26/09/2018 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 26th of September. Comments welcome!

WE AREN’T SURFING THAT WAVE
We can’t believe it! We first heard that the wave of EVRs
was going to be postponed after Xmas, but now we hear
that managers are planning to go ahead in Nov/Dec. Do
they really want to get rid of as many of us as possible
before the re-sign?
Look. We are already so short-handed and have
problems clearing. So in the run up to the Xmas rush
their "plan" is to have even fewer of us? This is destined
to be another one of their far-sighted blunders.

MULTITASKING: NOT OUR THING
We again.... (and again and again...) are made to feel like
ping-pong balls in HMP as managers send us from one
job to another (often instead of letting us finish and go)
according to their whims and of course their managermade
worker-shortage... It looks more like we’re getting
time slots on the job, rather than real duties. By the look
of it, managers seem to hope we’ve forgotten what a duty
means! Are we also now supposed to forget that too?

WORK DONE, GONE HOME
Yes, in packets we have the usual “non-duty is your
duty”. When we’re done with the scanning at the
conveyor belts in POCL and PPI, managers think we’re
good for the frames! But no! When we’re done with our
work, we are good only to walk out of HMP and go home.

WHAT’S GOING ON?
We noticed 2 weeks ago on packets that some of the
frames were closed. We were first told by managers that
it was because there were so many of us on annual leave
- and then, that the work had gone down... But the real
reason turned out to be that HWDC had started sending
only one lorry per day. Why, exactly? We just don't
know. But there's a rumour that RM HQ intervened in
order to do some monitoring, because some managers
were suspected of counting their mail clearance bonuses
before they'd hatched...

WE AREN’T DOGS!
By the way, certain managers here in HMP could really
do with a crash-course in good manners. In the
meantime, we are just going to have to turn a deaf ear to
any of their utterances which are missing the words
“please” and "thank-you".

SWW: NEVER SHORT ENOUGH!!
We only just heard how the shorter working week is
going to be implemented (but managers say it's still
"provisional"): Mon/Tues/Wed won’t change, but we’ll be
starting 30mins later on Thurs/Fri. And on the Platform,
mates will probably be finishing earlier instead of starting
later. Of course, managers are implementing the SWW
according to their needs, not ours. Cutting a whole hour
off a day would allow us to feel some benefit. This won't.

CASUALS BY THE MEASURING TAPE?
Oh yes, and with the Xmas casual recruitment coming
soon, we're wondering how managers will find work
space for them, given that the basement is such a
complete shambles! So unless they only recruit very thin
casuals, we don’t see how they’ll get around it…

ALWAYS STRONGER TOGETHER
Finally we have the brand-new locker and kitchen areas
for RM-PFS downstairs. And it’s a shared area now for
both cleaners and engineers, which means that we’ll be
able to get to know each other - which we couldn’t really
do before, even though we have the same top bosses
and a shared interest in keeping them in order!

WORKING OR WALKING OUT?
We’ve checked out the new Gym - and it does look good!
Is that the reason why managers thought it wise to put a
swipe card access to it? Or is it to monitor who among
us are working out, so as to allocate more of the working
day for exercise, for those who need it?

PETTY POIS
While we still have no idea about our famous new
pension scheme - the CDC pension for the "older"
workforce - we were nevertheless visited by POIS
investment sharks. Apparently they want to sell us fairy
tales about the beauties of the stock market, etc... But
stashing any savings we have (whether from pension
lump sums or whatever) under the bed, will probably be
safer than putting it in the hands of voracious
speculators.

CRAPITA'S CLAWS ON OUR PENSIONS
This is bad news! Terry Pullinger has sent a letter to
members to announce that the government has decided
that RM’s Statutory pension (RMSPS) will be now
administered by… Capita. Yes, this crooked company
which the CWU already has experience of, since
members work for their call centres, is now to be trusted
with our pensions? RM pension workers are now to be
TUPE'd over. We wonder: why was it impossible to say
"no" and insist it remains in-house?

THEIR BIG GOLDMINE
We see that the apartments in the HMP development
went on sale this month, for between £670,000 for a
small studio to £2.5m for a 3-bedroom flat. Yes that's the
going rate... and rising. How long before property
billionaires (including RM!) try to push us out of the rest
of this site? Let's prepare ourselves to defend the RMMP
fort!

AS GREEDY AS THE DAY IS LONG
We hear that RM chairman Peter Long resigned… Yep,
he had too many fingers in far too many pies,
accumulating duties as joint CEO at TUI Group and
chairman at Countrywide and RM - all for a juicy
£900,000/yr! Now he has to write £300,000 off his pay…
poor thing! But it goes to show that unlike us slaves, top
managers can accumulate as many "duties" as they want,
since it doesn’t involve any real work whatsoever!

[SpacePhoenix]

MULTITASKING: NOT OUR THING
We again.... (and again and again...) are made to feel like
ping-pong balls in HMP as managers send us from one
job to another (often instead of letting us finish and go)
according to their whims and of course their managermade
worker-shortage... It looks more like we’re getting
time slots on the job, rather than real duties. By the look
of it, managers seem to hope we’ve forgotten what a duty
means! Are we also now supposed to forget that too?

WORK DONE, GONE HOME
Yes, in packets we have the usual “non-duty is your
duty”. When we’re done with the scanning at the
conveyor belts in POCL and PPI, managers think we’re
good for the frames! But no! When we’re done with our
work, we are good only to walk out of HMP and go home.

They should be moving staff between sections to get the work done, why shouldn't they. It's written on anyone's 318 something like "or as directed", in any case job&finish is long gone