Poll - longer deliveries or less Full Timers.

[gary1975]

Will we get some sort of vote regarding start finish times, can they just implement it ? or is it out of the unions hands,or is the bribe if the century in the cards?

[motherhubbard]

Will we get some sort of vote regarding start finish times, can they just implement it ? or is it out of the unions hands,or is the bribe if the century in the cards?

If I understand Dingo's posts then Royal Mail isn't going to negotiate a national agreement on the issue - it will then be down to local agreements.
Some areas might agree to it especially if they don't think they have the clout to call and sustain industrial action.
RM could implement the changes by executive action in areas where they don't think there will be any sustained challenge to the policy.

Perhaps the whole thing is intended to provoke strike action to nullify the AFG agreement and then they can start imposing all sorts of stuff.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Another anonymous post.

The real question we need to ask is if the CWU isn't going to represent us properly, then what do we do? There has been talk in the past and I have heard it again recently about creating a union purely for delivery, and I certainly think there is now a real case for it.

One thing is for sure, while this union negotiates agreements on behalf of all at the same time we will never get an agreement for delivery members that is worth a damn.

The other point here is we need people who have done delivery in this day and age to negotiate for us, not people who haven't done a residential delivery since we had 2 deliveries, or in some cases people who have never delivered a letter at all, they came from a processing background and are trying to negotiate for a function they have no real concept of. If we could get that then perhaps we could hear some sort of common sense being spoken rather than some abstract discussion about protecting F/T jobs without any regard for the consequences.

At the moment we are like sheep being led by the nose into the quagmire, we need some real people who have real experience of deliveries to lead us, otherwise we will all be taking Ill Health retirement in the near future.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Been hearing rumours of a phased reduction in daily/weekly hours for the same wage as we get now, from 39 to 35 hours, rather than increasing walk size.

[t3mcIUQWE2]

Been hearing rumours of a phased reduction in daily/weekly hours for the same wage as we get now, from 39 to 35 hours, rather than increasing walk size.

Very funny.

[POSTMAN]

From London DIV...

ROYAL MAIL'S FUTURE PLANS



Dear Colleague

The following document sets out Royal Mail's vision moving forward from next January 2016. It is a far reaching strategy which has incremental stages over the next five years.

The term, "game changing" is often put to many changes, but there is little doubt that Royal Mail's future strategy will massively alter the current work plan in all functions and have huge consequences for our members futures, terms and conditions.

Royal Mail's strategy starts from January 2016 and will be subject to The Directors Business Plans and will obviously be a critical part of the April pay talks.

Bob Gibson, Mark Baulch and Tony Bouch have been meeting Anton Harding, Royal Mail's Delivery Strategy Director, over the last three months to understand Royal Mail's plans. Some of the details have been shared with the Delivery Reference Group and at the Area Delivery Reps forums.

Bob has requested the views of Divisional Committees and has called a special meeting of Divisional Reps in Birmingham on 16 December 2015.

Therefore the Divisional meeting's sole topic for discussion when we meet on Thursday 10th December 2015 will be about our views, concerns, suggestions and policy surrounding Royal Mail's strategy.

The Divisional meeting on 10th December will be one of the most important that we have had as it will be the start of a debate within London which will require membership support at some stage.

Background

Automation now means that almost 75% of all forms of mail is automated and that all of this is either sequenced to delivery point or walk sorted.

Currently apart from those offices which have work sequenced from iLSMs, all Delivery Offices have their sequenced work come into their Delivery Office in two waves (Wave 1 and 2).

To ensure this happens work plans in Mail Centres across the UK normally have a cut off from collections or receiving any mail after 7.30 in the evening (Central London has some late collections after this time).

This allows work to be moved around the country by plane or by the network drivers to the inward Mail Centres.

The vast majority of a Mail Centre's inward role is during the night. They provide the manual work priority services to Delivery Offices and the work which is to be run through the CSS machines at MPUs.

Professional drivers in Mail Centres and Inward Hubs transfer this work to Delivery Offices during the night and early morning for connection with deliveries.

The current Delivery Offices perform an early morning firms run, time deliveries, tracked and specials.

The schedule time out on delivery for the majority is around 10 o'clock. However, many get out earlier than the scheduled time. The last letter on delivery is 3pm. Royal Mail's research has shown 95% of all deliveries finish before 2.30pm.

The current delivery model allows for early starts and attendance patterns outside of the normal rotating rest day option.

In London we have the vast majority of offices starting at 0600, with some at around 0515 where there are 4 day weeks.

Royal Mail's strategy will basically result in the majority of duties being pushed forward by upwards of 3 hours.

That includes those who do the following:-

Collections
Processing
Professional drivers
Network drivers
Delivery OPGs
CSS workers

What is the strategy?

Royal Mail's strategy is that they:-

Want to capture more of the parcels market by having a later acceptance time for Mail Centres of around 3 in the morning.

They want to purchase 20 large letter machines which will sequence all large letters and flats in one wave. These were trialled in the Exeter Delivery Office catchment area for 6 months and removed all IPS, apart from parcels.

Apart from early morning deliveries, the delivery window would change to 10 till 5 or 6.

The model for deliveries will not consist of any indoor work and will be a solely outdoor model.

Network drivers would be impacted on in terms of attendance times and there will be less Mail Centres and Delivery Offices.

Processing outward and inward work times will be impacted on.

Some collection drivers will, with late acceptance times, have to move later.
Professional drivers who transport work from Mail Centres and MPUs will have a massive impact as there will hardly be any work transported during the night.

Delivery Offices will have no indoor work so an outdoor model will mean for the vast majority a 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock start.

The impact on Deliveries

We met with Anton Harding in Bournemouth who informed us of Royal Mail's vision.

Anton informed us that Royal Mail had reviewed whether to move from a 6 day model to a 5 day operation.

The day they considered dropping was Monday. However, due to the increasing use of the internet, ordering over the weekend and that same day and next day parcels is growing, they rejected any down dialling of the 6 day USO.

Royal Mail has stated that this is a 5 year strategy with incremental steps along that 5 year period.

Their end goal is to only have staff operating an outdoor model. This will mean that a few staff will do the early morning firms, timed deliveries, tracked and specials.

The remainder will attend work around 0930, load their work in their own van (no CDV partner). Parcels will come in either walk order from Mail Centres or the Delivery Office will need a bullring in the Delivery Office but will need to put parcels into order on the van.

There will be HCTs walks who will replenished back at the office.

D2D will be collated and an OPG will be expected to merge the D2D with live mail on delivery. The D2D collation machine will be trialled in January 2016.

Sorting frames will not be required in Delivery Offices which will allow Royal Mail to close around 400 Delivery Offices.

Staff will have choices then, if they wanted to maintain full time or a longer part time they would have to do a longer span of delivery between 10-5.

Royal Mail estimate that there are 66,000 walks currently based on 4 hours. Under their strategy there would be approximately 44,000 walks on a 6 hour span in the future.

Royal Mail believe where the right equipment is in place, other foreign countries which have adopted longer spans like Norway, Germany and France, have fewer sick absences than when they have had a shorter delivery span.

Any 6 hour span would include a meal relief in the middle.

This is not a National plan and will only work where a Mail Centre is close to a Delivery Office. So in parts of Scotland and other rural and remote areas this strategy will not work.

What are the immediate threats?

Royal Mail has written to the CWU and said they believe that in the region of 65% of Delivery Offices could move to one later arrival from January 2016.

This could be done from either Mail Centres or MPUs. They have scoped the Mount doing the whole of North London, Jubilee doing the whole of South West and Greenford doing the whole of North West and West London.

This sequence work would arrive in your Delivery Office at or around 9 o'clock.

There would be no Wave 1. There would be only manual work in your Delivery Offices before this.

Royal Mail has suggested this is a circulation change and is not negotiable

However, impacts on duties such as the impact on MPUs, duty contents in Mail Centres, MGV drivers and delivery start and attendance patterns are all subject to the IR framework.


Royal Mail Business Plan 2016/17

All Directors will be tasked to achieve a budget and efficiency improvement.

The Directors have given an early indication that if mail volumes are coming into Delivery Offices later then start times and attendance patterns would be at risk.

There would also potentially be changes to duty contents, attendance times and even job reductions arising in processing, inward hubs and professional drivers in Mail Centres arising from any introduction of one wave into Delivery Offices.

Clearly, Royal Mail will be reluctant to damage the progress of the London Agreement. However, as they say, if only 15 to 20% of the workload is in at 0600 but you have 80% of staff in then they say this will be inefficient, especially for people who have double prep etc as part of their duty.

What are the CWU doing?

There have been three months of extensive discussions establishing and challenging Royal Mail's strategy at National level in deliveries.

Divisions have been encouraged to consult their Area and Delivery Reps concerning the strategy.

As your Divisional Reps we have taken this a step further and said that we cannot just deal with Royal Mail's plans as a delivery only issue as it has massive consequences in Mail Centres, VOCs, RDCs, MGV Centres and Distribution.

We are concerned that we are not united across CWU Headquarters or the PEC on what is the best policy to adopt to deal with Royal Mail's strategy.

This is why we are going to have a Divisional Workshop on the issue to gather the views of the whole Division.




What do we want from any agreed changes?

First and foremost the union has to adopt a plan A which is the changes are unacceptable. However, as history shows stopping automation is never a successful option and we must have a plan B in our minds if, so we need to consider the price for this change.

Clearly there will be job losses with Royal Mail's strategy. We need to avoid compulsory redundancies at all costs. Therefore MTSF would have to still be in place and the recent changes made to above 55's reinstated.

If changes were to take place, members should be able to make informed choices.

There must be a significant reduction in the working week with the aim over 5 years to establish a gross 35 hour working week (without loss of pay).

The average age of an OPG in the UK is 47 years of age. A huge amount find that a 4 hour delivery span is too difficult now and some will reject 6 hours out of hand but cannot afford to leave the business on VR so could there be more attractive buy down terms available?

Equally if this is a plan over 5 years, could a solution be that only new recruits move to these times in the first instance and volunteers?

Should there be a compensation package for those who lose their attendance patterns with guaranteed rest day working opportunities?

What happens to CSS workers, nights, indoor workers?

What happens to shift payments in Mail Centres as some inward will be done later and so will the outward.

What happens to inward hubs and professional drivers who during the night will no longer run in any sequencing before 0900 and in the longer term no manual either before 0700?

We will have a debate on what benefits would we want along with other issues.

Format of Workshop

We will have a full debate and we will provide a list of questions which will help shape any debate.

The end result of the workshop will be the initial Divisional policy which we will report in Birmingham.

In addition, in the New Year we will have to start a massive communications campaign to inform our members of the threats which they will face from Royal Mail strategy.

[SpacePhoenix]

Reading what postman has posted EVEYONE will see changes to their duties, even if that's just start and finish times. Is a change in start times enough to trigger a re-sign?

[dvbuk55]

Well it's obviously an improvement in having a Plan B. What's the "London Agreement"?

[claretandblue]

If everyone goes out in their own vans what do non drivers do ?

[halfull]

looks like its time for our top boys in our union to start waking up & earning those big wage packets we pay them!
I cannot see any posties sticking around for any if this!
Do the royal mail know what it will be like delivering in the dark at 5pm? How will we see dogs coming? How will we see the letters? Do they understand what it will be like in bad crime areas walking round with expensive things in our pouches at 5pm in the dark? i wouldnt feel safe let alone some of our female colleagues doing it, im sure some would feel very unsafe in these conditions!
The health & safety ramifications alone should be enough for the cwu to throw this out of the window!
Also people with children to pick up from school & a partner who waits for them to get back the they go to work,or people who took the job as the hours aloud them to care for elderly parents etc
I personally see this only ending one way, the members never voting for any of it.

[k979aaa]

looks like its time for our top boys in our union to start waking up & earning those big wage packets we pay them!
I cannot see any posties sticking around for any if this!
Do the royal mail know what it will be like delivering in the dark at 5pm? How will we see dogs coming? How will we see the letters? Do they understand what it will be like in bad crime areas walking round with expensive things in our pouches at 5pm in the dark? i wouldnt feel safe let alone some of our female colleagues doing it, im sure some would feel very unsafe in these conditions!
The health & safety ramifications alone should be enough for the cwu to throw this out of the window!
Also people with children to pick up from school & a partner who waits for them to get back the they go to work,or people who took the job as the hours aloud them to care for elderly parents etc
I personally see this only ending one way, the members never voting for any of it.

And a mass exodus if delivery staff are not listened too! how can a union be so divisive towards most of its membership! At the end of the day time will tell but do you think anyone on delivery will back up the very few left on distribution when they do not heed the call to back us in our hour of need?

[Martin Walsh]

The London Document explains what Royal Mail want to do. There is no union agreement and this is an issue which the union has to unite behind.

Let's cut the crap about delivery staff being outvoted by mail centre , distribution and LGV drivers it cannot happen. There are 99 thousand delivery members and 18 thousand staff employee in Mail Centres , Collection Hubs , VOCs or RDCs.

Equally let's expose the myth that we should have a delivery only union. For one you have to have over 50% of employees to gain negotiation powers and why would anyone join if you have no agreements such as the Agenda for Growth Safeguards , pay rates , meal relief , annual leave , IR framework etc

The issue we face is massive but it impacts on everyone not just deliveries. This is a 5 year plan which starts from next year with one wave , Not Longer spans ! But later working ! This needs to be opposed and the union's needs to start communicating quickly.

[t3mcIUQWE2]

We're currently having a revision with a massive reduction in walk times. Seems to fly in the face of everything in this thread. How can this be?

[Martin Walsh]

Because longer spans and 6 hour spans are not part of the first part of Royal Mail Strategy. The so called 6 hour delivery plan will only be on the table if Royal Mail introduce the 20 large letter sorting machines. Their end game is not to have any indoor work in a delivery office and just have an outward model.

This is when the longer span would be their answer , along with delivery offices closures.

In the interim the move to later acceptance and therefore later starts via one way is their immediate plan.

[t3mcIUQWE2]

Because longer spans and 6 hour spans are not part of the first part of Royal Mail Strategy. The so called 6 hour delivery plan will only be on the table if Royal Mail introduce the 20 large letter sorting machines. Their end game is not to have any indoor work in a delivery office and just have an outward model.

This is when the longer span would be their answer , along with delivery offices closures.

In the interim the move to later acceptance and therefore later starts via one way is their immediate plan.

If this is a response to my post it doesn't appear to answer it in any way.