Change to come

[TrueBlueTerrier]

so why do we never see a comment from the Union about that then when Royal Mail use the falling letter volumes in press releases.

[dvbuk55]

So people are working harder than in 1991.

Well some people are working harder than in 1991 others aren't doing any work at all, just talking about it..........there's a nice little niche.

[Godric]

As I said in my office in 1991 we had 150 night duties , we had 150 first de
Overlies and 100 second deliveries and 60 van duties , oh and a middle class of duties to cover failures and a late set of duties Om over items to tip and prepare the work

That same office now has 12 nights , 80 deliveries only 30 van duties , no late class and no middle. A lot has changed . We have more automation , we have just one delivery and we are a lot more productive. So people are working harder than in 1991.

are you seriously trying to say letters and flats are at 1991 levels ??

[feduppostie]

wow we have a major problem if the union is trying the 'letters are at 1991 levels'

They are not

Maybe in the new make up the figures instead of letting offices weigh in the arrivals so they can check them world

In 1991 all traffic was recorded by weight leaving the mail centre and arriving in the delivery office and cross checked to see they matched and the amount of letters recorded accordingly ( given there was then an 'amount' per perstop)

now we are given an amount per perstop which we have to accept as truth ( It is not) and have no way of checking as we no longer are allowed to weigh arrivals in ( yes I know the supa doopa new machines count the mail and we have hardly any unsequenced mail according to those in the know)

why do the union not insist on an impartial check on the counts per perstop?

why don't the union insist on a count of the unsequenced mail per unit?

when the union are increasingly telling their members they have to believe things we know are not true what are the options?

well I for one I will vote on this shambolic deal and then leave the union

I'm not paying to be fed bullshit

[cyrus]

"In addition it will identify the start and finish of deliveries on a day , week or month. It will also provide accurate information if geo route said that walk was 4 hours but the delivery was taking 4.5 hours. it will also expose if some one is continues all being forced to work beyond their time. It will confirm attendance call rates and even the % of people across the office who finishes on delivery at 1500."

Hmmmmm? I don't see postie's logging on to their PDA's as soon as they turn up for work.A lot of unpaid overtime gets done, coming in early, skipping breaks, speeding in van,running across gardens etc.It all creates a false figure.

[dvbuk55]

wow we have a major problem if the union is trying the 'letters are at 1991 levels'

They are not

Maybe in the new make up the figures instead of letting offices weigh in the arrivals so they can check them world

In 1991 all traffic was recorded by weight leaving the mail centre and arriving in the delivery office and cross checked to see they matched and the amount of letters recorded accordingly ( given there was then an 'amount' per perstop)

now we are given an amount per perstop which we have to accept as truth ( It is not) and have no way of checking as we no longer are allowed to weigh arrivals in ( yes I know the supa doopa new machines count the mail and we have hardly any unsequenced mail according to those in the know)

why do the union not insist on an impartial check on the counts per perstop?

why don't the union insist on a count of the unsequenced mail per unit?

when the union are increasingly telling their members they have to believe things we know are not true what are the options?

well I for one I will vote on this shambolic deal and then leave the union

I'm not paying to be fed bullshit

The why is simple, they aren't interested - they are far more interested in playing with the big boys, trying to look impressive and hoping for seats on the board and getting hold of the voting rights for your shares. As for letters being down to 1991 levels- so what? We are actually doing it with 60,000 less people!

[Martin Walsh]

Godric lets examine what your saying, In 1991 there was no internet , no automation , no dsa , no by pass.

1991 we had WLA to measure traffic and most were manually sorted and we had bonus payments linked to traffic where sometimes we said half a jumble of flats were a full jumble. WLA by weight did not come into 1993.

Nowadays 85% of all delivery work goes through a machine and is counted. Now there are some issues around the accuracy but the CSS gives you a fairly accurate amount of work.

Now lets look at the recent study by Price Waterhouse cooper in letter decline. Both parcels and to a less degree flats are growing. Social mail has declined. Transactional mail has declined such as bank statements , RBS changed from monthly to quarterly.25% of this mail os sent by the 5 banks.

Paperless current accounts are now 40% of the total.

The advertising addressed mail has gone down as it does in any recession. Unaddressed is up.

Households have now got internet and emails are common whereas in 1991 they did not exist.

So are you really saying that we now have more letters then we had in 1991 despite all of these things and that letters are counted.

My guess is your office has less walks , indoor duties , less drives and less hours then in 1991 and possibly more delivery points. That does not mean you have more letters.

[dvbuk55]

Thanks for the history lesson dingo but personally I'd prefer to stay on current issues, if I was still in the army I'd be wearing a steel helmet, swinging the lamp and sat on a bucket of sand whilst listening to tales of derring do.

Now what about TODAYS delivery issues?

[Straight4ward]

As regards the PDA allowing RM to track my whereabouts and what I have or haven't done
I really don't have any problem with that whatsoever.
Bring it on!

[Tman]

Godric lets examine what your saying, In 1991 there was no internet , no automation

Dingo, you're wrong there. Not only was there automation in 1991 (CFCs, MTTs, E40s, OCR V3s, ASMs, pre-sorters and coding desks,etc) but there was way back in 1981 (and further) too.

Nowadays 85% of all delivery work goes through a machine and is counted. Now there are some issues around the accuracy but the CSS gives you a fairly accurate amount of work.

The CSSs aren't used to totalise the daily/weekly etc throughputs as they're not AI connected. The stats used to gauge the mail through a particular MC, hub or time period come from the iLSMs etc and they're not inaccurate. The fact that the CSSs walk sequence the mail for a particular DO isn't relevant for the purposes of measuring mail quantities as that's already been done previously.
What is an inescapable fact is that the amount of mail has dropped sharply over recent years, and no amount of "yebbut I don't believe the RM bull as I'm still just as busy" changes that.

[dvbuk55]

As regards the PDA allowing RM to track my whereabouts and what I have or haven't done
I really don't have any problem with that whatsoever.
Bring it on!

The problem is of course RM are going to use the negative aspects of the data from their point of view but not from the members.

[BernardBresslaw]

As I said in my office in 1991 we had 150 night duties , we had 150 first de
Overlies and 100 second deliveries and 60 van duties , oh and a middle class of duties to cover failures and a late set of duties Om over items to tip and prepare the work

That same office now has 12 nights , 80 deliveries only 30 van duties , no late class and no middle. A lot has changed . We have more automation , we have just one delivery and we are a lot more productive. So people are working harder than in 1991.

are you seriously trying to say letters and flats are at 1991 levels ??

What chance do we have when even our union leaders believe the lie that mail is down?

Staggering.

[halfull]

Godric lets examine what your saying, In 1991 there was no internet , no automation , no dsa , no by pass.

1991 we had WLA to measure traffic and most were manually sorted and we had bonus payments linked to traffic where sometimes we said half a jumble of flats were a full jumble. WLA by weight did not come into 1993.

Nowadays 85% of all delivery work goes through a machine and is counted. Now there are some issues around the accuracy but the CSS gives you a fairly accurate amount of work.

Now lets look at the recent study by Price Waterhouse cooper in letter decline. Both parcels and to a less degree flats are growing. Social mail has declined. Transactional mail has declined such as bank statements , RBS changed from monthly to quarterly.25% of this mail os sent by the 5 banks.

Paperless current accounts are now 40% of the total.

The advertising addressed mail has gone down as it does in any recession. Unaddressed is up.

Households have now got internet and emails are common whereas in 1991 they did not exist.

So are you really saying that we now have more letters then we had in 1991 despite all of these things and that letters are counted.

My guess is your office has less walks , indoor duties , less drives and less hours then in 1991 and possibly more delivery points. That does not mean you have more letters.

another pile of crap, come and do a delivery & tell me mail is down. My guess is you would need rescuing because its dark! Go have a coffee old pal.

[BernardBresslaw]

The problem is, letters ARE down, but we are faced with a growing parcel business, which is never properly addressed during revisions and planning of rounds. I cover 3 duties and the smallest duty actually receives the lower volume of packets -madness. Then there is the growth of door to door, which is, as regularly mentioned, a part of workload, which should be treated like first class mail.

Far more important than straight out volume, is also the penetration rate - if you are going to every house with one letter or six, it doesn't make a difference to delivery time. Sure, prep should be quicker, but when you have D2D to prep, and parcels to sort, that time soon adds up.

This is all without mentioning that on most days, workers are pulled off their frames for extra IPS because staff levels are so low, that the mail is never cleared up on time, so we get out late anyway. As mentioned, so many jobs have been slashed that although there is less mail, there are less bodies to deal with it! Pretty simple mathematics really.

It doesn't help when inexperienced senior union men, who have never done a delivery in their lives, let alone recently, believe the Royal Mail bullshit mantra. It just adds further weight to the theory that the collusion of RM and the CWU has almost completed, and the corrupt men at the top need shipping out sharpish. There are definitely some back handers going on.

[Godric]

Godric lets examine what your saying, In 1991 there was no internet , no automation , no dsa , no by pass.

1991 we had WLA to measure traffic and most were manually sorted and we had bonus payments linked to traffic where sometimes we said half a jumble of flats were a full jumble. WLA by weight did not come into 1993.

Nowadays 85% of all delivery work goes through a machine and is counted. Now there are some issues around the accuracy but the CSS gives you a fairly accurate amount of work.

Now lets look at the recent study by Price Waterhouse cooper in letter decline. Both parcels and to a less degree flats are growing. Social mail has declined. Transactional mail has declined such as bank statements , RBS changed from monthly to quarterly.25% of this mail os sent by the 5 banks.

Paperless current accounts are now 40% of the total.

The advertising addressed mail has gone down as it does in any recession. Unaddressed is up.

Households have now got internet and emails are common whereas in 1991 they did not exist.

So are you really saying that we now have more letters then we had in 1991 despite all of these things and that letters are counted.

My guess is your office has less walks , indoor duties , less drives and less hours then in 1991 and possibly more delivery points. That does not mean you have more letters.

the letter volumes are down in comparison to the peak of 2003 levels but nowhere near the volumes of 1991 .... they are going to have to put more deliveries in my office as the deliveries are way longer than the 4 hr 15 min spans agreed .... so we could be back to the same numbers when I started in 1990 .... I know for a fact we have way more more letters and flats than the 1991 era I would actually say our mail (letters & flats) volumes are at 1999 levels