Mount Pleasant WF bulletin October 6

[anna]

IN THE DARK OVER PENSIONS
Are we missing something? Since RM announced its plans to radically cut ("review"!) our pensions, the CWU HQ has only issued Bulletin Number One ["The fight to save our pensions starts here!" - yeah...] and that was almost 2 months ago!
We're not the only workforce facing pension cuts! A concerted fight against this is needed!

WE WOULD FIGHT
Indeed, making threats of a "strike ballot" as mentioned in the September issue of "Voice", is hardly gonna do the trick - and especially if a strike mandate - which the CWU will surely get - isn't even used, like last time in 2013, when the union leaders rolled over "on our behalf", leaving RM bosses free to sell the Royal Mail to shareholders! Many justifiably say: "How can we trust them now?"

PLANNING TO ROB US!
So, when RM bosses come and tell the CWU negotiators that their shareholders "can't afford" the pension deficit/increase in contributions needed to keep the pension scheme afloat, what then? Will the union call RM's bluff? Because we know very well it's not a case of "can't afford it" but RM's and the government's choice to rather give juicy dividends to the shareholders, while cheating us out of our deferred wages - money which we paid in - it is OUR money!!

AN "UNAGREED SCHEME"?
We've had bad experiences - like in 2007, when negotiations over job cuts and new ways of working were "decoupled" from pension changes during the run-up to a national strike. The strike was cancelled. Which put union leaders in a position of utter weakness when they negotiated cuts to our pensions in 2008. We got the closure of the "good" defined benefit (DB) scheme and the career average (CARE) scheme we have now. The crap Defined Contribution (DC) scheme was given to new starts. The CWU calls this the "unagreed" DC scheme. But RM instituted it over CWU officials' live bodies... Quite simply, they sold us out. We can't allow this to happen again.

IT IS REALISTIC TO DEMAND WHAT WE NEED
And just to add: this is a chance to mend the damage and get a proper defined benefit scheme reinstated for all. Anyone who says this is "unrealistic" is just accepting that the rich in our society are right to refuse to open their over-full pockets. They and the government which cares for them, may need to be "helped" to do so, but they can afford it!

LAME EXCUSES
Why so long a wait for proper full-time jobs in Processing? It's been decades! RM always found lame excuses to keep us part-time, but the latest one is that now there won't be F-T work at all - since there's only "one big rush" on processing, after 7pm…
But this is only because RM cut collections to one per day, in order to please shareholders and cut costs, of course! Not because that's the best way to do things! Why should we pay the price for such dumb greed?!

WE AREN'T DOING CASUAL WORK
What's more, RM/Romec, is still keeping 4 of our mates on casual contracts! Management keeps saying they'll get permanent jobs - but nobody knows when this is meant to happen! There is no "casual" work around here - it's all regular daily predictable work that has to be done. And our "casual" mates are working the same as everybody else in HMP! So we need them with us on the same Ts&Cs!

SCANNING LIKE ROBOTS
The way RM has introduced the finger-scans has created more chaos than anything else! In primary we had the "luxury" of 40 mins training, compared to the 5 mins now given to in secondary… no wonder we can't understand when the device tries to tell us something: 1 bip, 3 bips, 1 buzz… scan done? Connection with PDA lost?? Trackers detected??? We need a class teaching bipping translation! Unless the PDAs and scanners go missing at such a rate that soon there are none left to be found?

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!
Never mind that finger-scans actually slow down processing (thanks to RM's great skill and ability to plan). Still, we're expected to process more work... and managers can monitor how much we do! At least we don't need a device to monitor how much work they don't do...

ON THE CHEAP
Honestly, these mini-yorkies are good for nothing. When we have a heavy load in the bags, the plastic clips… unclip! Well, not surprising, given the cheap materials involved. If RM wants to "save" at the price of a mess, it's their problem. Let the managers get the duck tape…

RAZOR BLADE GONE
We've noticed that one manager went missing recently - apparently sent to Romford. This is good news for us here, less good news for mates there, who'll need to look out for his cutting ways...

WHEELING AND DEALING - LITERALLY!
Imagine RM's big bosses pretending to be experts on Kaizen and presenting HMP's WC Mail to a team from Italy's Fiat! Shouldn't it be the other way round, given it was the car industry which introduced this production method, to rope workers in, to help managers organise things better..? Nevertheless, RM's delighted to hold up HMP's WC as an example... Of what, we aren't sure. Free Fiats all round?

DOWN THE WC
Joke is that here at HMP, WC is struggling to get "gold"! We're told, on the eve of a mock audit, that we're on the starting blocks for "silver"! As if they're Olympic athletes about to do the 100 metres, when all they're trying to run is a piss-up in a brewery. [contact@w-fight.org]

[Jiries]

Cancelled.

[SpacePhoenix]

Most think that we will able to leave after Xmas or early 2017 to allow the engineers to clear down the machines that will take them 2-3 years.

It would only take RM a couple of weeks at most to empty any given MC of all it's machines if they ever wanted to