addressed those who do their job right will always be on the losing side. Yes I know this agreement has a ban on cars which is a solid start. It's not enough though. Anything and everything which Royal Mail get for free has to come to a complete stop. Probably too late now though. As I have already said if people get more added on to them some of them will come in early or/and not claim overtime.

How can we win when there is so many people working for free up and down the country? I dread to think what the actual hours nationally a week are worked for free!

How can we get an agreement to benefit us all when so many people will still work for free?

[postie222]

Do not understand why they work for free, do not take their breaks, use their own car, run around their rounds and cut so many corners. Then when things go wrong they are subject to the conduct code. Do they ever learn? No way, as a collection driver I do not get it. If they said to me we have a great idea why don’t you use your own car to collect mail, come in early, take your break at the end of your shift, carry over weight bags forget the rules until things go wrong then maybe we might have to conduct you! I would tell them to stick it wear the sun does not shine so would my work colleagues. So as for been shafted by the Cwu who are trying to safe guard full time jobs, keep some of the d2d monies for staff . As royal mail under the present d2d agreement could just bundle them all together and give you one payment of say 1.6p per item. They can only have themselves to blame. I feel sorry for the ones who do their job right , and a made to look out of place by staff cutting corners then subject to grief from managers wanting bigger bonuses and to get to the pub for opening time .

[sareknees]

Far too many selfish c***s work for RM especially in my office.. No wonder we are in this mess. leave early, no break , rush about daft , lick up bosses arse ... list is endless ... furthermore its both FT + PT staff who do all that... w*****s the lot of them... as for the CWU probably the same - useless . bar a few in my office , i work with a lot of total spineless bastards

[opgpat]

To protect our jobs this practice needs to be stopped. The answer is a clocking in clock with firm rules. Doesn't seem to be in the Agreement does it?

The company can afford to pay for the hours worked. RM Group made over 300million clear profit last year even after 600million paid into pension black-hole. With the new d2d contracts and mechanisation meaning 20,000 jobs are going, profits will soon be hitting the roof and if pension hole is paid off profits will be stratospheric.

[sareknees]

clocking in + clocking out .... would love that... be a fair amount in civvies clocking out in my office though with all the shortcuts took - tossers

[superteamu10]

Maybe the people who already have walk sequencing machines can enlighten us on how it works regarding coming in early?

Surely there would be no mail to sort except general office mail, but not your own?

With cars banned and people forced to start at the correct time it should make things very interesting.

[Big Daz]

clocking in + clocking out .... would love that... be a fair amount in civvies clocking out in my office though with all the shortcuts took - tossers

I think conference voted against that last year

[Big Daz]

Plenty of early starters at my D.O for the simple reason there walksorted mail is their ready and waiting for them, of course there is a operational need for RML to have 6am starts

If mail arrival times change due to sequenced mail, then putting start times at a time that is more closely allinged with the reality of mail arrival into the D.O will on paper eradicate the cause of early starting. It will upset the smokers at my D.O as they come in early do their walksorted mail and then pop in and out for smoke breaks after IPS as they are ahead on their prep work.

[tregs]

Our sequenced mail is in at 430am for "most" full time walks. Start times in our office is 6am,but 2 people are in at 4am to open up and put the trays out for the staff.
Most of the full time staff are in at work between 530am and 545am as we know our sequenced tray/trays are in so we can they can get on witj their day,as for me in at 6am and start from there. No need to give RM any extra hours.

[greenwood]

Clocking-in and clocking-out is fine in theory but you would still have people finishing delivery, going home for an hour, then heading back to the office at their finish time. Wouldn't necessarily make it any fairer.