briefings so far

[dvbuk55]

I believe that criticism is over the top. I don't like the fact that dingo defends the union stance but that is his job. There is an element of gloating in the fact that there is no organised opposition and a yes vote seems inevitable. I don't like the fact that once again the roadshow is trying to get reps to accept this deal and moreover to persuade their members to go along with it. It's a bad deal and every delivery office should forget the financial aspects, forget the "legally binding" pseudo babble and concentrate on what this deal does to address the obvious problems in delivery and should vote accordingly. Money is transient but what you are going to agree to will affect your working life for the foreseeable future.

[aiden01]

I believe that criticism is over the top. I don't like the fact that dingo defends the union stance but that is his job. There is an element of gloating in the fact that there is no organised opposition and a yes vote seems inevitable. I don't like the fact that once again the roadshow is trying to get reps to accept this deal and moreover to persuade their members to go along with it. It's a bad deal and every delivery office should forget the financial aspects, forget the "legally binding" pseudo babble and concentrate on what this deal does to address the obvious problems in delivery and should vote accordingly. Money is transient but what you are going to agree to will affect your working life for the foreseeable future.

totally respect your view but surely each individual member should make up their own mind no matter what their branch or rep tells them.

[dvbuk55]

I believe that criticism is over the top. I don't like the fact that dingo defends the union stance but that is his job. There is an element of gloating in the fact that there is no organised opposition and a yes vote seems inevitable. I don't like the fact that once again the roadshow is trying to get reps to accept this deal and moreover to persuade their members to go along with it. It's a bad deal and every delivery office should forget the financial aspects, forget the "legally binding" pseudo babble and concentrate on what this deal does to address the obvious problems in delivery and should vote accordingly. Money is transient but what you are going to agree to will affect your working life for the foreseeable future.

totally respect your view but surely each individual member should make up their own mind no matter what their branch or rep tells them.

Absolutely they should make up their own mind, if they are given the full agreement with the legal pack and they don't understand it that should tell them it is too complicated and convoluted. What they will receive will be a précis version highlighting the advantages without pointing out the pitfalls and omissions to the original objective coupled with Branch making a recommendation based on HQs vision of what will happen and not the actualite of life on the ground. A point well proven by BT 2010.

[aiden01]

I would say the majority don,t understand any of the agreement especially the legal points myself included so we see the pay rise on offer and decide to vote yes maybe we will live to regret our decision in the long term who knows. btw just my opinion.

[ebbzie]

I would say the majority don,t understand any of the agreement especially the legal points myself included so we see the pay rise on offer and decide to vote yes maybe we will live to regret our decision in the long term who knows. btw just my opinion.

This is what 75% will see . Its a shame but in 5 years or less our jobs will be gone or we will be minimum wage, zero hour contract part timers , fuc*ing sad for us but the millionaire bankers wont give a f*ck

[ronpetetrevchris]

My branch may well be recommending a yes, but as a rep i am tellimg my members ( delivery) that a lot of promises have been made, but nothing certain or concrete to resolve the issues you go through everyday! Thats the way i see it!

Many of them are asking that seeing as we have taken money already do we have to give it back? I see this as a canny guarentee that it will be a yes. The thought of owing money to RM will see a yes % rise on its own.

I

[Cut Off King]

I would say the majority don,t understand any of the agreement especially the legal points myself included so we see the pay rise on offer and decide to vote yes maybe we will live to regret our decision in the long term who knows. btw just my opinion.

This is exactly the way I see it too.
The only question I get asked is "When do we get our back pay"

Most poeple I know now have NO inetrest in the union. They only pay their subs in order to protect themselfs against being called into the office by the management.

We all need to face up to the fact that the cwu have stopped trying to get better working conditions for delivery members, instead they have decided to go along with the RM idea that people will accept anything if you throw money at them.

It will be a yes vote, the CWU really DON'T have a plan B and RM have doggedly stuck to plan A for the last 10 years; Work people Harder, Stronger, Faster, Longer.

Let's just accept it and deal with the concequences as they arise

[Lincox]

My branch may well be recommending a yes, but as a rep i am tellimg my members ( delivery) that a lot of promises have been made, but nothing certain or concrete to resolve the issues you go through everyday! Thats the way i see it!

Many of them are asking that seeing as we have taken money already do we have to give it back? I see this as a canny guarentee that it will be a yes. The thought of owing money to RM will see a yes % rise on its own.

I

The money that was paid to us prior to Christmas is not part of the agreement and was paid for the work that we did during 2013 to help them get the large profits to ease the way through to privatisation. This money is not reclaimable by Royal Mail if the agreement is not ratified by the members.

[borders]

I would say the majority don,t understand any of the agreement especially the legal points myself included so we see the pay rise on offer and decide to vote yes maybe we will live to regret our decision in the long term who knows. btw just my opinion.

This is exactly the way I see it too.
The only question I get asked is "When do we get our back pay"

Most poeple I know now have NO inetrest in the union. They only pay their subs in order to protect themselfs against being called into the office by the management.

We all need to face up to the fact that the cwu have stopped trying to get better working conditions for delivery members, instead they have decided to go along with the RM idea that people will accept anything if you throw money at them.

It will be a yes vote, the CWU really DON'T have a plan B and RM have doggedly stuck to plan A for the last 10 years; Work people Harder, Stronger, Faster, Longer.

Let's just accept it and deal with the concequences as they arise

agree with this entirely , very few people IMO have any interest in the broader concept of Unionism and its History. just as important IMO, is the understanding of the society we live in and the constraints it places on the ability of a Union to protect and improve the lives of its members.
I think the top of the Union should be more open about this :- we are a privatised company now , we operate in a competitive , capitalist system and to be frank the RM top brass will be more concerned about profit and shareholders than the foot sloggers on delivery.
what is the reality of living in Britain today ,

In London alone, a total of 239,703 dwellings are now valued at over £1 million – more than 61% of Britain’s total. The champagne corks are popping as the rich become richer in Tory Britain.The highest concentration of million pound homes is in South Kensington, where a whopping 71% fall into this bracket.

At the other extreme, the working class London borough of Barking and Dagenham does not have a single “millionaire” property.

Instead, Barking has to make do with extremely over-crowded schools and plenty of pound-shops.

Young workers today will have to work harder and longer than their parents or grandparents before retirement and get much less. Some have written in the press that the retirement age should be increased not to 70, but to 85 years of age. “We are not talking about people working until they are 90 but just for as big a proportion of their life as they used to in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Philip Booth, programme director at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

when faced with this onslaught , is it really enough to just be a member of a Union ?

[fishtank]

I think what's turning a lot of people off the union is not really the agreements themselves but the perceived lack of honesty and integrity when actually dealing with the membership.

The flaws in the negotiation of the BT2010 agreement were apparent to most members almost immediately the revisions started to go in but at no point did the union hold its hands up and say we might have got this wrong, Instead it appeared at least to the membership that there was a concerted effort to cover up and hide the failings of the agreement even to the point of blaming the membership and local reps in a lot of cases.

Even to this day the union tries to spin this agreement in a positive light and while a great deal of it was necessarily its flaws were in the vague wording and loose terms of reference which can only be the fault of the authors of the deal.

With this new deal there are positives but there are also drawbacks not least of which is the failure to secure any real concessions on delivery other than reviews which will obviously happen after the agreement is ratified meaning the membership will have no say on whether they agree with the outcome of these reviews. It would seem that rather than engage in meaningful debate with the membership over the failure to reach agreement over delivery the union has defaulted to its BT2010 position of covering up those failings and a we know what's best for you attitude which is plainly dishonest.

I believe a more pragmatic and honest approach would have been better suited in this situation because for one I think the membership are far more aware of the difficulties facing the business than the union ever gives them credit for and secondly when this agreement starts to inevitably unravel and the delivery members start to realise that these reviews are far more about facilitating growth than solving delivery problems the members would be less inclined to blame the union if they don't start with any unrealistic expectations.

[ronpetetrevchris]

My branch may well be recommending a yes, but as a rep i am tellimg my members ( delivery) that a lot of promises have been made, but nothing certain or concrete to resolve the issues you go through everyday! Thats the way i see it!

Many of them are asking that seeing as we have taken money already do we have to give it back? I see this as a canny guarentee that it will be a yes. The thought of owing money to RM will see a yes % rise on its own.

I

The money that was paid to us prior to Christmas is not part of the agreement and was paid for the work that we did during 2013 to help them get the large profits to ease the way through to privatisation. This money is not reclaimable by Royal Mail if the agreement is not ratified by the members.

Thanks for clarifying that, I had actually overlooked that and so had others, so I doubt we are the only ones.

[borders]

I think what's turning a lot of people off the union is not really the agreements themselves but the perceived lack of honesty and integrity when actually dealing with the membership.

The flaws in the negotiation of the BT2010 agreement were apparent to most members almost immediately the revisions started to go in but at no point did the union hold its hands up and say we might have got this wrong, Instead it appeared at least to the membership that there was a concerted effort to cover up and hide the failings of the agreement even to the point of blaming the membership and local reps in a lot of cases.

Even to this day the union tries to spin this agreement in a positive light and while a great deal of it was necessarily its flaws were in the vague wording and loose terms of reference which can only be the fault of the authors of the deal.

With this new deal there are positives but there are also drawbacks not least of which is the failure to secure any real concessions on delivery other than reviews which will obviously happen after the agreement is ratified meaning the membership will have no say on whether they agree with the outcome of these reviews. It would seem that rather than engage in meaningful debate with the membership over the failure to reach agreement over delivery the union has defaulted to its BT2010 position of covering up those failings and a we know what's best for you attitude which is plainly dishonest.

I believe a more pragmatic and honest approach would have been better suited in this situation because for one I think the membership are far more aware of the difficulties facing the business than the union ever gives them credit for and secondly when this agreement starts to inevitably unravel and the delivery members start to realise that these reviews are far more about facilitating growth than solving delivery problems the members would be less inclined to blame the union if they don't start with any unrealistic expectations.

I think your last paragraph Fish , hits the nail on the head. when Privatisation unravels , I think the Union will have even less space to manoeuvre than before and they should be honest and up front with this .
there is no mass movement for a change in how our society is run , Ed Miliband has offered up a freeze on energy bills for a bit but Labour still believe they will only succeed as a as a pro-business party . I pasted up some articles in the Union Room about how Unions are/ have changed in Germany and other other places and I read that Miliband is a fan and maybe this is the road the CWU will take.
however , the big question is are the RM management genuine and can they be trusted with these new agreements that the Union top bods are excited about ??

[dvbuk55]

however , the big question is are the RM management genuine and can they be trusted with these new agreements that the Union top bods are excited about ??

Oh absolutely, I would trust them with my life savings

[daveyeff]

I mean wtf does the subject mean BRIEFINGS IS FAR?????? It makes no sense whatsoever and is pretty worrying from someone who purports to understand the agreement and legal pack and recommends a yes vote.

i think its meant to read ''briefings SO far'',,, in his haste to post (possibly cos he knows what the result already is) he typed ''is'' instead of ''so''..... it does however enforce my belief that the 2010 agreement, and now this one also, are prejudged and therefore ''fixed'' on a totally corrupted scale. but thats just me!! (its time the crimbo hats came off teebs)

[dvbuk55]

I mean wtf does the subject mean BRIEFINGS IS FAR?????? It makes no sense whatsoever and is pretty worrying from someone who purports to understand the agreement and legal pack and recommends a yes vote.

i think its meant to read ''briefings SO far'',,, in his haste to post (possibly cos he knows what the result already is) he typed ''is'' instead of ''so''..... it does however enforce my belief that the 2010 agreement, and now this one also, are prejudged and therefore ''fixed'' on a totally corrupted scale. but thats just me!! (its time the crimbo hats came off teebs)

I thought there had been words missed, like "and away a load of crap"