13/02/2019 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 13th of February and the entire back and front page attached. Comments welcome!

IT’S THE FIGHT WHICH COUNTS
So, finally, the Processing re-sign is ready. But it’s more
than your routine re-sign. There’s this wordy new “Duty
Set Re-Alignment Agreement”, since the bosses
apparently wanted to “revise and realign” everything,
claiming “so much has changed”... Well, they’re right. A
lot has changed - and in the worst way, with their drastic
cuts everywhere! Anyway, whether we say yes or no to
this duty set, we know we’re going to have to fight to
uphold our interests.

GOOD THEORY, BAD PRACTICE, UGLY BOSSES
As this “Agreement” says, the many redundancies last
year hit us hard. And yes, a “stable duty set” should
match the right number of workers and skills to the
workload... But it’s one thing to work it all out on paper
and shake hands around RM’s very nice table. It is quite
another, when it comes to putting all of this into practice,
when the main aim of these two-faced bosses is to save
money on our backs and have fewer of us doing more, for
less...

TOO FAR FROM US
Apparently this negotiation was very hard... The CWU
letter underlines the fact that they’ve been negotiating with
managers for “almost” 12 months! Yes, that’s right, 12
months, but during that time, not a proper word about it
with us, on the shop floor? Couldn’t we have helped
them? To be frank, some of the jargon and attempts to
justify things in this final Agreement show how very far
from the shop floor the negotiating table really was!

SURELY THEY KNOW THIS?
We see that the union stipulated that a revision of duties
be based on “a VR package to ensure there would be no
surplus of staff”. We’re surprised. Can they please
explain how there could have been a “surplus of staff”
when the main issue for us has been that we're so often
short of hands? We’d be happy to invite them to the floor,
to see how much of a “surplus” there really is…

USED TO BE A UNION PRINCIPLE AGAINST IT...
We said this before, in fact. We also want to know how
come those VRs were offered - which amounted to job
cuts - at the same time as overtime was proposed, and
most recently on nightshift (which has lost so many jobs!)?
And what’s more - and this was the biggest surprise -
please explain how and why Scheduled Attendance has
made an official comeback, with duties duly assigned!
Maybe some mates will be pleased about it... but we
thought it had been scrapped for good!?

PLANTS RESPOND... TO LIGHT?
Oh, and it seems that when it comes to “protecting” the
Inward Foreign Parcels here at HMP, there is more “extra
working” anticipated: “a more enhanced resourcing mix
enabling the Plant to respond to variations in workload”!
So will that involve the same old practice of asking Parttimers
to fill in with overtime hours when the workload
goes up, rather than managers making us up to full-time
(38 hours) permanently?

WE’LL TAKE 5 WHEN WE NEED 5
On top of everything else, we also noticed that for us PTers
on Lates our meal relief is to be brought forward to
nearer the beginning of our shift. So instead of having a
much-needed break in the middle of the busy period, RM
expects us to work solidly through it! We can
(collectively!) decide not to meet these managers’
expectations, of course...

TAKING THE MICKEY
So this is it! From the 1st of April, our wages are going up
by a ridiculously tiny 2%, when the cost of living has gone
up by 3.3% (according to the Retail Price Index)! This is
a wage cut, whatever RM might say! The pay agreement
may have been signed, but it’s never too late to tear it up!

WE DO MIND THE GAPS
They have now decided to get rid of the Angard casual
workers. Of course, this is not the first time they’ve been
kept on after Xmas. But the gaps in the workforce won’t
go away just because these workmates have gone. How
many times must we say we need new hands, in the job,
permanently?!

SORRY FOR WHAT?
Managers already paid the £200 so-called
“compensation” to RM-PFS workers for working in this
dirty, hazardous building site. But we say it again: how
can any amount of money compensate for the harm to
our eyes, noses, throats and lungs... So what about a
real solution, instead of the worn out “sorry for the
inconvenience”?!

TWO WAYS OF ADDING UP?
At last the cleaners’ night allowance has been sorted out,
but why are we still paid short when we do overtime? We
can’t afford this nonsense - our pay is low enough as it is!
Is there good maths when payroll adds up managers’ pay
and bad maths when it comes to adding up ours?

CAN’T FIND WHERE TO SIGN!
Talking about the building site… apparently because of
this, cleaners are supposed now to sign on in the
messroom... If it had been up to us, we’d have ditched
the sign-on altogether!

CHANGING THE CULTURE WITH OUR FEET
We hear that 300 workers at Southend sorting office had
a sit-in, in their canteen, after one of their workmates was
sacked. Now they’re going for a strike ballot. Yes, RM
managers are bad all over - in Southend - and here in
HMP. And they only listen to the sound of our feet.

HERE OR THERE, DELIVERIES ARE HELL!
There’s another strike vote we know of: at Bangor
Delivery Office - this time because two workers were
given a “2-year suspended dismissal”(??!) on the
grounds that they hadn’t completed their duties!
Whatever next?! They have our full solidarity and
support!