24/04/2019 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of the 24th of April. The entire back and front pages are also attached - Comments welcome!

ON OUR GUARD
Our next pay review may be one year down the line, but
let's not forget what happened last time! CWU officials
and RM were at it for months, behind closed doors! After
our strike was cancelled and much mediation drama, they
finally presented us with their “CWU/RM joint-this-andthat”
agreement that left us high and dry. The 2%
“increase” on our pay slip this month is a reminder of that.
So, this time round, we want to know what's being
discussed at the negotiation table – and we want to have
a say over it!

KEEPING US IN THE DARK
So, RM and Blue Sky Building tell us they're looking out
for our health by “continuing to monitor dust and noise
measures”! Is this supposed to reassure us?! Outside
the Farringdon Road construction site, they claim that
“daily readings remain below the levels permitted by
Islington Council”. But, have they bothered to measure
the levels of dust where we've been working all this time?
In the 'Control of Substances Hazardous to Health'
Regulations, we see that the Workplace Exposure Limit
(WEL) for inhalable dust shouldn't exceed 10mg/m3 and
for the type of dust that can stick to our lungs, the WEL is
4mg/m3. So we want to know what type of dust we've
been inhaling, and how much!

FROM BAD TO WORSE
The hazardous dust exposure has been particularly bad
for those of us working in the basement! And in the PFS
locker room, we're now expected to put up with the
disgusting smell from the sewage pipes?! There's fresh
air outside – if this continues we know where we should
be spending our time!

THEY'LL KEEP TRYING AND TRYING
We're glad to see that HMP management have stopped
bringing in casuals in the W1/EC hub area downstairs.
They might have failed to cover for the ongoing shortage
of hands with agency workers this time but they won't
stop trying. We better keep a watchful eye on RM
manager's tricks!

MORE PAY, NOT OVERTIME
By the way, we hear that the duties covered by the 6
casuals in W1/EC are now done by mates on overtime?
Of course, we know managers wouldn't offer these
Angard workers permanent contracts. They'd much
rather have us work O/T – which some of us do only
because our pay doesn't ensure us a decent standard of
living!

EXPOSING THE DISEASE
Why do we have to rely on RoyalMailChat to tell us that
Angard agency workers are to launch a legal battle
against RM? A group of 50 Angard workers in Leeds
have lodged a claim against unequal treatment by RM:
after 12 weeks on the job, they have the right to paid
leave, paid breaks and the same rate of pay as
permanent mates. RM bosses' push towards
casualisation comes from their wish to have a completely
flexible, low-paid workforce. But why should we allow
this? Don't we have the same fight to wage alongside
casual mates – on the streets, rather than in the courts?

SEEING RED
In the Bullring, we're seeing the result of the re-sign
exercise: we're now 3 to 5 workers short – and we feel it
in our backs, arms and joints! But like in the real Bullring,
if managers keep tussling with us, we're going to see red!

PLATFORM MESS?
Who's bright idea was it to do the initial segregation of
trays from yorkies on the Platform? As a result, we keep
tripping over trays which are scattered all over the place.
This is a Health and Safety issue and needs to be sorted
out asap!

TRYING TO MIX IT UP
On nights, managers had the great idea of mixing both
tracked and non-tracked parcels and left us to sort out the
mess... This won't do and we hope it was a one off! If
they have no hands to clear the tracked parcels it is their
problem, not ours!

WITH THE BLUE PILL MAYBE?
We had a good laugh when we heard that managers had
to send back several of the new 7.5T vans because the
tail lift would get stuck... So the previous vans were too
tall, and now this? When are managers going to
understand that yes, size matters, but the equipment also
has to work!

WRIST AT RISK
Talking about new technology, we could do with some of
it in PSA! Each of us have to scan several hundreds of
priorities with the old, heavy gun scanners which strain
our wrists. If there's no new, lighter scanners available,
we'll just have to give our hands a break, as and when
needed!

WE DON'T WANT DEALS BEHIND OUR BACKS!
In Quadrant, the pay deal is to go through, even though
the majority (54%) didn't vote in the ballot! And why?
Because many of us thought voting in this ballot would
make no difference. Yet some, though a minority, did
vote against the agreement. We all know that this pay
rise won't cover the rising cost of living – so why not say
so? And have proper discussions on what pay and
Ts&Cs we want?

THE PILLARS CONTINUE TO CRUMBLE
What are we supposed to make of DGS Terry Pullinger's
latest video on the CWU Facebook page? He mentions
that RM's plans to install more sorting machines and to
have “more resources” (staff included?) would be “a
positive if that improves the revenue situation”!! So
what's good for the bosses is meant to be good for us?!
What about stating that: yes, we need more machines,
and more hands... Not to fill RM shareholder's pockets,
but to take the load off our aching backs and legs?

[SpacePhoenix]

TRYING TO MIX IT UP
On nights, managers had the great idea of mixing both
tracked and non-tracked parcels and left us to sort out the
mess... This won't do and we hope it was a one off! If
they have no hands to clear the tracked parcels it is their
problem, not ours!

Tracked segging from all offices is a joke. Many yorks of mixed large and small (and often well over half small) and many sleeves mixed with large and small (with some of them that could no way be called small by anyone). You get normal mail mixed in and even the occasional special mixed in as well. Something needs to be done about it at a national level

WRIST AT RISK
Talking about new technology, we could do with some of
it in PSA! Each of us have to scan several hundreds of
priorities with the old, heavy gun scanners which strain
our wrists. If there's no new, lighter scanners available,
we'll just have to give our hands a break, as and when
needed!

There's only the option of STAR guns for the specials, besides I doubt that lighter guns would be able to handle several hundred items being scanned every day

THE PILLARS CONTINUE TO CRUMBLE
What are we supposed to make of DGS Terry Pullinger's
latest video on the CWU Facebook page? He mentions
that RM's plans to install more sorting machines and to
have “more resources” (staff included?) would be “a
positive if that improves the revenue situation”!! So
what's good for the bosses is meant to be good for us?!
What about stating that: yes, we need more machines,
and more hands... Not to fill RM shareholder's pockets,
but to take the load off our aching backs and legs?

New sorting machines for flats and letters will probably never happen. There's certainly not the volume of work to justify RM having any T2K machines now and with the way that letter mail is dropping off (excluding bulk postings) I think it's possibly only a matter of time before RM revert to walk sorting only (at least for the whole of wave 2) and if the decline continues maybe even just axing the sorting of letters by machine.

Could MP accommodate a parcel sorting machine? If they can't then that's got to be a ? over the future of MP