14/02/2018 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 14th of February. Comments always welcome!

... OR IS IT UNION “INCORPORATED”?
Lo and behold, while we were waiting for the union to
distribute their “negotiators’ settlement” (it was, however,
already on the Royalmailchat online) Moya Greede told her
managers to distribute that “Colleague Update” which gives
the “key points” and tells us if we want to see the full
agreement, just “ask your manager”! She also helpfully tells
us that “the CWU will ballot members... and recommend they
vote in favour”. Is this a perverse strategy by the union to get
us to vote against?

UNSALEABLE GOODS
Quite evidently, this deal is not something we’d want to buy,
not in a month of Sundays. Page after page we read how the
CWU in “mutual interest” together with the bosses of this
private shareholder-owned company, will work to make such
a marvellous profitable success story you just can’t believe it.
And we don’t! BTW their profits mean our increased
exploitation. It’s quite unacceptable!

SMOKE THIS “JOINT”!
Yes, and this will come to pass, apparently, via
CWU/management joint working parties, joint reviews, joint
forums… It’s not "collaboration" any more (which was bad
enough), it’s collusion! In fact if all goes to plan, union
officials might as well offer to supplant at least half the current
RM managers… there certainly won’t be seats in offices for
all of them together! But we imagine that the CMA might
have something to say about that...

KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD
However there is a bit of a problem: with the exception of the
offer on pay, all these 39 pages of joint-this-and-that basically
“agree” nothing concrete at all! All of it is kicked down the
garden path - to be decided on over the course of the next
year! Which of course means they hope to get away with
turning the screw on our conditions of work in exactly the
same way they proposed to do in the first place, when we
voted by 89% to strike against them!

PENSION SCHEME TRICK
As for the pensions - well, they’re stealing DB pension
money. Of course, whether the Collective Defined
Contribution scheme sees the light of day, depends on the
government passing the regulations - which it might. But
we’re losing out and as we said before it’s a lie that they can’t
afford to pay us the pensions we saved for. The deficit they
claim is going to accrue in the future is pure speculation and
a projected figure based on estimates, based on everchanging
parameters! What’s more, once in this CDC scheme we have no
protection against it going bust - only DB schemes are insured
by the government’s Pension Protection Fund.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS!!
As for pay, it doesn't get better: RM pulled out of its sleeve a
5% pay rise - only it’s really 5% over the whole period since
our last pay rise! So it’s actually below 2.5% and thus at
least 2% below inflation and again, exactly what we voted
against last year!! And worse, it’s not even backdated to April
2017 - only from October. Imagine that they would try to trick
us like that!

PART-TIMERS LEFT HANGING
We part-timers weren't too surprised to find zilch of any
substance, on being moved to full-time jobs, as many of us
wish! It's all left to another "joint" CWU/RM review…
sometime in the future. But what was pretty shocking was to
read that managers and union officials have agreed to
introduce MORE part-timers according to requirements! (And
where is the ban on agency workers in "normal times"?)

WORKING TIME LAUGHING
We laughed a good deal when we were told in WTL last week
that managers were planning to reduce the full-time working
week by an hour (before the "settlement"/"agreement" is even
voted on?). Meaning what? That we should start our shifts
12 minutes later?

A TWO-TIER WORKFORCE
Then in the small print we see that new workers are going to
be taken on as full-timers on a 35-hour week in October, in
other words they’ll be on fewer hours but of course less
money (we will still be on 40 hours!)? So is the CWU
agreeing a 2-tier workforce? Of course, all RM ever wanted
was a fully-flexible part-time workforce, The problem is that
the CWU has put its name to "new and inventive duty
arrangements to align resource to workload" which means
just that.

CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE
That WTL video hammering over and again that change is
coming sounded like a broken record. No, times haven't
changed! Big shareholders and workers still have opposite
interests… But maybe RM thinks that by repeating a lie we'd
swallow it?

LIGHT DUTIES MEANS LIGHT DUTIES
On light duties, we're fed up with these managers that come
track us down in order to harass us . Some of us have been
even asked to do packets when it’s obvious that’s not “light”.
Anyway we will continue to take their silliness lightly - and
carry on as before.

THIS ELEPHANT HAS NO MEMORY AT ALL
The Elephant is once again checking on cleaner’s sick leave.
And why? Just because there aren’t enough of us, stretched
as we are across too many duties - which is a vicious circle
because it’s a sure recipe for us hurting ourselves or getting
ill. You’d think he’d know that by now?

WHERE SHOULD WE SEND THIS PACKAGE?
Oh dear - it appears that MP top bosses actually believe that
putting Bobzilla on lates with Casper the Hound will speed up
clearance and all will be much improved! Poor fools.
They've sure got another thing coming!

[chickenwittle]

Christ why do I bother reading that bulletin every time it's posted . Do they ever have anything positive to say about the job ,change the record or in fact change your job if it's so bad.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Christ why do I bother reading that bulletin every time it's posted . Do they ever have anything positive to say about the job ,change the record or in fact change your job if it's so bad.

So you don't like it, why post a response, no one is forcing you to read it. Freedom of speech means you allow people to have different views if you don't like that simple concept.....

Also why do people always think if you complain about a job you don't like it. How about if you like the job but not how you are treated, stay and try to change, it or leave (as you suggest) and let it get worse. One way is the coward's way, I'll leave to decide which one.

[Surfpostie]

I agree teens,let people get things off their chests. I look forward to reading the bulletin.

[loverman shabba]

Christ why do I bother reading that bulletin every time it's posted . Do they ever have anything positive to say about the job ,change the record or in fact change your job if it's so bad.

give us a bulletin about how positive your job is then?

[hans solo]

Christ why do I bother reading that bulletin every time it's posted . Do they ever have anything positive to say about the job ,change the record or in fact change your job if it's so bad.

give us a bulletin about how positive your job is then?

give us our vr terms and see how many are left

[cloherty1976]

Christ why do I bother reading that bulletin every time it's posted . Do they ever have anything positive to say about the job ,change the record or in fact change your job if it's so bad.

So you don't like it, why post a response, no one is forcing you to read it. Freedom of speech means you allow people to have different views if you don't like that simple concept.....

Also why do people always think if you complain about a job you don't like it. How about if you like the job but not how you are treated, stay and try to change, it or leave (as you suggest) and let it get worse. One way is the coward's way, I'll leave to decide which one.

Is that poorly written or just up to my standards of English?

[cliffeyhez]

Thank you Mount Pleasant Bulletin for your post.
This is pretty much how I've interpreted the spiel that has been put out by both RM and the CWU.
Personally I am flabbergasted by the apparent collusion between the company and the union.
Unfortunately in my small office I seem to be alone in my mistrust of these proposals, but feel somewhat reassured that someone somewhere seems to be on the same page as me.

[BELIAL]

Lots of people everywhere. When was the sinister staff association spawned?

[crimson king]

Lots of people everywhere. When was the sinister staff association spawned?

The SSA? Do we get a badge?

[BELIAL]

Lots of people everywhere. When was the sinister staff association spawned?

The SSA? Do we get a badge?

NO , but the leggings and thigh boots are rather fetching. {if you have the physique to carry them off}