xmas arrangments

[north london driver]

has any area had any news on xmas workings such as times and extra hourage.
extra vans are already at some offices.

[martinapsid]

not in my office dom is weeks behind staff have said no reasonable xames duty's and we will work to our times never been know in my office at xames

[Spanishsteve]

We have had hire vans delivered and not to be used till Monday. On Collections we are being asked what O/T we want on what days starting 21st Nov.

[Hitcher]

Overtime is only being paid for the pressure weeks and everyone is expected to complete.

[DGP1]

Overtime is only being paid for the pressure weeks and everyone is expected to complete.

Tell them that you're only working your hours and you WILL cut off if you don't want the OT.

They've had it too easy at Christmas for too long, let them do the extra work (that has already started) because I'm certainly not doing it.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Overtime is only being paid for the pressure weeks and everyone is expected to complete.

If my lino tried that with me I would laugh so much after he told me!

Our section is is complete meltdown, it has been technically failing right from the off when the delivery methods kicked in...

At first, most OPGs without instruction/pressure were fudging the outdoor work by not using LWT trolleys and the HCT users breaking SSOW protocol by leaving mail in a locked trolley and out of sight for greater than 2 minutes (plus carrying "weight on shoulder" ... fundamentally against the principals of these revisions). But these short-sighted OPGs did not see the error of their ways, all this was doing was making the walks seem far more achieveable than they really were (but often still needing a bit of o/t to complete) at a relatively quiet time of year, albeit the HCT users were leaving themselves open to serious breaches of protocol on a daily basis if ever caught by the Investigation Bureaux. If you wanted to cut off, standard procedure was applied, as in you agreed with lino how what section of letters and packets for that bit would be left behind.

Roll on to autumn, the packets are soaring and the amount of mail is increasing as expected. The P&L teams are now carrying silly weight pouches on their back instead of loading two bags on the provided LWTs and the HCT users are now struggling to keep their pouch carrying loops the same size. If OPGs do not want to complete with substantial amounts of o/t (often in excess of 90 minutes, a fair bit of which can be attributed to longer prep times from more mail/pkts coming in), now we are instructed to leave non-priority attendence packets behind, so OPGs go out with all letters; packets that will fit through the letterbox; Specials; Tracked.

The result: Increasing amount of yorks filled with a backlog of packets, a handful of OPGs coming in way before the standard 0700 start at ~0400 or so to do IPS/pkt sort o/t, yet this headstart "bandaid" is still not solving the achieveability issue.

Yet those rare breeds like myself that have pushed our beloved trolleys everywhere can clearly demonstrate from our work hours and o/t needed to complete how things have truely progressed through the year, as letter volumes and packets have gone increasingly further away from the "model week" volumes of late July. We are now dealing with 2-3 trays of sequenced, 5-9 trays of manual and 2-5 sacks of packets on a daily basis, along with ~1 hour of indoor work (IPS, pkt sorting; portering)... yet worse is yet to come in the next month or so! Even if all attendence packets are left behind, you can go over simply delivering the letters and Specials, I've yet to "test the water" by telling lino I want to leave all attendence packets behind and then half a row of mail too!! The fact that I am "smelling of roses" in his prep tests further strengthens my position, it is not an indoor performance issue, it is simply these walks have far too many items to throw in to have any chance of leaving the depot by the guideline 1000 having taken 20mins meal relief.

I'll be damned if I'm going to agree to complete everyday without fail during Xmas Pressure, I do not want to be delvering in the dark until 1800 thankyou very much and I'm not going to "fudge the books" or risk my job by breaking SSOW. Each day will be taken on its own merits, I'll typically show a bit of willing by going over until 1530 at the latest, but that is it.

[eastie]

My DOM has got it easy compared to some offices since we started P/L.
I would estimate that about 75% of my office are starting 30 minutes to an hour early UNPAID
I dread to think how much it is saving RM in O/T and without these muppets our office would be in meltdown.
These early starters are about 30 of the 40 posties in my office, needless to say me and the others starting at their proper start times are bullied into thinking they are slow.
As for trolleys , the 40 odd trolleys have slowly been hidden by management and there must be only about 8 left in the office.