National Update

[Martin Walsh]

Important Update to London Members

Dear All

We were called to a Joint PEC/ Divisional Reps meeting yesterday at CWU HQS.

We were given the following update

The officers seemed shocked that within the last week that all the following senior Directors have gone :

Steve Cameron
Anton Harding
Ian Jones
Ewan Mcmurdo

It would seem that Reco has decided to remove anyone who was involved in the Four Pillars Negotiations and subsequent agreement.

These have been replaced with either Directors from other companies or those who previously worked in continuous improvement projects.

It is clear the direction of the company is heading .

Terry Pullinger reported that Royal Mail were saying that some areas and offices were not holding the line on the shorter working week and were agreeing revisions. This was weakening the unions negotiating position.

Terry also reported that the company had written to the CWU asking to commence the review into the legal guarantees and that there is a belief that they will try and reduce some of those legal guarantees.

In addition we were told that Royal Mail wanted to set up a different profit and loss company for Parcelforce with staff possibly being TUPE over to a new company.

This is in our opinion the breaking of the legal guarantees which was that they could not break up the company.

In addition it was reported that Royal Mail believe that they could save thousands of hours and overtime if the union agreed to PDA actuals being used for resourcing revisions, AHDC being used for time recording and linked to pay and Resource Scheduler for clarifying how many duties you need on a weekly / monthly or seasonal basis.

Anyone who thinks the above is good and yes there are some , should also realise that Royal Mail want the CWU to sign up to continuous improvement on efficiency and resourcing.

The CWU and Royal Mail are in the process of agreeing the external mediator to review the differences between the Company and Royal Mail and has to be done before the union can ballot for strike action.

There is a meeting between Royal Mail and the CWU on Thursday but the CWU are not hopeful of much progress as some of Royal Mail’s chief negotiators have now been replaced.

It is clear that Reco Back and Achim Dunwald have decided that they are not interested in the key principles of the Four Pillars Agreement and want to introduce their 5 year strategy on the workforce without agreement.

It is therefore clear that we are likely to be heading for an industrial dispute in the Autumn 2019.

Let’s get the members ready , let’s get the membership addresses correct.

But most importantly let’s tell Reco your not running a non unionised GLS now !

Your dealing with the CWU who have had more National disputes in the last 25 years than any other union and has gained significant achievements in all of them.

The CWU must now rise up and say enough is enough! Either you negotiate on the following :

Parcel strategy
Stoping Real time recording
Improving culture n the workplace
Extending the Legal guarantees
Agreeing the Shorter working week

Or we will show that we can get 89% of our members to vote yes again to defend their jobs and futures !

A message from the London Divisional Committee

[Deadly]

This is the big one, Reco Back and his cronies will use this to try and defeat the union. Be prepared for a long hard struggle.

[SpacePhoenix]

Assuming it does end up with industrial action, what's a realistic timetable (mediation, ballot then potential 1st strike)?

[yubin282]

Why not push for a 35 hour week now instead of 2022

[zz666]

The cwu's track record for strikes in the run up to Christmas is poor. They are always postponed till after the festive period. Their bargaining position is then reduced.

[General Mannerheim]

Or we will show that we can get 89% of our members to vote yes again to defend their jobs and futures !

Good luck with that after the last fiasco and last few shitty agreements. Stop your `partnership` and you might get somewhere.

[Jpro747]

If they drag it out till after Xmas were f**ked.

[daveyeff]

Assuming it does end up with industrial action, what's a realistic timetable (mediation, ballot then potential 1st strike)?

mediation.....next few weeks.....ballot end of sept/early Oct...….1st strikes late October.....Royal Mail.....applies for and wins ANOTHER injunction....strikes off till after xmas. then friends again

[leolion855]

Martin.

Simple yes/no to to the following if you dont mind

1. Under Ricos regime will part time contracts be reduced?
2. Will those of us that want to work for RM be pushed out against our will?
3.if the parcel separation gets through and walks are removed are we to be given a workable workload?
4. Are we going to be swallowed up by another provider/ all go self employed in the end?

Cheers muchly.

[Yamr1]

Lets all think positive now,
We need to win the fight.
So lets all Unite and take this fight to the greedy people high up that think the postman and women do f**k all.

[Yamr1]

This will be one messy fight so let's all get behind the cwu 100%

Plus we're all the union asswell
So lets fight for our four pillars and take no crap from rico and his greedy sidekicks

[postslippete]

Its not a great thing for Royal Mail to start using these PDAs against us. The idea of the technology was supposed to be for our customers so that they can see whether or not an item has been delivered or not in real time. I'm aware that there will be a few muppets on here who will just say 'work to time, whats the problem?' - but that attitude will seriously backfire on you when Royal Mail pull you up for either not walking fast enough or taking too many rest periods on your walk i.e. performance issues. And believe me they will give anything to introduce it.

And the other issue is this seasonal variation of hours. Having us work something like 30 hours in summer (plus lapse) and well over 40 hours during Xmas when the nights start getting dark at around 3.30-4pm. Could it lead to problems where they might mess up our hours over the course of the year and have us wondering if we have worked too many hours than what we should have actually been paid for? I am wondering whether it is workable too when there are all sorts of postal staff working on different hourly contracts. Personally, if the bosses at Royal Mail are red hot on this idea then I would suggest that our lapsing should be null and void. They can't seriously expect us to work more hours at Xmas on something like a 46 hour contract but then for the 30 hours in summer also say that we should be working extra lapsing as well!!

[rogersh]

Assuming it does end up with industrial action, what's a realistic timetable (mediation, ballot then potential 1st strike)?

mediation.....next few weeks.....ballot end of sept/early Oct...….1st strikes late October.....Royal Mail.....applies for and wins ANOTHER injunction....strikes off till after xmas. then friends again

I am certain the reason the CWU has requested mediation now is to prevent what happened last time in that RM took out an injunction which stopped strike action until the mediation process was executed.

[daveyeff]

they did. but I just know there will be a balls up somewhere in the ballot procedure. some incorrect union members addresses or something trivial......Dave Wards shoelaces tied wrongly etc. they'll get their injunction, they always do. scumbags.

[worktotime]

i think we need to stand together and support the cwu 100% on this because if not we will get f****d over big style. massive job losses , even more unmanageable deliverys . etc etc .