ballot vote %

[Ozzvaldo]

A significant proportion of deliveries in my office go over, and I'm talking an hour plus, several days a week, including Mondays and Tuesdays when the lapsing plans are ramped up because it's "quiet". The duties are simply too big at present and the managers are intimidatory bullies.

Dingo, I simply don't believe there will be any interest by RM to invest in my office based upon PDA readings because it's been f*****d up since P&L came in 7 years ago, and what their own eyes, OT bill and shamefully numerous B&H grievances tells them hasn't made a s****e of difference to the way the office is managed. Apologies for the language.

[clashcityrocker]

And who will care what the PDA actuals say if the office is deemed "inefficient"?
How will we be judging inefficient going forward?

[Stunners]

Lets hope the PDA's are more reliable at data capture than doing what they are supposed to do and that's scanning items then

[Sugar]

You will only do the same workload in 38 hours if the PDA actuals for your office state that there is scope to absorb that hour. If your office works to time than Royal Mail will invest as the PDA actuals will conform that you cannot absorb that hour.

However the reason why we need to look at the working
week is that automation and the fact that the amount on the first wave has increased in the vast majority of Delivery Offices from 60% to the mid 70s and therefore Royal Mail do not want the first wave sorted into a frame , instead there will be four options trialed which all are based on indoor merging of workload but with without the first wave being sorted. This is anticipated to save an amount of prep time on each walk. Royal Mail assumptions are as much as 25 mins per walk per day and if they are right and there not always wrong than that will mean that on 5 day week 2 hours and 5 mins will be lost each week and if there is not a shorter working week than your span will have to increase to compensate that loss.

So that is why we want a SWW. In terms of doing the same work in less hours this will only be the case if duties currently do not finish to time. No union can argue that we want a reduction in the working week to safeguard jobs in the future but by the way we don’t actually want to work the hour we are paid.

In the last 10 years we have seen sequencing , more flats Automated by buddying system , we now have parcel automation , we have d2d automation , we have PDA s which send a ping every 12 seconds showing the latitude and longitude of where it is on a walk , the route someone goes , where they stop and when they finish , we have Automated hours Data Capture which the union has limited in its use from clocking in and when you leave the floor and when you return from delivery and when you leave the building. Royal Mail wanted to put sensors on the IPS frames , the Prep frames and packet frames which would have allowed them to know how long each individual is on the IPS , Prep and Parcel frames , their aim was to have a compete Resourcing tool to link with the planned final mile Optimisation plan which feeds all the data in and the provide a different set of walks on a weekly basis for an office by all that data.

So this is why the union is looking for a reduction in the working week and it maybe the case on the first hour people will be doing the same work but the second hour will be based on a planned reduction in prep time.

That's all well and good Dingo but the data capture in our office, and probably many others, has been done with hardly anyone doing the job as its supposed to be. No trolleys no meal reliefs and cutting corners out on delivery. The data captured will be flawed and so will be any walks built off it which is par for the course with anything RM bring in. The data capture shouldn't have started till the union had some how forced RM to make sure ALL delivery offices were doing the job to the letter and if they weren't then OPG's should have had a way of reporting the managers/offices involved which didn't require you to leave name rank and number.

The scope for this data capture to be misused and abused is epic and it leaves the OPG's with no way of being able to cut off because all your LM will do say is "the PDA says you have time". Forced overtime will go through the roof as will B&H and sick leave due to stress.

The union really hasn't thought this through properly from an OPG's perspective of what ACTUALLY goes on in most DO's on a daily basis.

P&L, Pegasus, has been a disaster from day one as has any revision since all because RM cannot properly collect and interpret data for toffee. Time and motion at its worst.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

The PDA isn't going to show who came early, working for free.
The PDA is not going to know which duties are having their indoor 318s fudged (eg. Bob is supposed to sort parcels for an hour, then double-prep both sides of the park and loop duty before partner arrives at 0930 according to 318, but this means they will go over by some margin, so Bob is told to just do 40min parcels and Jim preps one frame while he is doing parcels).
The PDA isn't going to know who has taken the pre-delivery segment of their meal relief.
The PDA isn't going to show who is using a pouch, which might be overweight, for sections of delivery that should be being delivered using the LWT or HCT.
Even if the PDA is accurate enough to show who is spending 2+ seconds per drop standing still, getting mail for the next address from the working bundle, RM won't be interested in how those seconds add up over typically 500+ delivery points per OPG.
RM won't be interested in how the PDA shows how many (I suspect most of us) don't stop for meal relief outdoors.
I'm not convinced the PDA will be able to accurately show the call rate on a delivery on any given day, especially in blocks of flats, from my own personal GPS tracking experiments.
The PDA is not going to know that neighbour's car is not on drive, so there's no point knocking on their door to take a parcel.
etc.

For the PDA data to be meaningful, it requires a lot of objective analysis, linos/DOMs won't look at PDA data unless an OPG is regularly cutting off and/or claiming "excessive" overtime.

[Nickvilla20]

There far to many grey areas for me and I’m still undecided.

I think there will be a pretty big yes vote though from what I’ve heard people say in my office even though most haven’t even read the agreement.

Might be just a wait and see what happens but I doubt it will be for the benefit of us posties in the long run.

[postslippete]

You will only do the same workload in 38 hours if the PDA actuals for your office state that there is scope to absorb that hour. If your office works to time than Royal Mail will invest as the PDA actuals will conform that you cannot absorb that hour.

However the reason why we need to look at the working
week is that automation and the fact that the amount on the first wave has increased in the vast majority of Delivery Offices from 60% to the mid 70s and therefore Royal Mail do not want the first wave sorted into a frame , instead there will be four options trialed which all are based on indoor merging of workload but with without the first wave being sorted. This is anticipated to save an amount of prep time on each walk. Royal Mail assumptions are as much as 25 mins per walk per day and if they are right and there not always wrong than that will mean that on 5 day week 2 hours and 5 mins will be lost each week and if there is not a shorter working week than your span will have to increase to compensate that loss.

So that is why we want a SWW. In terms of doing the same work in less hours this will only be the case if duties currently do not finish to time. No union can argue that we want a reduction in the working week to safeguard jobs in the future but by the way we don’t actually want to work the hour we are paid.

In the last 10 years we have seen sequencing , more flats Automated by buddying system , we now have parcel automation , we have d2d automation , we have PDA s which send a ping every 12 seconds showing the latitude and longitude of where it is on a walk , the route someone goes , where they stop and when they finish , we have Automated hours Data Capture which the union has limited in its use from clocking in and when you leave the floor and when you return from delivery and when you leave the building. Royal Mail wanted to put sensors on the IPS frames , the Prep frames and packet frames which would have allowed them to know how long each individual is on the IPS , Prep and Parcel frames , their aim was to have a compete Resourcing tool to link with the planned final mile Optimisation plan which feeds all the data in and the provide a different set of walks on a weekly basis for an office by all that data.

So this is why the union is looking for a reduction in the working week and it maybe the case on the first hour people will be doing the same work but the second hour will be based on a planned reduction in prep time.

You know when I read this I nearly choked on my Weetabix.

PDA Actuals should not be used by managers to assess workloads and determine whether we should absorb or not. Just imagine you get a dozen guys regularly coming in early, skipping breaks and finishing their shift an hour early BUT you also get a dozen guys in a section starting their shift on time and working past their time - so answer me this question dingo - should this section ABSORB?? Because in my experience this is what leads to B&H, and can you imagine, managers bringing posties in their office bemoaning PDA Actuals. Coupled with any "local agreements" depending on how good some reps are in their offices, its really a recipe for disaster.

Is SWW really such a good thing? 25 minutes of not prepping a duty translates as 25 minutes additional time of outdoor work. I can just imagine how RM will play it out. First of all, there will be MORE lapsing and absorption to get everyone used to walking longer and doing bigger duties.

[Celgar]

I think dingo has got it spot on compared to what Royal Mail wanted the cwu has got a lot more than I expected the wage is much better than most unskilled workers are ever going to get and what other alternative is there for a pension going forward we could strike from now till Christmas but the db scheme isn’t going to stay open pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to is reasonably happy contrary to what people are saying on here

I'm not sure who you have been speaking to but I would say morale within the RM workforce has been at rock bottom for years and it isn't moving as a consequence of the current proposal/agreement. I'll admit I personally still like and enjoy doing the job but I'm probably in a minority. But I don't enjoy the continual flow of **** that falls upon our heads from upper management. I agree some of the aspects of the agreement are a good deal negotiated by the CWU . The RM share price is still storming upwards though from which you can take that RM drew the longer straw. 1630 is the maximum on paper delivery end time for rurals which isn't far off RM objective target. The direction of travel is still in RM favour and the next negotiation time will show more where we are going to end up.

[Celgar]

The City seem to see it as business as usual also. RMG up from £4.69 pre agreemant announcement, to £5.50 today. Coincidence ?

When the RM three year saving in wages to buy more shares option ended last year, which was pre agreement I think, the share price was about 3.60 to about 5.50 today which is a massive percentage increase. This reflects in how good a deal RM got for themselves.

[Celgar]

It sounds like there is more specific information available as regards changes to working practices than is actually written in the official agreement. Dingo mentions four options as regards "merging" mail rather than sorting it into our sorting frames. I don't recall any four options in the agreements regarding "merging" mail but it would be very handy to have knowledge of them.
I think we have to have a NO vote - not to go on strike but to get more precise information regarding work methodology. I realise RM won't know exactly what will be implemented but they must have an end game or some idea where they want to end up. We need that to know information such as:
RM trials on time window for tracked items. What size of time window would they LIKE to have eg 1 hour ?
What does RM actually physically mean by the word 'merge' & 'merging' ?
If there are four options for 'merging' mail in the trial can we be told them ?
More clearly defined what they mean by 'first wave' of mail ? If this is just the first trays of sequenced mail then that amount definitely isn't 60 to 70 percent of the mail volumes we deal with !!
There are more specific items of information we need access to but I don't know them all as i'm only in a DO. It isn't possible to know what actually will happen but just what you are precisely wish to do and the possible changes RM could do to get there. At the moment we are in the dark and can only envisage scenarios that at best will take longer to do or are actually physically impossible to do.

[Son Of God]

We all know any PDA data that supports investment shall be ignored pretty much in the same way as when revisions have been considered for units and they determine in the early stages that an investment is required, they step away and move to another unit and only progress in units when savings can be made.

[Son Of God]

A reduction in the working week and than 2% next April and a further hour off the working week.

But no reduction in the workload, in fact, the same workload in fewer hours. That's what I am hearing from my unit. That's the biggest concern outside pensions.

instead there will be four options trialed which all are based on indoor merging of workload but with without the first wave being sorted.

On what page of the proposed agreement does it explain this?

[SpacePhoenix]

More clearly defined what they mean by 'first wave' of mail ? If this is just the first trays of sequenced mail then that amount definitely isn't 60 to 70 percent of the mail volumes we deal with !!

and that % of sequenicng on wave 1 will drop a bit with the SWW, less time available for sequencing the mail