Royal Mail's proposals in the current pay, pensions and change strategy negotiations

[jetblack]

Rome collapsed.

Under the weight of its own inertia.

But yes - the picture you paint is pretty much the one RM are looking at.

Doesn't have to be that way though folks.

The future hasn't happened yet - we are today in the process of shaping it.

[taurus88]

I don't think the revenue will be the same as today, nor will it grow. Royal Mail still has a lot of credit with the generations of people who have grown up with them, and who still have a relationship with the local postperson. What they are seeking with these proposals is to establish themselves as 'just another delivery company', and there will be consequences that go with that including the loss of part of the customer-base. When you are utterly beholden to shareholders, you tend to err on the side of ruthless short-term decision making that doesn't always consider the negative (and unintended) consequences of your actions. But Royal Mail's reputation in my locality is still fairly good, 95% of our postmen are popular with the residents. That reputation will deteriorate as the staff become less-skilled, worse-treated and more temporary (because of higher staff turnover). I look at my office and see a very stable workforce at present. When that stability is taken away, the quality will deteriorate (and it's not always that high at the moment). Imagine the effect it would have on your office if new-starts became a weekly or monthly thing, rather than a yearly thing as they are in the offices I've worked in. Then consider the detrimental effect the resultant lapse in quality might have on Royal Mail's reputation.

It's all good staking your future on razing our Ts & Cs to the ground, but it is just as likely to end in a decade's time with Royal Mail being a nothing company, consumed from the inside by its own greed. The thing is, that won't matter to the people at the top because they'll be gone either way, with a golden handshake regardless of the efficacy of their numerous schemes and initiatives. It seems that there is a perception among privately-owned companies that growth is the only way forward, but stability and reliability should not be taken for granted. Sometimes, when something is woven deeply into the cultural fabric, it holds an unconscious quality that revolves around traditions and nostalgia that money-men cannot easily understand. It's necessary that companies evolve, but evolution is exactly what is necessary, not regression to old, Draconian practices that places every single Shekel above the wellbeing of the common worker. I guess what I'm saying is that these proposals make me pessimistic for the future of Royal Mail, as much as for myself. They have an unimaginative feel to them, as if they were drawn from the beginner's guide to austere business management. They were exactly what I expected and that disappoints me because I'm not a corporate big-wig with "huge" ideas. In a hyper-competitive delivery market, what exactly will there be to distinguish Royal Mail from the rest? Just another delivery company...

[SpacePhoenix]

Space Phoenix second class will be stored in Hubs under Hub Optimisation so won't be done on the lighter days and 90% of sequencing is in 24 of the 39 Mail centres circular of 0200 according to Royal Mail.

MCs will have to send the 2C to the hubs without any processing being done, then the hubs will have to sort the 2C

Space Phoenix you really do need to look at not what is currently happening in Mail centre and think that they want to have collections along with the under the roof activity done in Hubs in Mail centres and second class stored in Hubs and only transported into Mail centres when needed. They want to have a 10:00 dispatch on second class. They want a later last dispatch apart from Track , PS and specials. They want Mail centre to change to support deliveries including getting rid of the traditional early late and night operation.

Does RM want the last acceptance time (and pipeline) moved back 2 hours or do they want the 10:00 dispatch of 2C? They can't have both as by moving the pipeline back a couple of hours, MCs won't have the space or staff to process 2C for a 10:00 dispatch. Tracked, PS (whatever that's short for) and Specials will be a later last dispatch if RM want to move the pipeline back a couple of hours as the work won't get into MCs early enough

They want to move the processing window 2 hours back. They believe this will mean a significant increase in Twilight shifts between 20:00 and 04:00.

And what inward mail do they expect MCs to process for most of that, if they move the pipeline back a couple of hours, they'll need to move night shifts the other way to become 00:00-08:00

One wave with filtering of manual into the bundle in the van and working from two bundles the other being D2D

One wave of work from MCs to DOs will never happen, you'd need to use artics to make it work and how many DOs could handle artics? Some MC-DO runs probably make use of artics which would be running empty otherise back to their parent RDC

Have the people at RM that come up with these ideas had any practical experience either in MCs, DOs or RDCs?

[Martin Walsh]

Space Phoenix the whole point of Hub Optimisation is the majority of collections will be done Hubs and not from Mail Centres. I will answer your other points later.

[Wednesday]

Shame the "have your say" survey was not this week,the results would have been interesting!Well planned to get that out of the way by Royal Mail.

[zz666]

CWU talks about 35 hr week, less stress.... Seems we'll get the opposite.

[Deadly]

Space Phoenix the whole point of Hub Optimisation is the majority of collections will be done Hubs and not from Mail Centres. I will answer your other points later.

I'm confused by all this talk of hubs. What are they going to be, small units on industrial estates or large purpose built buildings similar to mail centres? Are these hubs going to have deliveries in them too?

[postslippete]

I can see that Royal Mail are ambitious but at the moment I really don't believe that these plans will work.

Our office has already had several other offices that closed and are now merged into ours. But prepping a frame and then simply changing the fillets for prepping another duty?? Do you realise how long I have been waiting to get my frame properly updated? Besides, I would feel rather sorry for anyone having their duty prepped second at 10am. I mean what time would they actually start their delivery - 12.30pm??? Does it really take 2 and a half hours to fully prep a delivery that has had all its mail pre-sorted. Well, at the current moment it would, because its not just sequenced mech and the loose items, but also in marking and prepping all the packets, organising the large packets, collecting the specials, getting the bags out of the van, bundling all the mail up. It takes time! Would Royal Mail expect then expect them to do a 5 or 6 hour delivery span as well finishing in the dark??

And its all very well the D2Ds being collated as it were, but how? If its 4 or 5 lots of D2Ds that are not 'sandwiched' inside each other, then I can see many posties really struggling to carry and post them properly along with the bundle of mail as well. And before you tell me that the items should not be 'sandwiched' (I never do them for one or two lots). More likely, what happens is that the letters get mixed up and end up in different neighbours doors.

As for capturing an extra million parcels by moving the pipeline back two hours. Have Royal Mail ever considered the possibility of taking all the medium and large parcels off us delivery posties and employ parcel only drivers from say 2 till 8pm?? Maybe we could revert back to how it used to be with delivery only drivers taking the bulk, specials and medium/large parcels.

Lighter days, 2 deliveries to be done by full-time posties. Have the bosses been smoking meth?? How does that not seriously affect our 'quality of service'? Do we now communicate to our customers that if you buy a 1st class stamp to post something - its not actually 1st class at all and won't arrive next day, and that you might as well use 2nd class instead? What sort of message is that conveying to our customers? We are promising a service that the customer just isn't getting. And killing us off in the process.

And you already know my thoughts about teamworking. I won't be doing any extra work for diddly squat. And any who does, needs to have their head re-examing...

[magicw]

And you already know my thoughts about teamworking. I won't be doing any extra work for diddly squat. And any who does, needs to have their head re-examing...

O


Our office has already got 10 full time walk vacancies ( nearly 10% ) of the walks in the office , were people have left and not been replaced.
These walks are either Lapsed every day or completed by Overtime on heavy days. The management have let this situation develop over about 2 years , by taking no one on!

How could you even contemplate " team working " in an office were the starting point is 10 full time duties ( I m confident this would be the case in many offices )

Surely the responsibility to staff/ resource walks is the Mangements, its about the only thing they feckin do!!!!!!!!!! Or Not.

[SpacePhoenix]

Space Phoenix the whole point of Hub Optimisation is the majority of collections will be done Hubs and not from Mail Centres. I will answer your other points later.

I'm confused by all this talk of hubs. What are they going to be, small units on industrial estates or large purpose built buildings similar to mail centres? Are these hubs going to have deliveries in them too?

Hubs are DOs were collections get taken to and the mail gets prepped ready for processing in a MC (eg mech mail trayed up). I think locally we've only got one hub, if RM want to send out the 2C to them, they'll need to use an artic and they'll need the space to be able to store getting onto a 100 yorks (probably 150+ at busier times). If RM do move the pipeline back a couple of hours, they may as well axe the 10am 2C dispatch from MCs as combined with the time needed to set up the work area and the time taken for multiple lorry runs from the hub to the MC with the 2C they've not got a hope in hell of the 2C being processed in time for a 10am dispatch

[worktotime]

I can see that Royal Mail are ambitious but at the moment I really don't believe that these plans will work.

Our office has already had several other offices that closed and are now merged into ours. But prepping a frame and then simply changing the fillets for prepping another duty?? Do you realise how long I have been waiting to get my frame properly updated? Besides, I would feel rather sorry for anyone having their duty prepped second at 10am. I mean what time would they actually start their delivery - 12.30pm??? Does it really take 2 and a half hours to fully prep a delivery that has had all its mail pre-sorted. Well, at the current moment it would, because its not just sequenced mech and the loose items, but also in marking and prepping all the packets, organising the large packets, collecting the specials, getting the bags out of the van, bundling all the mail up. It takes time! Would Royal Mail expect then expect them to do a 5 or 6 hour delivery span as well finishing in the dark??

And its all very well the D2Ds being collated as it were, but how? If its 4 or 5 lots of D2Ds that are not 'sandwiched' inside each other, then I can see many posties really struggling to carry and post them properly along with the bundle of mail as well. And before you tell me that the items should not be 'sandwiched' (I never do them for one or two lots). More likely, what happens is that the letters get mixed up and end up in different neighbours doors.

As for capturing an extra million parcels by moving the pipeline back two hours. Have Royal Mail ever considered the possibility of taking all the medium and large parcels off us delivery posties and employ parcel only drivers from say 2 till 8pm?? Maybe we could revert back to how it used to be with delivery only drivers taking the bulk, specials and medium/large parcels.

Lighter days, 2 deliveries to be done by full-time posties. Have the bosses been smoking meth?? How does that not seriously affect our 'quality of service'? Do we now communicate to our customers that if you buy a 1st class stamp to post something - its not actually 1st class at all and won't arrive next day, and that you might as well use 2nd class instead? What sort of message is that conveying to our customers? We are promising a service that the customer just isn't getting. And killing us off in the process.

And you already know my thoughts about teamworking. I won't be doing any extra work for diddly squat. And any who does, needs to have their head re-examing...

well said , most of these fools who are coming up with these world beating plans have never done a hard days work in there life , come and show us how it works and how to do it,

[Martin Walsh]

Whilst I agree a lot of what you say about Royal Mail's ideas and that they are barking up the wrong tree on the multiple bundle system , the real issue we have to confront is Royal Mail believe they are not getting the true efficiency from Automation and in particular walk sequencing due to the fact it is sorted in a frame and that is why they want the first 90% not sorted into a frame. The second 10% based which would be 70 letters if you had 700 in total sequencing letters along with what manual would be sorted into a frame but you would not need such a big frame due to the the amount of Mail and this is where they are coming from with staggered start times with OPGs using the same frames. Now the key for Royal Mail is this would allow them to close further Delivery offices.

Now Royal Mail used to have a lighter day when we had two deliveries and that was on Saturday''s when there was just one delivery and second class , Mail sort , rebate never went out. Royal Mail already give a better than advirtised services for second class and the USO only makes up around 40 odd percent of your daily workload. This would lead to a significant number of job losses.

[Martin Walsh]

Space Phoneix Hub Optimisation is about taking collections away from the Mail Centre to save on mileage and to have collections concentrated to primary Hubs i.e. Delivery offices in the afternoon and evening for onward transport to the Mail Centre this will save on stem mileage.

Primary collection Hubs will stream parcels and hold 2c parcels. Primary collection Hubs will prep Mail to go direct to machines in Mail centres

In Mail centre's

90% of sequenced letters on first wave , enable through optimising batch clear. Downs and local plans.

55% of large letters buddy walk sorted enabled through CLLLS deployment and changes to sort and work plans.

16 automated parcel machines

All 2 C parcels dispatched by 10:00 increased focus on inwards parcels with more continuous inward processing

Eventual combination of tracked and untracked as a single stream as allowed through automation and scanning requirements

Need for Agile / flexible workforce in processing ( Non traditional shift patterns )

Accurate hours and traffic recording with effective rostering tools and appropriate resourcing model.

These are Royal Mail's words not mine and that is their plan and what they want to trial.

[Creditshampoo]

If they try and change my duty time to finish in the dark I'll be bringing it back before sundown everyday

[SpacePhoenix]

90% of sequenced letters on first wave , enable through optimising batch clear. Downs and local plans.

No chance, best they can hope for is 80%. If they wanted 90% then we wouldn't be able to start the sequencing until 04:00 at the earliest, time sensitive mail would fail and some DOs wouldn't get their sequenced mail till the afternoon

55% of large letters buddy walk sorted enabled through CLLLS deployment and changes to sort and work plans.

Unless each MC gets multiple CLLS machines it won't happen

16 automated parcel machines

Probably only the 16 largest MCs will get them

All 2 C parcels dispatched by 10:00 increased focus on inwards parcels with more continuous inward processing

No chance, not every MC will have the room to be able to sort inward and outward at the same time. If RM move the pipeline back by 2 hours then no MC will be able to have all the 2C parcels ready for 10:00 as the staff and sorting space will be in use

Eventual combination of tracked and untracked as a single stream as allowed through automation and scanning requirements

They'd need to at least double the number of PDAs that we have and we'd need at least 2 batteries per PDA, probably more likely 3 batteries per PDA

Need for Agile / flexible workforce in processing ( Non traditional shift patterns )

Shift patterns are built around main dispatch times

Accurate hours and traffic recording with effective rostering tools and appropriate resourcing model.

They'd need to put hours in for that to happen, if anything they'd probably look to take hours out