Turned away from shift

Fonzanooi · Post by **Fonzanooi** » 06 Jun 2018, 02:03

I arrived at the The Mail Centre to work a nightshift 2300-0600. I signed in and started work sorting packets. After approx 30 minutes a duty manager came and told me I would have to go home as my name was not on the Angard list. I explained that Inhad been booked by a Royal Mail Manager the previous week along with about ten other Angard employees. I was told that yes I had been booked by the Royal Mail but as Angard had failed to add me to there list I would have to go home along with two other Angard employees. This is following on from the past four or five weeks of continuous overbooking of shifts by Angard whereby you can be booked in for two to four shifts only to have two or three cancelled on a daily basis. It would be nice if you could actually get an answer to who actually owns or runs Angard as a buisiness, nobody seems to know, its one of lifes big mysteries?? . So my question is who can answer this, who are Angard, who owns it and who runs it???

nothingatthemoment · Post by **nothingatthemoment** » 06 Jun 2018, 13:43

Royal Mail owns 100% of Angard shares , there is only 1 share valued at £1.
Royal Mail is both the immediate and ultimate parent company of Angard .
Angard directors are also R.M. directors.
Angard is "run" by Reedglobal from their offices in Northampton .

It is basically a company that exists on paper only, with no staff , offices, assets ect.

Post by **Navalron** » 06 Jun 2018, 20:10

This is bullshit. You turn up and start work and you get sent home coming up to midnight. Join the union. I know that they don't seem to bother with agency staff, well more fool them but it's better to have some sort of legal protection than nothing. What RM workers in mail centres especially don't realize, is that it's all going this way and when they start getting messed about for shifts maybe they will take interest in whats happening with casuals instead of treating them like second class citizens, exactly the same as RM do. I posted several months ago that mail centres would be all casual and agency within 7 years but maybe that was be I g optimistic.

Post by **SpacePhoenix** » 06 Jun 2018, 20:34

Navalron wrote:I posted several months ago that mail centres would be all casual and agency within 7 years but maybe that was be I g optimistic.

Don't think it'll even go that way, more likely RM will try and automate most jobs in a MC. If they did get new machines to sequence flats and letters together that would eliminate most manual letter and flat sorting, and would probably give RM scope to increase the time that delivery staff spend out delivering

dancingqueen · Post by **dancingqueen** » 06 Jun 2018, 20:57

I have been told many times that RM Managers are NOT allowed to book in individuals directly for shifts.

All shifts must go through Angard.

Looks like they are clamping down.

Post by **Lockardian** » 06 Jun 2018, 21:47

Such issues have been cropping up quite regularly at the MC I work at. Normally RM cancelling a shift or reducing staffing at short notice but nobody at Angard bothering to tell the staff members concerned. We have people who travel up to 60 miles to work, and even those who live more locally have missed their last bus or train and have to fork out for taxi fares. The problem became so bad that the RM duty manager even advised us to ring the site to confirm they were expecting us before leaving the house!

A few weeks ago six shifts in a row were cancelled, and only once did I receive notification from Angard. I even rang Angard as late as 5pm to confirm I was booked for a nightshift and was told yes, I was still in - but on arriving at work my name wasn’t on the sheet (and the RM manager said they had cancelled with Angard well before 5pm!) I would have had many more wasted journeys had I not heeded RM’s advice and rang the site on subsequent nights.

My Angard consultant assured me that cancellation texts had been sent, but it was obvious staff either received no message at all, or received incomplete texts just saying “Many thanks, [consultant name], Angard”. People are still getting these incomplete texts, and on ringing Angard just say “check with your mobile network, we are doing it right”!! Obviously that’s not the case or it wouldn’t affect various people on different networks! Some of us have emailed a supervisor at Angard but had no acknowledgment or response, and if you try to discuss it over the phone with them you get told they are too busy to deal with it at the moment!