We Need A New Union ASAP

[DirtyHarry]

What exactly is the union doing for us?
What is the union doing to stop the worsening conditions we have to put up with these days?
As far as I can make out, NOTHING.
Frankly, I'm astounded that there are still enough workers paying union dues, only to subsidise the well-paid, cushy jobs, of people like Hayes and Ward.
Hands up, how many of you are confident the CWU can protect your job if you are on a third-stager?
Nah, me neither.

[clashcityrocker]

Hands up, how many of you are confident the CWU can protect your job if you are on a third-stager?

I would feel more confident with an Area Rep sitting beside me than if I was sitting there on my own.

[Martin Walsh]

Having seen the figures on how many people do not get dismissed on their first 3rd stage then the CWU is doing a damn good job if that is your criteria for how effective the CWU are.

In terms of what the CWU have done and are doing has to be compared with the circumstances this union and indeed Royal Mail are operating. it is a vastly different Royal Mail to the one which I joined some 28 years ago.

1. Back then we had a monopoly , now we have lost over 50% of the profitable mail to DSA and now we have companies delivering the work as well and in West London they have now got 6% of the traffic which we were doing in 26 weeks of starting.

2. We have automation which is meaning that work arrives in delivery offices later than it did a decade ago and is driving later starts and later finishes including on a Saturday.

3. We have an employer who promised both the Government , Post COMM Now off comm and the European Commision that it would take hours out of delivery offices in order to borrow money and it is finding out that those hours they thought they were going to save don't exist.

Now if anyone believes that the CWU is not trying to resolve thoses issues you are mistaken. Stormy meetings with ACAS took place last week and will continue. Yes I agree that they should communicate this fact and I will raise it later this week at a meeting.

But if anyone truly believes they are better without a CWU at this time then good luck just remember by leaving the CWU does not make your job or your working conditions any better.

I get the opportunity to meet members which is good and we all know some would rather go back to the time when they could chase time , ride their bikes , driver their cars , start early and finish early on a Saturday but that is never going to happen and under a new privatise company it's going to get a lot harder as all privatised companies do.

[Stormproof]

Talking of Stage 3's found out this morning i've triggered one just 2 weeks short of clearing a Stage 2

[manfromuncle]

Union may do good things in certain area's, both geographically and agreement wise but they fall short in so many area's.
Nationally, they want to actually read what they sign with Royal Mail because by using vague terms they leave interpretation wide open....eg. Flexibility, now that one's being abused to death.
Which brings me to locally. Now I know the Union is the membership and most of the time the members don't help themselves, ie voting for stupid agreements for a bit of cash up front and doing things in the office they shouldn't but the local Rep's should pull the management up on the way they are using flexibility amongst other things. So many people are easily pressured in to things by the management, isn't that what good old Union Rep's were supposed to be for.
Our office is going through the Car Derived Vans revision and to be honest, it's hard to tell the difference between the management and Union, I think they've been castrated.
Another problem, a lad at ours was dismissed, taken to court for theft and it was well dodgy, the Union wouldn't represent him although he'd paid his subs for 20+ years. He lost his job, went to court and was found........ Not Guilty.

[dvbuk55]

But if anyone truly believes they are better without a CWU at this time then good luck just remember by leaving the CWU does not make your job or your working conditions any better.

I get the opportunity to meet members which is good and we all know some would rather go back to the time when they could chase time , ride their bikes , driver their cars , start early and finish early on a Saturday but that is never going to happen and under a new privatise company it's going to get a lot harder as all privatised companies do.

Well we may need the CWU dingo, what we don't need is a CWU that is nothing more than a rubber stamp for RMs business plan - if there is one. We need a CWU that is primarily concerned with the membership - who pay to maintain the CWU in case you and the rest of the full time union bods have forgotten. We need a CWU that stands up for its members, communicates with its members and realises how far the membership think the CWU has fallen. You rabbit on about chasing time, riding bikes, driving cars - have any offices you are responsible for actually had a revision - because I can assure you those offices that have had true revisions are chasing their arses not time.

[Martin Walsh]

For the record Dvbuk London has 108 delivery offices and we have now introduced 56 delivery method revisons which included CDVs , geo route etc. Out of those 56 only 1 revisons was a disaster Kilburn which has now been resolved , a few teething problems in Premier Park mostly due to the traveling to the first delivery point as Premier Park is in NW london and the delivery units are in West London.

All the others have worked , members have had the opportunity to move to new attendance patterns. The PIRs have corrected any problems.

Now what we in London have done is that we took a decision early on that we would ensure any manual adjustments including time for time locks , welfare breaks were factored into the outdoor element. We tested the loops and ensured the packets counts were right and the traffic speed was correct.

On the indoor element we negotiated the journey which we would make from the current BSI to the new BSI we ensure we factored in any new delivery points which were due to come on stream and we made sure the office would not fail by the indoor increase. We negotiated the start times and attendance patterns.

All of what we did is in line with the national agreement , the joint statements and the guidelines. If we can do it explain why anywhere else cannot. Like I say I don't come on here to moan or groan , I come on here to say you need to question yourselves as much as your blame others , could you do more to ensure your office has a better revision ??

In London we don't play the blame game it's far to easy we look after ourselves and ensure that revisons are all voted in by the members and that the members are kept in formed at all points of the revison.

[clashcityrocker]

Whereas the rest of us are kept in the dark and fed s**t.
And any rep that doesn't toe the Branch line gets the revision signed off over their head.

[fishtank]

If we can do it explain why anywhere else cannot.

If it's been such a blast why have you now withdrawn from revision activity?
Could it be that you're now facing the same kind of management intransigence and coincidently the same regional management teams that other areas have had to deal with since 2010.
Of course when our local and area reps talked of withdrawing from the revision process they were met by blank looks from division and talk of teething problems from Dave and Bob.
Scare stories i think was the phrase used on here by some.
Anywhere else can't dingo because anywhere else ain't London,some of that is down to a strong easily mobilised membership of which you should be proud,but some if it is just pure geography and the location of 150 The Broadway and Moya's place.

[Martin Walsh]

Clash I will be in touch will chase up later this week.

Well fish we have withdrawn from revisons activity as management have started to break the national agreement on the issues of 100BSi , later starts ie 0700 starts , lapsing CSS machines , breaking the stoke agreement and a range of other issues. We decided until they adhere to the national agreement then they won't get another revisons agreed. We are not the oly division to do this but it's already working as Steve Cameron has wrote to the union on the 100bsi issues , confirmed that start times are negotiatable , that there were no Pre set delivery span.

It's not yet good enough for us as it does not mention not lapsing the sequencing machines but it's moving in our direction.

Fish I don't think it matters where CWU HQs is , we would still operate the same way in London. There is not one mention of 100 BSI in the agreement god knows why some have agreed to a revison set at that level.

[dvbuk55]

For the record Dvbuk London has 108 delivery offices and we have now introduced 56 delivery method revisons which included CDVs ,

Now then dingo of those 56 - which lets face it is only 50% and a litle close to the ROD for the agreement - how many are using the equipment agreed, how many are still using cars. If you have only 1 office out of 56 that has had "teething" problems maybe your offices should have gone first and then we would have had a blueprint for the rest of the country. By the by, any news on the 75/25 split yet?

[fishtank]

There is not one mention of 100 BSI in the agreement god knows why some have agreed to a revison set at that level.

Possibly because the guidance on setting indoor performance states that your starting point can't be less than your current performance and there are so many ways to manipulate current performance figures that poorly trained reps with no support from Branch didn't stand a chance.
We were lucky,our "current performance" at the time of the revision was piss poor and there was no hiding that,maybe that's London's real trick dingo...it worked for us.

[dvbuk55]

There is not one mention of 100 BSI in the agreement god knows why some have agreed to a revison set at that level.

Possibly because the guidance on setting indoor performance states that your starting point can't be less than your current performance and there are so many ways to manipulate current performance figures that poorly trained reps with no support from Branch didn't stand a chance.
We were lucky,our "current performance" at the time of the revision was piss poor and there was no hiding that,maybe that's London's real trick dingo...it worked for us.

You mean they were crap to begin with and now they might be as good as we were BEFORE we had the revisions..............sounds about right. I mean that "chasing time" ffs we haven't been chasing time for years.

[beazer]

What exactly is the union doing for us?
What is the union doing to stop the worsening conditions we have to put up with these days?
As far as I can make out, NOTHING.
Frankly, I'm astounded that there are still enough workers paying union dues, only to subsidise the well-paid, cushy jobs, of people like Hayes and Ward.
Hands up, how many of you are confident the CWU can protect your job if you are on a third-stager?
Nah, me neither.

Stop asking what is the union doing and start asking what WE AS A UNION are doing
the union is only as strong as its members

[fishtank]

You mean they were crap to begin with and now they might be as good as we were BEFORE we had the revisions..............sounds about right. I mean that "chasing time" ffs we haven't been chasing time for years.

What appears to have happened with a lot of the really bad failures is that too many hours were taken out of indoor because anticipated performance was set way too high.
Years of bad practice had artificially boosted EP levels but when the revisions came in and members were faced with longer deliveries most of them at least had the sense to see that coming in early and skipping their breaks only meant more work.
EP levels crashed from an artificial 100+ down to more realistic levels of around 80 and a revision based on 100BSI indoor was doomed to fail before it even made it outdoors.

Ours was set much lower mainly because although my Dom wouldn't win a round on The Weakest Link he's just smart enough to realise that the higher you set the bar...the higher you have to jump to get over it.
The steer from Branch was 100BSI...if any of them have ever worked at 100BSI it must have been a very long time ago.
I think we made EP92 one day last month...i'm very proud of our efforts.