Bad Administration - Lousy Union

[shannonohara]

I am one of the Angard Casuals, who did get paid, properly and on time. Having said that, my 3 week stint on early shift at the Jubilee centre - laid off on Christmas Eve - opened my eyes to some bad things.

1. The system for notifying Angard about our hours involved sending a daily fax to Angard about our hours. So, someone had to enter hours on a computer and create the fax in Hounslow, someone had to enter the hours at Angard and notify a payroll service to pay the wages. The room for error is very high. With 18,000 Christmas casuals involved I am quite amazed that I got paid at all. I can think of at least 4 better ways of doing it in our technological age.

2. The Communications Workers Union is regarded as useless amongst the permanent workers - and that is being polite. The Union has entirely forgotten about Unions were created for. To stand up for the rights of workers. The Union appears not only indifferent to their members, but they have made no attempt to organise the casuals. The Royal Mail is being casualised at shop-floor level. The CWU is only interested in permanent workers who pay their membership subs.
Given a golden opportunity to organise the Casuals they did Nothing. Worse they said they would do nothing, because the Casuals aren't "members". This is not what a Union should be about.

Another intriguing fact: there are machines in the canteen at the Jubilee Centre, where you can surf the web. Try logging on to this forum and you get "Access Denied" Hmmh!

[DGP1]

Another intriguing fact: there are machines in the canteen at the Jubilee Centre, where you can surf the web. Try logging on to this forum and you get "Access Denied" Hmmh!

We call them computers but seriously, RMC was banned years ago from being accessed from any RM computer, they class this site as bullying

[shannonohara]

Intriguing! Bullying the Royal Mail presumably, or am I wrong? Is this why the CWU website isn't banned?

[POSTMAN]

If a postie/casual can access RMC from a Royal Mail computer,then so can a manager.
Posties/casuals don't have time to surf the web while at work,but a manager...

[shannonohara]

Still doesn't answer my questions!
What bullying?
Why won't the CWU do anything?
Surely someone on this forum has answers to these questions.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Intriguing! Bullying the Royal Mail presumably, or am I wrong? Is this why the CWU website isn't banned?

No you got it right - they can't control the flow of information and discussion on here and perhaps it made them uncomfortable. The CWU did try a Forum some years before RMC appeared but that was closed down although the reasons why are not clear.

Still doesn't answer my questions!
What bullying?
Why won't the CWU do anything?
Surely someone on this forum has answers to these questions.

The CWU site can't be blocked by Royal Mail as the Union are responsible for our collective agreements, and they have official recognition with Royal Mail.

The bullying question is not clear but if you mean in relation to RMC hopefully I have explained that. If you mean in regard to Angard casuals then in an official capacity the CWU can't do much as there is no collective agreement between the Union and RM in regard to Angard. In an unofficial capacity, I would question the values of any rep at any level who would not try to intervene if they witnessed B&H personally, or were approached by a non union member asking for advice.

[fishtank]

Why won't the CWU do anything?

You'll have to be more specific.
If you mean the Angard situation there are theories but that's all they are.