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

[Martin Walsh]

Your looking at this from now and your Mail Centre.

Currently the vast majority of letters is inward only with DSA and Mailsort ! Royal Mail predict that within 3 years there will be an increased undorted share as small mailing go unsorted.

Shift patterns and flow - Squencing currently starts at midnight and their plan the sequencingwill start as late as compatible with Delivery start times which will move the window for processing and delivery back around 2 hours. This will require non traditional shift patterns.

Parcels currently roughly equal outward and inward split with some bulky item shoppers accepted at the outward Mail centre and inward is currently concentrated onto Kate's and nights. There is 14:00 2c outward dispatch. In the future Royal Nail want an increasingly focussed on inward processing capacity as concentration and direct inject from Amazon and the like will remove outward volume.

Royal Mail believe there will need to round the clock inward operation and they want 2c outward complete by 10:00.

Currently Tracked and untracked parcels are handled as separate streams in separate areas. Currently Mail preparation on site and 2c parcels sorted before processing. In the future with items being barcoded Royal Mail want a single stream and process for tracked and untracked combined. Collection Hubs will prepare Mail for the machines and hold 2c in collection Hubs.

On Automation currently 10 sites have no large letter automation. Only 1 site has parcels automation. Only 12% of large letters is walk sorted and 80% of sequecnced letters are on the first wave.

In the future i.e. Within 3 years. CLLLS rolled out to all manual sites and at least 16 sites with parcel automation and this will result in 55% walk sorted large letters and 90% sequenced letters on first wave.

By moving the window 2 hours they will have later acceptance times and cancel planes at a cost of 1.3 million a plane.

[Martin Walsh]

Additionally one of Royal Mail's priorities are to have Later acceptance times in the middle of the country for next day service with Nationsl coverage. To meet this requirement Royal Mail would need to move flights and road services to later in
the night with a knock on impact on arrival times to some inward Mail centres and delivery start times in their catchment area.

By adopting the Hub and Spoke network model for late acceptance times from NDC and East Midlands airport we are able to limit the impact to Mail centres within 2/3 hours drive to a circular of two hours later.

Based on a 02:00 dispatch from NDC this work would be available in Greenford or the Mount at 04:00 and in Medway for 05:00.

Hence why later starts for delivery are on the table.

[SpacePhoenix]

Squencing currently starts at midnight and their plan the sequencingwill start as late as compatible with Delivery start times which will move the window for processing and delivery back around 2 hours. This will require non traditional shift patterns.

Wrong! Sequencing starts at 18:00 and runs to 04:00 for wave 1 and wave 2 is about 04:30-08:00/08:30

Royal Mail believe there will need to round the clock inward operation and they want 2c outward complete by 10:00.

Only the larger MCs will have the space for that to happen, for smaller MCs it's either inward or outward not both. If they want the 2c done by 10:00 then they'll need to bring the pipeline foward a couple of hours

On Automation currently 10 sites have no large letter automation. Only 1 site has parcels automation. Only 12% of large letters is walk sorted and 80% of sequecnced letters are on the first wave.

In the future i.e. Within 3 years. CLLLS rolled out to all manual sites and at least 16 sites with parcel automation and this will result in 55% walk sorted large letters and 90% sequenced letters on first wave.

Unless each MC gets multiple CLLS machines the best you're going to get is sorted just down to office level, how could a single CLLS machine walk sort mail for potentially 700+ walks

By moving the window 2 hours they will have later acceptance times and cancel planes at a cost of 1.3 million a plane.

If they cancel the planes then mail from the south of England going to Scotland and vice versa will fail as there's no way that it'll get there in time

[ScousePostie]

In one of the slides it says;

"Simplified 10-6 shift pay only for starting or finishing (lates/nights/ dawn)".

What does this mean?

[claretandblue]

What happens when these new super dooper machines break down ? today all our buddy boxes were sent as manual flats to sort on a tuesday with a skeleton staff. We had 3 extra yorks of flats to sort.

[daveyeff]

we had a union meeting today downstairs with our area rep and branch secretary. started at 3pm....I just got in at ten to 5. everything dingo has said was also relayed to us. its all on their agenda. they said they've got loads of other offices to go to with this stuff and there will be updates weeks and MONTHS ahead. which begged the question...how long are these pay talks expected to go on for?? the answer as he shrugged his shoulders was...don't know...could be another 2010 scenario...i.e. 6 months...MORE!!! payrise was due 3 days ago.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

My depot is expected to have a duty revision and re-sign in the near future, it is already overdue, but there are issues to be ironed out. If the 35-hour FT carrot is real (albeit I suspect in steps over the next three years), surely major depot revisions should be on hold until this laughable list of RM demands is negotiated with the CWU, otherwise depots like ours will have duties getting modified and then straight away not really be fit for purpose?

[SpacePhoenix]

What happens when these new super dooper machines break down ? today all our buddy boxes were sent as manual flats to sort on a tuesday with a skeleton staff. We had 3 extra yorks of flats to sort.

Chances are that any CLLS machine will just sort down to office (big DOs might get a basic split if space on the machine). Even a small MC might have 600-700+ walks across all it's DOs, you would need a lot of stackers to have a chance of walk sorting that.

It would be just the same as if all the CSS machines breakdown in a MC or MPU, it would go manual

[Glenno]

CWU.org
CWU.org

04 April 2017

Dear colleagues,
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 3:30pm the DGSP, Terry Pullinger will be holding a LIVE Q&A with all CWU members in Royal Mail Group for 1 hour. This will take place on the unions Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ThecommunicationsUnion/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
You do not have to be a member of Facebook to watch the event but you do have to be logged in and 'like' our page to ask Terry a question.
The whole session will be based around the 4 Pillars strategy and ongoing talks with Royal Mail. Alongside Terry, we will have pensions expert Hilary Salt who has been assisting the union with putting together our pensions proposal to the company.
The session promises to be lively and no questions will be avoided other than those who are abusive. We ask members to be mindful that employers will also be logging in to view the event. Whether it's pay, pensions, job security or pressure at work - this is the forum to voice your opinions.
We also acknowledge that not all of our members will be off work at 3:30pm tomorrow. CWU members work around the clock so there will never be a perfect time. We will rotate the timings of future sessions. A recording of the Q&A will also be available online immediately.
Please get your questions ready and pass this onto your colleagues at work. Like the CWU facebook page and engage with your union.
#TheCWU

[citypostie]

What happens when these new super dooper machines break down ? today all our buddy boxes were sent as manual flats to sort on a tuesday with a skeleton staff. We had 3 extra yorks of flats to sort.

Probably what happens now, most of it gets left on the day in trays and people are offered overtime to come in early next morninng to sort and prep it

[hubbahubba]

Dingo,you mentioned that RM want to do away with early/late/night shifts in MCs.
What shift patterns and times do they favour instead of this?
Also,I assume that if they are to cut it to 2 shifts that VR would be offered as obviously less staff needed if one whole shift is lost,any thoughts on this?

[Kitt2]

In the mc that I work at I've noticed a massive drop in letters even dsa mail not like decades ago when you had rows and rows of letters 24/7 along with it loads of people just on the letters alone it feels like we have really lost something.

[postslippete]

Im not against automation other than the fact that:

1. we will be starting later but not finishing any earlier
2. longer delivery spans with more outdoor work rather than indoor work

Now I understand that point 1 is supposed to be partly resolved by the reduction of the working week to 35 hours. Have the CWU considered reducing our hours to 30 with no loss in pay???? Quality not quantity right.

Because it seems to me, with what you are saying, that most of this indoor work will be done in MC rather than delivery offices? Now that might make sense from a logistic point of view to those already working with machines in large MC but it makes absolutely no sense for an ageing postie who is perhaps expected to double his walk length!

Lastly, will there be any provisions to posties who have childcare issues like me?

[daveyeff]

Dingo,you mentioned that RM want to do away with early/late/night shifts in MCs.
What shift patterns and times do they favour instead of this?
Also,I assume that if they are to cut it to 2 shifts that VR would be offered as obviously less staff needed if one whole shift is lost,any thoughts on this?

at our meeting yesterday the branch sec said they were looking to have 2 twelve hour shifts in mail centres. thereby getting rid of half the managers. .....his words!!

[Kitt2]

That's a long shift would you get more day's off out of that and do overtime on your days off if you wanted too providing it's there