length of breaks competition.

[teesdale]

What's the longest break that people have in your mail centre. The way forward said the total daily breaks for mail centres should be 1 hour made up of 40 mins main break and a 20 min grace break. If you add 5 mins either side of each break it becomes 1 hour and 20 mins average for your normal postman. At Bristol Mail Centre we've got regular routines going on of 1 hour, 30 mins and 15 mins (1 hour 45 mins per day) and average going home 20 mins early giving a working week of 27 hours and 40 mins (including work time snoozing, not compulsory - sit in car or canteen if you prefer). Other routines are main break 1 hour and 20 mins and 40 mins grace break (2 hours per day- a 26 hour + 25 min working week). If you add in arriving half an hour late most days some people are barely working at all and are just turning up to show their face. What about the people keeping to the breaks, where is the fairness. They must be working hundreds of hours extra per year and getting nothing for it.

[Deadly]

Not forgetting unofficial smoking breaks.

PS any transfers available to Bristol?

[rainbowwarrior72]

No wonder Processing never get the work out to us. I have heard rumours that at about 05.30am Processing go into overdrive. I would say an 8hr shift could be the biggest break . To my Processing colleagues at my MC I do love you really.

[Pinky 1]

This is old news. Us on deliveries have known about it for years .....

[tinkerdil]

This is a scandalous thread. To serve what purpose? Put people out of jobs? People in delivery fall for it time and time again. Let the bitterness begin.

[Pinky 1]

People in delivery fall for it time and time again. Let the bitterness begin.

Let the bitterness begin ?
The OP works in a mail centre

[teesdale]

I would say that from what I have read on here over the years deliveries is a harder job than that performed in mail centres. Deliveries requires individual responsibility, something that's discouraged in a mail centre. Coming from a mail centre I would say half the people here would not be able to do a delivery and you would need an army of managers to deal with the resignations, going sick, and incompetence if we were made to do a delivery next week. What I would say is that to make things fair we need clocking on and off at Bristol Mail Centre, and in out for breaks, using swipe card stations. Then you could recover the 25% of hours lost for half the duties here. If an agreement was made with the CWU that half an hour lee way was given each day that surely even they could not deny was generous, you could then add up the absence above that and get a print out of what you then owed in unpaid overtime. What gets me here in this s**t hole is,that its got so bad, that the managers seem to even admire the people who show up late, take massive breaks or go missing for 50 minutes. Its like their saying well done you got away with it again and I didn't even notice you weren't here, and you got you're colleagues to do it all for you whilst you were sitting in your car. Congratulations, with a smile and a laugh for being cleverer than them.

[tinkerdil]

Teasedale, if I may, are you a manager of some years of experience at Bristol MC? One of the reasons I ask is your posts refer to managers and manager activity in striking regularity.

[teesdale]

No I'm not a manager at Bristol Mail Centre. It's just that everybody knows everything about everybody here 30 minutes after its happened. Also I have observed managers as they have watched me for thousands of hours, its just that I learnt something from it and they were doing it because they had nothing else to do. Im not against managers, someone has to do it. A working team leader system would be better though, just like the rest of UK industry has done for the last 30 years. Even the managers that I like though refuse to carry out large parts of their job description, eg. bullying and harassment, attendance ( massive breaks ) etc. If I was a manager and spotted persistent bullying I would speak up and get the c*** moved to another shift at the very least, these lot do nothing. They will need a lot more training yet to be worth that £34,000 a year. Couldn't be a manager though and give out stages for people being ill, do you.