Royal Mails grand plan/end game.

Celgar · Post by **Celgar** » 04 Feb 2018, 12:32

Royal Mail's grand plan or end game is their misconception that delivery office staff are 'prepping already prepped mail'. As with every action within RM their never ending concern is with the employees use of paid work time and whether every single minute is being consumed by job related activity. If we finish twenty minutes before time it would seem to them that the world has ended. On the other hand certainly upper management and above don't want to know if we are still working past end of duty time. The 'shop floor' end of management and the union reps do arguably care but their hands are tied while they get beaten into submission by those above.
Now back to their grand plan. RM want the best use made of every minute so where possible more machinery will be deployed to get the work done quicker, increase capacity, and cut costs. RM are investigating or trialling the eventual sorting by machine of all letters, flats, and parcels as well as combining D2Ds into one 'bunch' for each delivery point. This brings to rise many questions:
1) Is there actually machinery available that can sequence ALL the letters and flats? Currently a lot of sorting is still completed within delivery offices.
2) Is there actually machinery available than can sequence ALL the letters and flats TOGETHER ?
3) Is there actually machinery available than can sort D2Ds into delivery point 'bunches' ?
4) Can machinery be used so that none or very few mistakes are made ?
Currently in the sequenced mech trays of letters we get numbers of unsorted letters at the back of the letter trays. We also get letters not relevant to the walk or even the office. We have times where a lot of the letters are upside down or sometimes alternating upside down. This kind of thing has to be stopped before the grand plan can even be considered.
We now need to ask three more questions:
1) Is how we are currently prepping letters doing the prep twice or is it using the best tools we have and competing the task in good time ?
2) Is it going to be more efficient, more time consuming, or even possible to deliver from sequenced trays of mail and removing the DO sorting frames from the equation ?
3) How, by whom, and where will the redirection of mail be conducted ?
I would personally argue that the DO sorting frames are the best tool for a number of reasons but let's explore the grand plan idea. Apparently in the past the idea of jackets or belts with several large pockets for bundles of mail or D2D has been floated. I don't think any of us could see any merit in this old idea. Others have mentioned more recently the idea that the sequenced mail would arrive at delivery offices in trays with the letters, flats, D2Ds all in separate trays. Just imagine how many trays would be needed to do that and trying to fit them into the van without them tipping over and mixing up. Having to go to the back of the van at every delivery point and pick through three trays and then maybe rummage through parcels. Currently Postie's do little things like turning a letter round to signify there is a parcel for an address. In this new system you likely wouldn't do this. Actually you might get a manifest list instead but that would be more work on the mail centre end especially with the amount of parcels and small packets we get nowadays. Even then you would have to rummage through instead of getting them in order in the sorting office. A lot of delivery's are shared van ones now. Having mail arriving in multiple trays would be even more time consuming for them as they use pouches. Then you have the issue of redirections. God knows how they would be done in this new system.
Finally you have the issue of letter volumes falling year on year. It has to be considered whether it is a good use of time and resources to go to all this trouble. Countries such as Germany and Denmark have rapidly falling non parcel volumes and will soon switch to every other day, two or three days or even only one day per week!! I admit they have different cultures in these countries and we are likely to carry on sending cards etc. I would argue instead that we should concentrate more on the parcel & packet side of the business like our competitors. That is the increasing market and where the money will be.
In short I cannot see any viability in this grand plan of removing sorting frames from delivery offices and wonder why the CWU put any credence to it.

Jefferson Starfish · Post by **Jefferson Starfish** » 04 Feb 2018, 12:38

Isn’t the plan for the mail to reach the DO sequenced, bench merge what isn’t sequenced, sort out the redirections, etc and then bag up as now?

Celgar · Post by **Celgar** » 04 Feb 2018, 12:45

No I was under the impression the mail would all arrive in trays and then be shifted straight into the back of the vans. This is one of the big problems with the proposal/agreement from the CWU/RM. It is just far too vague on nearly everything apart from the pay increase. Its like the union think we are just a bunch of mindless idiots who will just take the money with no forethought of the inevitable consequences.

mark.cup · Post by **mark.cup** » 04 Feb 2018, 13:17

How the hell is bench merging going to be anything other than a complete pain in the ass! and after 500 years do these idiots not think we who do the job would have a pretty good idea of the best way of doing things...

Redirections,turning packets etc make so much more sense using a frame,checking a manifest every 2 seconds for your 400 Chinese packets sounds like a recipe for disaster....

theargyspy · Post by **theargyspy** » 04 Feb 2018, 13:44

Thanks Celgar for a very erudite and well reasoned post, I have nothing to add to the debate being Sunday afternoon and I'm chilling but when I see a
post like yours I wish there was a "Thanks" Button

Jefferson Starfish · Post by **Jefferson Starfish** » 04 Feb 2018, 14:26

Celgar wrote:No I was under the impression the mail would all arrive in trays and then be shifted straight into the back of the vans.

That might work on a rural, but on a normal town walk? I don’t think so!

This is one of the big problems with the proposal/agreement from the CWU/RM. It is just far too vague on nearly everything apart from the pay increase. Its like the union think we are just a bunch of mindless idiots who will just take the money with no forethought of the inevitable consequences.

The official line is they’re going to trial different methods, isn’t it? So it’s going to be vague until they’ve decided on something. No?

Dorset Plodder · Post by **Dorset Plodder** » 04 Feb 2018, 19:54

Royal Mail will definitely suffer from the "Principle of Unforeseen Circumstances"

They believe they know what we do..... the haven't got a Scooby Do. Every Postie has their own little "Tricks" for helping them during the day. Turning mail or inserting 739s for parcels..... writing "P" for parcel, or "Z" ( zap) for scanning......... doing back to back bundles for some roads to save time....... reversing loops on some days.......starting where you've got a large parcel.....reversing the dut,y or cutting off if you've got 9 o 'clocks or normal specials. None of these things show up on their Management Radar because they're the sort of things Posties learn by Experience.

IF they ever bought in half these stupid ideas they'd probably end up with twice as much overtime being claimed. So much for money saving ideas.

Recently we've had some changes in the office (mainly start times) which..... guess what....were designed to save money. A lot of the unhappy Posties reverted to working "Properly" and loe and behold it started costing more overtime..... so we've mainly reverted back to the old system!

k979aaa · Post by **k979aaa** » 04 Feb 2018, 20:40

Too many dick's at the top of royal mail even if they don't a dicky do what to do grand plans on paper but don't bear out any sense in reality too much big brother or an Orwellian scheme fit for the 1940's!

postslippete · Post by **postslippete** » 04 Feb 2018, 21:06

Ah yes, this is the game changer that may lead to a lot of redundancies. Royal Mail's grand plan is to have one wave of mail sequenced, 90% I think was quoted with the rest unsequenced. There won't be a frame to put the mail in but instead we will bench-merge the rest from the back of our vans. Any packets that we forget to remember, well, theres always tomorrow or the day after. Quality will suffer but that don't matter as long as we make a big fat profit. .

Post by **greengiant** » 04 Feb 2018, 21:13

What about redirections / keepsafes / call and collects? If we no longer have frames, where will keepsafes & call and collects be kept?

Post by **SpacePhoenix** » 04 Feb 2018, 21:31

postslippete wrote:Ah yes, this is the game changer that may lead to a lot of redundancies. Royal Mail's grand plan is to have one wave of mail sequenced, 90% I think was quoted with the rest unsequenced. There won't be a frame to put the mail in but instead we will bench-merge the rest from the back of our vans. Any packets that we forget to remember, well, theres always tomorrow or the day after. Quality will suffer but that don't matter as long as we make a big fat profit. .

The best that you can generally hope for with 1 wave is about 85% and with the shorter working week, that'll cut down on the available time for sequencing so the % will probably drop. Some batches will often have 8-10 boxes on wave 2 so if one wave comes in then they'll be going manual. You'll possibly find that the sequencing will eventually go out later so then possible ALL DOs will be later starts

k979aaa · Post by **k979aaa** » 04 Feb 2018, 21:42

greengiant wrote:What about redirections / keepsafes / call and collects? If we no longer have frames, where will keepsafes & call and collects be kept?

In your mind as they will conduct you for it or glove box if it ain't a bipper!

Post by **arsenalbob** » 04 Feb 2018, 21:52

Let's take the wheels off the vans. Then we could put them back on again

Post by **Brandy** » 05 Feb 2018, 16:04

arsenalbob wrote:Let's take the wheels off the vans. Then we could put them back on again

Dont give them ideas!!!

clashcityrocker · Post by **clashcityrocker** » 05 Feb 2018, 16:13

greengiant wrote:What about redirections / keepsafes / call and collects? If we no longer have frames, where will keepsafes & call and collects be kept?

You will still have a frame - it will just be a lot smaller.
You might have some more postcodes in your office.
Keepsafes and call and collect will be handed to the callers office as they are now.