13/03/2019 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 13th of March. The entire back and front pages are also attached - Comments welcome!

A VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE
What's this all about?! Managers have brought in 6
casuals on Lates! They're saying that, for as long as
building works continue, they need more hands to move
W1/EC1 yorkies from the Platform to a temporary
processing area in the basement. How long that will be
is anyone's guess!
We've never agreed to RM bosses bringing in
casuals – temporary or not! We know RM uses agency
workers all year round elsewhere, not only on deliveries
but also in large MCs like Greenford... we can't allow
this to become the rule!

FAIRY TALES
And what a cheek! RM managers claim that these
jobs on W1/EC1 had been listed on the re-sign sheet as
overtime duties. But that no one picked them up, so
they had “no choice” but to bring in temps! Only we've
not seen these duties anywhere on the re-sign sheet...
Is this just their way of covering their backs about
bringing casuals here?
PS: Whatever happened to the time when the union
refused casualisation?!

OVERTIME? OVERBOARD!
….And by the way, are we supposed to be satisfied
with overtime duties? Of course, RM bosses would like
to have a flexible workforce with flexible hours,
regardless of our needs! Managers take advantage of
the fact that many of our part-time mates rely on OT to
make ends meet… instead we could say: no overtime
but decent full-time jobs!?

NO TO THE FLEXI-SHIFT!
Speaking of flexibility, on Distribution, drivers now have
five reserve duties that have no allocated shift! Yes,
our mates on these duties cover any shift – Earlies,
Lates or Nights – and managers only need to give them
2 weeks notice! On the drivers side, our jobs are being
casualised as we speak!

PLASTERING OVER THE CRACKS
As shifts have been cut on Earlies, some of us have
been left with no option but to move to Lates. Here we
go again, with the same lie that we on Earlies are there
as a “surplus”! Is this their way of filling in the gaps that
will be left from our mates going on EVR? Well it
doesn't cut it... as we've said before, we want nothing
less than recruitment!!

THE YORKS CAN WAIT
Speaking of changing shifts, F/T Platform duties on
Lates are to be 4-day instead of 5-day weeks! An extra
day off is fine, but not if it means working until we drop
on the other 4! Considering the heavy work we're
expected to do on Platform, more hours means more
breaks!

THIS IS GETTING HEAVY!
This isn't correct. Those of us on light duties were told
that the re-sign would not affect us. But some of us
have now been told we need to sign for regular duties!
So what next? We're supposed to go through the OH
procedure all over again to prove that we need to be on
light duties?! We know managers have been trying to
push heavy work on us, and now they've used the resign
to do exactly that! We can't let them get away with
this!

WE NEED OUR NAPS!
What is going on with Work Time Sleeping? On Nights,
they've cancelled it for the second time in a row.
Managers told us they were too busy with the bogus
Employee Survey forms and now, too busy with the resign...
Do they not want to face us, knowing what we
think about said re-sign?

A PENSION CUT BY ANY OTHER NAME...
So now we hear that the DWP has given the green light
to the CDC pension scheme... Not that this means the
CDC scheme is going to materialise any time soon,
anyway! But even if it does, we'll just end up with a DC
scheme by another name. And if RM goes bust, we
won't be eligible for the Pension Protection Fund...

WE WANT NEW FRIENDS
Yes, some of our mates on RM-PFS have retired, and
others are on sick leave... so we're now more short of
hands than ever! But to think that one casual can cover
all this is just wishful thinking. Do we have to repeat this
over and over? We need many more mates – on
permanent contracts!

RUBBISH IDEAS
This is the Elephant's latest bright idea... to cut the
budget for bin bags! Each one of us is supposed to only
get 2 boxes per month – which is obviously not enough...
But no worries, if we're short of bin bags and the rubbish
piles up, we'll let everybody know who was behind this!

STRIKE AT STOCKPORT
Last Saturday, workers at Stockport DO had a sit-in in
the canteen over managers' nasty behaviour. In
response, Dave Ward tweeted: “Sometimes when the
pressure on our members is too much, Royal Mail must
learn there is no stronger culture than solidarity action”.
Well, here we know all about “pressure” from managers,
especially in EC! So does “solidarity action” mean we're
to join in?

THANKS FOR REMINDING US!
We see that the Mount Pleasant CWU local news
bulletin reminds us about that national demonstration on
Saturday against racism. The meeting point is Park
Lane, near the Dorchester Hotel, W1K 1QA. Yes,
prejudices are back with a vengeance, especially with
the “hostile environment” of late! We should go along!

[SpacePhoenix]

We know RM uses agency
workers all year round elsewhere, not only on deliveries
but also in large MCs like Greenford... we can't allow
this to become the rule!

and in smaller MCs

Speaking of flexibility, on Distribution, drivers now have
five reserve duties that have no allocated shift! Yes,
our mates on these duties cover any shift – Earlies,
Lates or Nights – and managers only need to give them
2 weeks notice! On the drivers side, our jobs are being
casualised as we speak!

A good chunk of our drivers are agency, i don't think we've got enough RM drivers

As shifts have been cut on Earlies, some of us have
been left with no option but to move to Lates. Here we
go again, with the same lie that we on Earlies are there
as a “surplus”! Is this their way of filling in the gaps that
will be left from our mates going on EVR? Well it
doesn't cut it... as we've said before, we want nothing
less than recruitment!!

I can see in the long term there being "2C hubs" which would process all the 2C from a group of MCs

Speaking of changing shifts, F/T Platform duties on
Lates are to be 4-day instead of 5-day weeks! An extra
day off is fine, but not if it means working until we drop
on the other 4! Considering the heavy work we're
expected to do on Platform, more hours means more
breaks!

No it doesn't mean more breaks, just an extra 10 mins if it's a 10hr shift instead of an 8hr shift