At the end of the day , there are 129,535 employees in Royal Mail and there are 110 829 CWU members.
The CWU members will be the ones who have a say on whether we will strike or we will accept the proposals.
The CWU , it predecessors the UCW and UPW have been the only organisation which with the backing of its members have made significant improvements in the working conditions of its members.
Remember prior to 2003 the vast majority of delivery OPGs worked 6 days per week. Everything which makes up the job , the amount of annual leave, maternity and paternity leave , pensions , meal reliefs , allowances , VR payments , pay protection , excess travelling , election payments , sick payments along with so many other issues.
How did the CWU get most of these through struggle and disputes.
When you examine most of what Royal Mail is proposing on pay than it is what they been proposing for years , monthly pay , getting rid of legacy payments , performance related pay etc. They have been proposing these things for years and the CWU have managed to stop them. Lets be clear on legacy payments these are reducing year on year as new employees don't receive them and when employees leave they go. There is no reason why Royal Mail needs to switch these off when employees have built their life"s around them for years.
On monthly pay they have been proposing this since the late 1980"s and even tried a voluntary scheme where you could opt for monthly pay and they have never been able to introduce it.
On pensions they have made a new proposal which still leave employees in two different schemes and is still vastly inferior than the current DB scheme. For example a section c member who is 50 in 2018 with 30 years service retiring at 65 will see their pension benefits reduced by 22.3%. A section c member with 10 years service aged 30 at 2030 retiring at 65 will see their pension benefit reduced by 51%. This is not acceptable.
on the wide Royal Mail proposal which some seem to be missing is the following :
All Delivery Starts times will move at least 2 hours later to ensure later acceptance times at the national distribution centre in Daventry. This will allow Royal Mail to delivery next day parcels which is the growing market which Royal Mail do not currently play in.
That mail centres and MPUs do not process wave 1 until 95% of work is available. This will mean delivery offices will receive this work later. In addition they do not want delivery staff to throw this 95% of work into their frame. This will reduce indoor work and move start times later again. The remaining work will not need big frames to sort into and this will help Royal Mail close / merge another 400 delivery offices.
Trial of heavy and light days so on 3 days per week meaning that less than 50% of the workload goes out meaning less staff on the lighter days.
Route ownership with groups working together but without delivery cuts offs.
Seasonal variations of hours.
in Mail Centres Royal Mail want too reduced dispatches and are reviewing the main dispatch. In addition they are reviewing the indoor workplace.
Royal Mail also want remove all flights where possible which will move deliveries later.
On area distribution and Logistics they want to maximise vehicle utilisation i.e. less trips in larger vehicles.
Deployment of 10/11 CLLLS machines deployed to sites without tops 2k machines which removes processing and delivery workload
Collection Hub Optimisation start and finish location of routes , COD3 , fleet reduction and storage of 2nd class in line with the principle of just in time in mail centres.
So whilst some may say strikes are old fashioned the alternative is you allow Royal Mail to implement whatever they want without an argument.
Royal Mail only listen when the CWU and its members force them too. This is a time when all union members need to united.
So there is plenty of disagreement on issues , there is no need for people to start flagging up what your willing to give up. You don't see Royal Mail asking its managers what they
