Royal Mail bins union agreement

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.redflagonline.org/2019/05/r ... agreement/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

By a CWU Rep

Royal Mail announced a new five year strategy on 22 May to increase automation and develop later parcel deliveries without informing the CWU postal workers’ union. Many outside the company would have been surprised the next day when the union, in a video to members, denounced these new plans as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” threatening up to 20,000 job losses and more office closures. But few CWU members would have been shocked.

The fact is for months the “Four Pillars (4P)” agreement, negotiated last year to end a high-profile strike threat, has been coming apart from above and below. It promised a change of culture in Royal Mail from shopfloor bullying to management working with the union to develop “an agreed joint mutual interest vision”, together planning to harness technology and target the growing parcel market. In return the workforce was promised a 35-hour working week in stages, improved pensions for 30,000 staff and extended legal protections against zero hours contracts and any break-up of the company.

In reality the culture of bullying has got worse, as directors pressured managers to claw back the costs of the pay rise and the first reduction in the work week to 38 hours.

According to union officials the result has been the biggest spike in four years of unofficial walkouts, canteen sit-ins and ballot requests, overwhelmingly against bullying and victimisation and with the verbal backing of the union’s leaders. Just last month unofficial walkouts have occurred in Medway mail centre in Kent, aand delivery offices from Paisley, Scotland to Bristol and Birmingham. And no doubt there are even more canteen sit-ins or threats.

This pressure in part led to the emergency motion at the CWU national conference earlier in May, which accused Royal Mail of a “growing toxic workplace culture” and resolved to take national industrial action to defend the 4P agreement if necessary.

Privatisation comes home to roost

At the top, Royal Mail’s board changed its management team, appointing as CEO the anti-CWU Rico Back from its European operations – built on casualised contracts, long hours and no union – and placing a host of old anti-union managers into key positions.

The 4P’s joint management-union bodies to oversee the redesign of postal operations were sidelined for new management structures going round the CWU and its new plan, developed behind closed doors with the consultancy firm KPMG. That exposes the company’s briefing to staff as a lie, with its claim to be “committed to working collaboratively with our unions on the strategy, detailed design and deployment”. As one official said at a recent national reps’ meeting, “it’s the shortest honeymoon ever after a new agreement has been signed off, barely months”.

Billing the new plan as “investment” in a “second daily parcel delivery”, they aim to strip shoe-box sized parcels out of walks for later delivery concentrated in 300 out of 1,400 Delivery Offices, downsizing the current delivery staff in line with the shrinking letters market while hiking their walkspan (hours spent on physically delivering letters).

While extending parcel deliveries to Sunday, the company has privately floated the idea of slimming the USO commitment to deliver letters from six to five days a week, cancelling Saturdays. Meanwhile Royal Mail managers have said they want to use the tech agreed in the 4P agreement to introduce an Amazon-style “data-led” management of individual workers, while using infotech to change staff shifts, possibly weekly, to fit traffic. This will create a pressure-cooker workplace, messing up workers’ lives and commitments, 35 hour week or not.

Company PR is hypocritically billing the new strategy as a massive investment in Royal Mail, after shareholders have stripped £1 billion in profits out of the company since 2014. It announced at the same time it would increase this month’s dividend! The new five year plan is the fallout from privatisation, as Royal Mail bosses move to reap its fruits by taming or breaking the union.

‘Were we naïve?’

Deputy General Secretary (Postal) Terry Pullinger explained in his video to members, “We thought, new managers, new leadership, new thinking, that’s what we thought – were we naïve?”

Yes. Without some miraculous change in the postal market, and with other companies and the giant Amazon increasingly entering it, Royal Mail was always going to claw back the cost of its promises.

The fact is every deal cut in the last decade starts with affirming the “mutual interests” between the workers and bosses, and they all melted down on the fact that our interests are opposed – our wage rises and shorter working week are a deduction from their profits.

A deal brokered around a conference room table with ACAS couldn’t force Royal Mail millionaire shareholders to even temporarily accept these deductions from its profits. Only a strike that brought them to their knees could have forced this, though not permanently. Now the company wants to go forward without the union.

In December 2017 during the 4P dispute a court injunction stopped us striking – the basis of the 4P’s legal clauses, now incorporated into the 4P itself, which bar strikes – and forced the union into ACAS talks and the current deal. Now as the union prepares for another likely battle, postal workers, activists and reps need to develop our rank and file organisation to provide the power and members’ control that can mean we fight and win.

[Rumple]

Yes Terry, you were very naive! Members said so at the time.

[houseoflords]

I remember reading in the Courier just before Moya Greene left the business she stated that We, yes us the workers were in safe hands with Rico Back and Sue Whalley, well Sue left or left before she was pushed and well you can guess the rest.

[datasaint]

The union rolled over too easily with the 4P agreement, all the members saw was the 5% backdated pay agreement, the trouble is now the company is fighting market forces and if the union were to call a strike it's just going to harm it more and who knows where that might lead, a takeover maybe, splitting up the business? Where will the union be then?

[roadrunner bill]

Its not good..

[crimson king]

The union rolled over too easily with the 4P agreement, all the members saw was the 5% backdated pay agreement, the trouble is now the company is fighting market forces and if the union were to call a strike it's just going to harm it more and who knows where that might lead, a takeover maybe, splitting up the business? Where will the union be then?

Next step needs careful,crucial planning, as it will define all our futures and all the future of this job.

Market forces indeed. The next step needs to try and protect us from eventually becoming as poorly treated as Yodel or Hermes couriers.

[GRS]

Very tricky situation this now. We have got ourselves pretty much boxed in to a corner. We either accept the way things are going to go or we have to stand and fight. If Back is so anti union he will relish this situation and what an ideal time to push us into a strike - the middle of summer when mail volumes are low. Will the newer entrants of the last couple of years be willing to stand alongside the old timers? I’m not so sure as many I speak to aren’t overly interested in the business as a whole and see it as just a job they’re passing through whereas many of us have 20/30/40 years of our lives tied up in it. No doubt the usual numpties will just shout “strike” but what we can’t do is just walk blindly into one thinking that it will solve everything in fact personally I think if we do end up out it will turn very nasty and won’t end well and could see the biggest industrial unrest since the miners. I don’t know the answer hence I plod the streets every day but we’re going to have to put our trust and hope in the hands of Terry and co and see if they can pick their way successfully through this. Hold on everyone the next year could be very rough!!

[aiden01]

Very tricky situation this now. We have got ourselves pretty much boxed in to a corner. We either accept the way things are going to go or we have to stand and fight. If Back is so anti union he will relish this situation and what an ideal time to push us into a strike - the middle of summer when mail volumes are low. Will the newer entrants of the last couple of years be willing to stand alongside the old timers? I’m not so sure as many I speak to aren’t overly interested in the business as a whole and see it as just a job they’re passing through whereas many of us have 20/30/40 years of our lives tied up in it. No doubt the usual numpties will just shout “strike” but what we can’t do is just walk blindly into one thinking that it will solve everything in fact personally I think if we do end up out it will turn very nasty and won’t end well and could see the biggest industrial unrest since the miners. I don’t know the answer hence I plod the streets every day but we’re going to have to put our trust and hope in the hands of Terry and co and see if they can pick their way successfully through this. Hold on everyone the next year could be very rough!!

Think if there is to be a strike it will be around october.

[GRS]

Well just have to wait and see. I just don’t think it’s something we should just take lightly and treat as a couple of days off work here and there to have a laugh with mates on the picket line. IF it comes down to it then as I say it could be long and nasty but a necessity!

[VAB18]

.

[clashcityrocker]

support my fallow posties

Deer oh deer.

[Woody Guthrie]

support my fallow posties

Deer oh deer.

Why buck the trend?

[Celgar]

I can't think of any talks or strike action over the past twenty years in RM where we have ended up with the better end of the stick. On the large parcels proposal it should go to trials first and dependent on the fine details I still think it will fail. Switching to a Monday to Friday operation is in the hands of whoever negotiates the USO but if not this then something else, such as ending the DSA, needs to happen to level the playing field. It sounds like Terry Pullinger has already given the go ahead to a different usage & interpretation of the PDA actuals data which is probably the most worrying factor. We still haven't got anything to disprove RMs figures such as the 60% call rate claim or accurate data to match the job to paid duty hours.

[Marshamp11]

I can't think of any talks or strike action over the past twenty years in RM where we have ended up with the better end of the stick. On the large parcels proposal it should go to trials first and dependent on the fine details I still think it will fail. Switching to a Monday to Friday operation is in the hands of whoever negotiates the USO but if not this then something else, such as ending the DSA, needs to happen to level the playing field. It sounds like Terry Pullinger has already given the go ahead to a different usage & interpretation of the PDA actuals data which is probably the most worrying factor. We still haven't got anything to disprove RMs figures such as the 60% call rate claim or accurate data to match the job to paid duty hours.

I disproved our guvnors call rate claim a couple of days ago when they said it was 49%. I counted the call rate in my frame after prep to be 77%. Hmmmm.

[k979aaa]

Very tricky situation this now. We have got ourselves pretty much boxed in to a corner. We either accept the way things are going to go or we have to stand and fight. If Back is so anti union he will relish this situation and what an ideal time to push us into a strike - the middle of summer when mail volumes are low. Will the newer entrants of the last couple of years be willing to stand alongside the old timers? I’m not so sure as many I speak to aren’t overly interested in the business as a whole and see it as just a job they’re passing through whereas many of us have 20/30/40 years of our lives tied up in it. No doubt the usual numpties will just shout “strike” but what we can’t do is just walk blindly into one thinking that it will solve everything in fact personally I think if we do end up out it will turn very nasty and won’t end well and could see the biggest industrial unrest since the miners. I don’t know the answer hence I plod the streets every day but we’re going to have to put our trust and hope in the hands of Terry and co and see if they can pick their way successfully through this. Hold on everyone the next year could be very rough!!

Think if there is to be a strike it will be around october.

Well you would think so as our deferred pay rise was not payed at the due time the gloves would be on for round one the ballot but we could keep talking for another 2 of 3 weeks and hit them in November till they pay up.