Thames Valley Delivery Method revision facts

[POSTMAN]

Having been to some of the offices listed as working, I certainly don't think the staff there would consider their revision to be 'working', even if it is delivering savings. Stroud DO is on that list as a successful revision but is on this forums list of failing revisions

Num 33 on the list which would mean it was added early.
Someone from there or with info of there would of given me or storm the nod.
If they are still on the site then hopefully they will confirm/deny the info the cwu has been given of the office by RM is correct or not.

[fishtank]

Some 37 units are delivering year-on-year cost reductions averaging 13.3%.

https://www.myroyalmail.com/mrm/appnews ... aspx?i=394" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I count around 30 from this list so the rest of the country can't be doing very well.

Windsor DO 54 full timers and 9 part timers (ratio 86% -14%) 92.9 quality of service as of November - 2.0 sick leave and gross year on year improvement 338 hours

338hrs from a D.O. with 63 staff.
That's a frightening amount of savings.
Are they delivering every second day?

[Fluke]

Dingo - With regards to the savings you have posted. Are the savings likely to disappear when when the office's need to flex up due to RM using model week traffic? Was there really that much slack time in those offices?

My office is in the middle of working its way through a revision, currently we have 4 disagreements in place over the 100BSI, Model week traffic, Flow and RM's reluctance to give 1 in 4 Sat's off. If we went with RM's model week traffic our office would need to flex up for 45% of the year (including 30 Tuesdays out of the 52), and lot of hours would be taken out. The office budget would be lowered (based on the reduced hours, but the budget would be blown nearly every week.

Because there are no overtime barons in my office (230 members) and people are not going to want to work beyond a 4 hour delivery span and in order to reduce the cost's, managers would likely bully and intimidate people into working longer and harder to get the work done, whilst trying to keep below an unrealistic budget.

[fishtank]

This time next year fluke with another 10% decline in traffic not only will you not need to flex up...you'll have scope for lapsing.
That's the stunt they're trying to pull on us.

[celerycelery]

"Gerrards Cross 29 full timers and 6 part timers ( ratio 83-17) 92.9 Q of S as of November - 9.4 % sick leave and gross year on year improvement 220"

This office has only 35 staff but nearly 10% sick but still saves 220 hours.....how on earth do they do that?

[Fluke]

This time next year fluke with another 10% decline in traffic not only will you not need to flex up...you'll have scope for lapsing.
That's the stunt they're trying to pull on us.

The traffic figures they are trying to use also have the so called decline built in, having to flex up on most Tuesdays tells that they are taking the piss. It makes you wonder what have other offices been using, even peak day traffic means flexing up a hell of a lot, although that method does reduce the need to flex on Monday/Tuesday.

In other offices in our area where a revision has gone in and we had a lot of docketeer's, RM are struggling as most of them have lost their appetite for OT after walking the streets trying to complete their own delivery.

[fishtank]

In other offices in our area where a revision has gone in and we had a lot of docketeer's, RM are struggling as most of them have lost their appetite for OT after walking the streets trying to complete their own delivery.

That's been our experience as well.
There is little appetite to flex up....i think it was another one of those ideas from someone who last did a delivery around 1987.
Docket grabbers in the main want easier overtime like collections or indoor work.
No one wants to do a 4hr delivery and come back for more.
We've had to take on more staff...that's our flexing up.

[Martin Walsh]

Ok' let's clear up some facts Strood was introduced last year and was intially a disaster both quality wise and savings wise. More than a year on the quality is above the minimum target required by Post comm and is saving money on this years budget. This is worth explaining the way managements budget work they are set a budget which under the BTA agreement is based on achieieving BSI targets. Each year the budget is reduced so an office which is saving say 500 hours suddenly starts the new budget none saving any.

So the saving year on year will depend on when the revision was introduced and against the budget. So in the Strood case the saving is quite low and thats because the revision was introduced last year. Whereas the Gerald's Cross example is the revison would have been introduced this year and the high sick leave would have probably been absorbed.

Now someone stated there are different views on whether a revision is working or not and that is true. However it is very hard to argue that a revision is not working when quality of service is above 91.5 the standard required and is saving money.

Now the fact is the quarter 1 results quality of service results were the worse since Royal Mail were required to present them to Post Comm and now Off Comm. Royal Mail could not hide behind the bad weather excuse or the closure of British Airspace due to the Volcanic ash cloud. No it was all down to failed revisons. 57 out of the 118 postcode areas failed to achieve the 91.5 miniumn floor figure. Whilst in Quarter 2 this improved and reduced to 14 post code areas failed but that was the summer months. As of quarter 2 cumulative figure there are 29 postcodes which are below the floor target for off Comm these are - St Albans, Bromley, Cambridge, Chester and Deeside, Chelmsford, Colchester, Canterbury, Enfield, Guildford, Ilford,Kingston Upon Thames, Liverpool, Llandrindod,North Wales,Luton,Maidstone,Newport, North West London,Paisley,Redhill,Romford,Stevenage,Salisbury,Sunderland,Southend on Sea,Stoke on Trent, Tonbridge,Truro and Twickenham.

Now remember a postcode is a collection of offices and not all would have had failings but the bigger the office the higher impact it has on the quality.

[fishtank]

Now someone stated there are different views on whether a revision is working or not and that is true. However it is very hard to argue that a revision is not working when quality of service is above 91.5 the standard required and is saving money.

If you're Royal Mail but i'm not really interested in what they think is a success.
Our targets should be more to do with jobs,earnings and how the members feel about the revision.
Do we have any feedback yet on those targets in the offices mentioned and whether the offices are using the equipment and "doing the job properly"?...genuine question.

[Martin Walsh]

Fish we have asked for that information and how many have got the 1in 4. We have got the overtime figure for every office , the absorption levels per week , RFID results and the adjusted hours on the baseline. We have a meeting with the directors early in the new year where this information will be supplied. In addition numbers on door to door and quality.

However there were national talks today and I think that we might well end up in a row over the flow project and other related issues.

[dvbuk55]

Given the tendency for RM to be .............shall we say, economical with the truth, how reliable are these figures? Anyone who is familiar with the book room will be aware of sleight of hand accounting for hours and where it is attributed, at the managers behest of course. These figures would be far more believable if they were gathered by the CWU from full time officials working with each unit and compiled as a national statistic.

I know some people still believe in Santa but reality dictates that............................

[Fluke]

Dingo - I'm not sure if I'm missing something but, our revision is due to go live in March (week 51), we will have a new budget, set low because of the predicted reduction in hours. If we have to put overtime in (flex up) in order to clear and keep quality of service, then how can an office stay within budget year on year?

[gerardy]

Sorry if this sounds trivial or irrelevant as I am not up to speed on budgets and the overtime been paid for offices that have went through the revision process.
I am a bit concerned however that since the introduction of our office revision the amount of overtime that is not been paid out from one week to the next is ever increasing. The managers are claiming everything from simple mistakes, oversights, and computer cliches as the causes and the men are happy to believe them.
If say there was 40 hours across the office that was not paid out in overtime would this give a false impression on weather the revision was working or not.
Again can managers manipulate the WTLL session times: say 75 staff x half an hour = 37.5 hours if this figure was moved into the office preformance would this also not give a false impression of how the office was preforming.
Training budgets etc, is there not an endless number of ways in which Royal Mail managers are able to cook the books?

The CWU will only see what RM want or allow them to see, figures are easy to manipulate.

[Fluke]

Sorry if this sounds trivial or irrelevant as I am not up to speed on budgets and the overtime been paid for offices that have went through the revision process.
I am a bit concerned however that since the introduction of our office revision the amount of overtime that is not been paid out from one week to the next is ever increasing. The managers are claiming everything from simple mistakes, oversights, and computer cliches as the causes and the men are happy to believe them.
If say there was 40 hours across the office that was not paid out in overtime would this give a false impression on weather the revision was working or not.
Again can managers manipulate the WTLL session times: say 75 staff x half an hour = 37.5 hours if this figure was moved into the office preformance would this also not give a false impression of how the office was preforming.
Training budgets etc, is there not an endless number of ways in which Royal Mail managers are able to cook the books?

The CWU will only see what RM want or allow them to see, figures are easy to manipulate.

This sounds very familiar. My office has excactly the same problem, we have noticed that people are having an average of 30 mins shaved off their overtime per week.

[Lincox]

This is illegal and covered under the employment rights acts. Immediate grievance should be put in.