Mount Pleasant bulletin from 28/01/16

[anna]

GOOD NEWS, YES, BUT...
So this is it! Finally Romec will be fully back in-house. While that may be good news, it certainly doesn't give us back our former RM Ts&Cs. No - we're told nothing changes! As the Romec boss said in his letter to us, "it's business as usual"! But that precisely, is the problem - we don't want "business as usual" here in Romec! We want much better!!

HOW CAN WE VOTE FOR THIS?
Just look at the agreement: how can we vote on it when it packages everything - good and bad - together? We get to be part of RM, BUT must accept a derisory pay offer of 1% for 2015 (de facto pay cut), 1.5% for 2016, 2% for 2017, which won't uplift cleaners' low pay?
And a 2-tier cleaning workforce: new starts on the min wage, (3yrs "progression" to max. pay) -goodbye "equal pay for equal work"?
Redundancy pay capped at a max of 2 year's salary? Cleaners' and engineers' bonus schemes gone, replaced with incentive schemes relying on "overachievement"? Engineers to improve 15% on current "productivity" while tracked on GPS? And why’s nothing said about the famous “shares”?
So, while it's "yes" to being back in RM - on this "Agreement" we can only vote NO!

URGENT MEETINGS NEEDED!
Indeed, and since this agreement raises all these problems (union officials don't even seem to have considered that WE may not agree...), there's a need for meetings for everyone concerned and discussion on all of the points, without delay!

OPEN YOUR BOOKS!
What we also wonder is how much the private companies - Hayden, Balfour Beatty and RM have "gained" on our backs out of every one of the transactions when 49% of the operation changed hands? And how much RM will benefit from buying its stake back? We'd like to see the accounts now AND in the future! PS: what about Quadrant?

HASTA LA VISTA
At last the CWU officials at HQ have decided to acknowledge the huge problem their agreements over EVRs have caused, are causing, and will cause into the future!! And not just here at HMP, but nationally, and especially in outlying deliveries! Yup, they signed up to allow mates to rush to take EVR without the proper notice (pay in lieu of notice - PILON as they call it) leaving us short of hands at critical times. And yes, it led to "resourcing anarchy" as the union Deputy General Secretary aptly puts it! And now RM is doing it again! Yes, they're trying to speed up cuts in headcount ahead of the financial year, this April - so mates are being pushed out the door asap! Never mind the chaos!

CARING ONLY FOR THE PROFIT MARGIN
Why would RM want to do this? Well, it's because their share price dips every time big cost payments dent profit margins - as they do when there are big redundancy programmes. So while the share market generally likes job cuts, shareholders still expect RM to deliver on its promise of a high profit margin of 7% by 2018 (Moya Greede pledged this at the time of flotation). But because of the cost of thousands of redundancies, the profit margin dropped to below 4% - affecting both share price and dividends...

AN END TO SELLING JOBS!
Good! So now union reps are told to resist "any attempts by managers to sell or reduce the number of permanent jobs without resolving current issues, including the removal of managers from deliveries".
But what about mates who want and need to leave, for their own reasons and who already made their plans? Well it's simple - they must be replaced with new permanent workers. In fact that should now be the rule - no EVR without a permanent replacement.

BUT WHO'S DOING IT?
In fact we heard that already 9 people are meant to go on EVRs next week, mostly mates from machine processing. And who will do the work? Managers? Buzzy Bee? Not that they know how. But we're happy to provide them with some training on the basics, starting with the "meaning of work"… At a fee, of course.

THEIR METHODS
Unsurprisingly, managers are distributing OT in processing to compensate for the EVRs, when there are still so many of us still working on part-time contracts… (a point also made by the Union's DGS) - so since this is the case, anyone who wants to be made up full time must be - now!!

NO WAY
OT is one thing, but another which is totally unacceptable is when managers ask us in the bull ring, (or anywhere else for that matter), to stay longer after our shift is finished. If they're so eager to clear, they can stay all night if they wish.

THEIR DISORGANISATION
Seems managers can't even set priorities - we're getting yorkies/autolevels full of stuff which has already been sorted, but not put in the right place - so it has to be reprocessed to go where it should’ve gone in the 1st place! How efficient!

WAND BEING WAIVED
We hear Langley (HWDC) is to be yet another RM failure and is to move to Manchester. So will mates who were pushed to move there be allowed to come back here? No! Apparently the compensation they got to move means they won't! How ridiculous! There can be no such ban!

FURRY FRIENDS
Our little companions in the kitchen downstairs are still alive and twitching… and wouldn't mind scaring away the only elephant left in this place! If only they could make him run far and fast enough…

[rainbowwarrior72]

Why are they moving HWDC to Manchester? Its confusing when Heathrow airport is on it's doorstep. We're getting a lot of Chinese work at my MC. Why is it not going to HWDC considering HWDC has lost a lot of work over the years.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Why are they moving HWDC to Manchester? Its confusing when Heathrow airport is on it's doorstep. We're getting a lot of Chinese work at my MC. Why is it not going to HWDC considering HWDC has lost a lot of work over the years.

Any chance its because of the delays ay HWDC/Customs as the moment. The Customers forum is arounnd 95% people chasing internationals in both directions.

[britwrit]

Imports from China have gone through the roof in the last year or so. I suspect the overflow you're seeing is diversions.

They also divided HWDC into two separate buildings a couple of years ago. The old one (HWDC) now only handles export, stuff leaving the country. The new one (ILC - which is in the same industrial park) handles only imports. But from what we've been told, some import work will be coming back to the old building shortly.

[anna]

Hi there thanks for info re HWDC but have you guys been told anything about moving, closure etc...?

[Jiries]

Cancelled.

[britwrit]

You hear so many stories. Management hasn't started (or has even hinted at starting) the official process for closing the two sites, so June seems a little early. (And when does the London Mail Centre Review happen? Does anyone know?)

There are so many factors at work that it would be difficult to make even a guess about what'll happen. Are they going to build a third runway at Heathrow? Are imports from China going to continue to skyrocket? So much work going out to Europe these days is sent by road and is that trend going to continue? And I'm sure tons more of things that I don't even know about.