London Divisional Comms over current impasse with Royal Mail

[Martin Walsh]

Dear All

Please see a comms to the London Members regarding the current issues with Royal Mail and the carriage of the emergency motion E2.

Important Update to All CWU London Members

Last month, Reco Back wrote to DGSP Terry Pullinger outlining the direction in which Royal Mail wants to move to.

Last week Terry Pullinger explained to all delegates at the CWU conference in Bournemouth the problems with the direction which Royal Mail want to move to , when Terry moved an emergency motion on behalf of the executive in which he pushed back at Royal Mail’s proposed direction of travel and their cherry picking of issues.

So What is Royal Mail’s Strategy

1. Royal Mail are back on the tired and insulting mantra of wanting all staff to be working every minute of the everyday, every week, every month, every year.

Ignoring the fact that we work in an industry which has unpredictable traffic fluctuations as well as a pipeline which only has to have a machine or HGV breakdown and the game changes. Additionally, it does not consider sickness or vacancies within a unit.

Yet they want to continue with the same tiresome mantra. Do all managers and Directors work every hour their paid? If so why do so many choose to perform OPG work?

Royal Mail want to use new digital technology to record that all paid hours are worked. Royal Mail want to use PDA’s to resource and do revisions outdoors.

They want to use a system called Automated Hours Data Capture to record total work hours including part time hourage and overtime hourage.

This is in in spite of the fact that the trials were far from being successful, they also want to extend the number of offices piloting AHDC. Their eventual strategy is to introduce AHDC across all offices.

Royal Mail still want to roll out another computer system called Resource Scheduler. Resource Scheduler is designed to feed in all the systems such as traffic transformation, PSP, AHDC, Traffic Transformation etc.

Resource Scheduler can produce different duty sets per week or monthly, and is design to reduce the unions influence within the workplace.

Additionally, Royal Mail want to extend the 30 minutes flexibility clause to every day depending on real time recording. This would mean staff being told to work 30 minutes more or told they will be finishing 30 minutes early so they have more time on heavier days.

London Divisional Committee’s Opinion :
The London Divisional Committee including all London CWU Branch’s believe that we should never agree that resourcing and revisions are decided by digital technology and real time recording.

PDA’s do not consider individuals starting early , taking their meal reliefs , doing their proper indoor work , the type of traffic and mix of work for that day , whether there are traffic and congestion problems that day , whether the correct delivery methods were use and whether, the right quality was achieved.

There is a view held by some in the CWU that real time recording is designed to be fair . We believe this is not the case at all. Real time recording is designed to be used to control workers and reduce the need for local negotiations.

We are already seeing a rise in problems in workplace with managers treating OPGs in a disgraceful manner which is causing IR issues throughout the UK.

These same managers cannot be trusted to use digital technology in a fair a reasonable manner.

We were originally informed PDA’s were there to enhanced the customer experience and capture Royal Mail a bigger share of the market.

However now it appears that digital technology is now the central point behind Royal Mail’s strategy to reduce hours and improve efficiency.

We have recently seen Amazon forced their Warehouse workers to wear a digital watch which records their how many steps they take and how long each journey takes . They want to link this up what they are paid. This kind of employer model is what modern trade unionism needs to stop.

We therefore cannot allow Royal Mail to move in the same direction.
We must oppose the use of new technology to resource and perform revisions and produce duty’s sets.

Royal Mail’s Parcel Separation Strategy

Royal Mail have confirmed that they want to trial parcel separation.
They believe that Royal Mail must now separate format 3&4 parcels ( everything above shoe box ) from the normal operation.

In short this will mean that these larger parcels will be concentrated onto circa 300 Later Acceptance Units.

The design is that these parcels will be delivered later in the day from the circa 300 LAT units to all 1400 delivery offices catchment areas.
Royal Mail want to explore within the LAT units a trial based on collapsing one wall in six. This will mean that one of the six will become a late driver performing the larger parcels for all the Delivery offices within the LAT catchment area. The remaining five walks will trail absorbing the sixth. If this works than they want to expand the trail.

The remaining circa 1100 delivery offices will simply lose parcels formatted 3&4 completely meaning their offices efficiency drops and these offices will be targeted for significant cut in hours.
Royal Mail want to automate the larger parcels from 3 parcel centres. One in Warrington, one in Midlands and one to the North of London.
The parcel machine designed to automate the larger parcels has 400 selections. It will sort the larger parcels to the circa 300 LAT units.
This will mean it by passes inward mail centres and will have impacts in processing , Area distribution and Network.

Royal Mail also want to make Sunday a normal day for delivering parcels but at normal rate of pay and not overtime or SA.

London Divisional Opinion

We all want to grow parcels as letters continues to decline.

However Royal Mail’s parcel Strategy will mean over two thirds of CWU members would be see workload reductions from Royal Mail strategy to remove larger parcels above shoe box size from inward mail centres and over a thousand delivery offices.

We believe the impacts from such a strategy would far outweigh the benefits from the shorter working week.

Royal Mail claim that the 1000 offices which will lose larger parcels will simply see this replaced by growth in smaller parcels.

In short, they are asking us to agree to lose something which is guaranteed i.e. larger parcels on a projection that smaller parcels will grow to replace.

Would anyone except a deal like that ?

Notwithstanding the above, the London Divisional Committee is serious about growing the parcel market.

If Royal Mail really believe that parcels formatted at 3&4 will grow faster by moving them later in the day and not delivering them on the core delivery.

Then why could they not stay being delivered within the current 1400 delivery offices?

We than could have imaginative duty sets which could include rotational duties which covered the core delivery, the larger parcels and LAT products across the 7 to 7 delivery window.

The Next Hour Off the Working Week

Talks are on-going regarding what will trigger the next hour off the working week.

For Area Distribution it will be a PAD revision. For Network a Network review.

However, for processing, collections and delivery it would seem it would be as part of a revision.

London Divisional Opinion

We would not be opposed to agreeing the next hour based on some kind of / review /revision, however we would need to see the detail.

However, we do not believe the CWU should agree to the next hour being conditional on the CWU agreeing to trials on parcel separation or on digital technology being be used for pay, revision or resourcing purposes.

The CWU National Executive Emergency Motion

The PEC Emergency motion which was very critical of Royal Mail’s current strategy was carried unanimously by Conference.
It was a unifying motion which demanded that the business adhered to the Four Pillars National Agreement or otherwise it would be in conflict with the whole of the CWU.

Royal Mail’s capital markets day is later this month and the CWU will have to watch what the company says to potential shareholders as they attempt to get more investment into the company.

The London Divisional Committee remains a 100 percent behind the National Union in challenging Royal Mail’s flawed strategy.

We need to be united in stopping Parcel Separation and stopping Royal Mail from using suspect digital technology to control the workforce and make unreasonable and unrealistic demands on our members.

All members need to be ready to back the CWU once again should Royal Mail decide to ignore the Union and simply introduce their strategy.

We will keep you further updated as things develop.

The London Divisional Committee
Sent from my iPhone

[Celgar]

I don't see anything wrong with using the PDA to determine how long the delivery aspect of the job takes to complete with a view to making the job fit the paid duty time as part of a walk revision process. It can be carried to every letterbox or delivery point and will be far more accurate than the current system which is based on data from the utility companies. We don't walk along the lines of water pipes or electricity cables so the current system is practically useless. RM want to switch to data from the emergency services but how do we know that their information isn't based on something else inaccurate such as location of fire hydrants?
No one seems to be mentioning people going over their duty time and working unpaid either. Instead there seems to be a tendency to defend the notion that we can stick with 'job & finish' which is no longer the case.

[citypostie]

I don't see anything wrong with using the PDA to determine how long the delivery aspect of the job takes to complete with a view to making the job fit the paid duty time as part of a walk revision process. It can be carried to every letterbox or delivery point and will be far more accurate than the current system which is based on data from the utility companies. We don't walk along the lines of water pipes or electricity cables so the current system is practically useless. RM want to switch to data from the emergency services but how do we know that their information isn't based on something else inaccurate such as location of fire hydrants?
No one seems to be mentioning people going over their duty time and working unpaid either. Instead there seems to be a tendency to defend the notion that we can stick with 'job & finish' which is no longer the case.

What use would PDA data be for seeing how long deliveries take when everyone works at wildly different speeds, often depending what their agenda is whether that be to go home early, getting some ghost in or making it last as long as possible for whatever reason. If you use that data to base deliveries on you'll end up with more unbalanced duties than now. If they do that I'm glad I'm near the top for a pick and I already know what I'd go for, and it ain't a delivery that a pair of flyers are on at the moment. The exact opposite in fact

[Celgar]

I don't see anything wrong with using the PDA to determine how long the delivery aspect of the job takes to complete with a view to making the job fit the paid duty time as part of a walk revision process. It can be carried to every letterbox or delivery point and will be far more accurate than the current system which is based on data from the utility companies. We don't walk along the lines of water pipes or electricity cables so the current system is practically useless. RM want to switch to data from the emergency services but how do we know that their information isn't based on something else inaccurate such as location of fire hydrants?
No one seems to be mentioning people going over their duty time and working unpaid either. Instead there seems to be a tendency to defend the notion that we can stick with 'job & finish' which is no longer the case.

What use would PDA data be for seeing how long deliveries take when everyone works at wildly different speeds, often depending what their agenda is whether that be to go home early, getting some ghost in or making it last as long as possible for whatever reason. If you use that data to base deliveries on you'll end up with more unbalanced duties than now. If they do that I'm glad I'm near the top for a pick and I already know what I'd go for, and it ain't a delivery that a pair of flyers are on at the moment. The exact opposite in fact

I'm thinking in terms of the distance from the kerb to the doorstep. This is likely not covered by the current system. All that walking distance adds up and you may have fairly long or maybe some very long drivable drives that are not mapped. If you have seen what we currently use on a computer screen you will know it is utterly inaccurate. Having the correct data will give us more time to deliver and may make more walks/jobs.

[clashcityrocker]

I'm thinking in terms of the distance from the kerb to the doorstep.

I thought the current system uses the middle of the road to the letterbox.

[Woody Guthrie]

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what Royal Mail mean by working all paid hours. They're not talking about being at work for all paid hours what they are looking for is every second of your working day aligned with workload. That's a zero downtime equation, now some people think they do this already but trust me you're not even close to working under those conditions, very few people are and those that do tend to suffer from the odd nervous breakdown or two.

If you think this would stop people starting early or skipping their breaks you are way off the mark, this is designed to put so much pressure on staff to complete their allocated workload that it's far more likely to have the opposite affect. It's a mandate for the worst kind of bullying and intimidation you could imagine.