National Update

[Martin Walsh]

For the immediate attention of CWU Members in London

Dear Friend and Colleague

It has been clear for some time that Rico Back the Head Of Royal Mail wants to systematically break our national agreements and create a cheaper and more flexible employment model.

This has been demonstrated by his decision to not only not adhere to the commitments made within the Four Pillars Agreement but by the fact that Royal Mail want to review and remove the legal guarantees we got when we were privatised but also by their refusal to commit to protecting the universal service obligation which Of Com intend to review next year.

Rico Back has shown his open contempt to the CWU within negotiations by suggesting that he as the Chief Executive should be able to do what he wants rather than having to negotiate with the CWU.

Royal Mail’s decision to break the Agenda for Growth by deciding to set up a separate profit and loss company for parcelforce from October and TUPE parcelforce members into this company is just the start of his strategy to shrink the company.

What starts with parcelforce might be followed by Logistics LTD , Delivery LTD , Collections LTD , Processing LTD , International LTD as they all become their own profit and loss standalone companies.

Royal Mail’s decision to bring forward the review into the legal guarantees is significant. These legal guarantees stopped Royal Mail from breaking up the company , creating a two tier workforce , stopping them from outsourcing or franchising and stopping them from recruiting zero hour contracts.

Royal Mail believe this these are the barrier to a more profitable company. We need to defend those legal guarantees by all means possible.

In addition Royal Mail want to introduce the following:

1. Introduce their separation of larger parcels from mail centres , RDCs and circa 1000 delivery offices which will lead to thousands of jobs losses.

2. In addition in the circa 300 LAT units they want to collapse one walk in every six to become a late driver delivering larger parcels and their walk will be absorbed by the remaining five duties.

3. Royal Mail want to use PDA’s outdoor to rescouce and perform revisions.

4. Royal Mail want to roll out further Automated Hours Data Capture ( automating signing in and out )and to reduce overtime and they have suggested linking it to pay roll.

4. Royal Mail want to roll out Resource Scheduler which creates different duty sets and tasks for each office as it is linked to traffic , PSP and PDA’s actuals. At the moment Royal Mail and the company who supply the software still have not managed to get the system to work. However if they do it is a game changer and designed to remove the CWU from involvement in resourcing or revisions.

5. They want 20 thousand jobs losses with London and other cities with mostly full time jobs under the most attack.

6. They want each office to improve their efficiency by around 5 percent in order for them to agree the next hour off the shorter working week.

7. They want 30 minute flexibility on every duty 6 days per week.

8. Royal Mail’s obsession of reducing costs is seeing more offices being attacked and causing walks outs. We are seeing a rise in conduct cases and medical retirements and cases against CWUs reps. Royal Mail seem to not want to improve the culture in the workplace.

Royal Mail and CWU are due to go to external mediation in line with what the High Court Judge ruled during the Four Pillars Dispute and that the CWU had to do prior to balloting for industrial action.

There is little optimism that external mediation will resolve the significant differences between Royal Mail and the CWU.

It is therefore our opinion that we are heading for a significant and defining industrial dispute with Royal Mail.

This will be a dispute which will shape whether Royal Mail will get their way of becoming a cheaper and move flexible employer.

This is a time when all members needs to support the CWU and make sure we send a clear message to Rico Back and the other senior Directors that we are not going to stand by and let him wreck the business and our members terms and conditions in their desire to reward themselves with more shares and bonuses.

It is time for action! it is time for CWU Members to stand up and say enough is enough

We must protect our jobs and our futures.

A statement by the London Divisional Committee

[borders]

" but also by their refusal to commit to protecting the universal service obligation which Of Com intend to review next year ."
what is their likelihood of being able to wriggle out of this , Martin ?

[osgoody1970]

martin, I am surprised it's taken this long for them to attack the terms & conditions of our members, it was always apparent after privitisation, this was the way they would go, the only way to fight this, is to make the members aware of this, the members must be told in no uncertain terms, this is a fight they must win, the alternative doesn't bear thinking about, minimum wage!!!! for a job that in the end I found too physically demanding to do!!! 5-6 hour delivery spans is the equivalent to doing a marathon every day!!! (I had colleagues who done the kilt walk In just over 5 hours) that's not going to be healthy for any of our members in delivery!!! keep up the good work, your old mate in Glasgow????

[britwrit]

Royal Mail’s decision to break the Agenda for Growth by deciding to set up a separate profit and loss company for parcelforce from October and TUPE parcelforce members into this company is just the start of his strategy to shrink the company.

What starts with parcelforce might be followed by Logistics LTD , Delivery LTD , Collections LTD , Processing LTD , International LTD as they all become their own profit and loss standalone companies.

From a business standpoint, this would be awful. A bunch of tiny little fiefdoms - each with managers busily engaged in scheming and empire building - is not what the company needs.

[bowie]

Rico back wants a fight let’s give him one,we stick together and we stand behind are union,we stick together and we win

[SpacePhoenix]

If RM were to get machines that could sort and sequence letters and flats together, combined with packets being sorted by machine, I do wonder if traditional walks would be done away with walks being dynamically created each day based on what's coming through to the DO

[DGH]

From a business standpoint, this would be awful. A bunch of tiny little fiefdoms - each with managers busily engaged in scheming and empire building - is not what the company needs.

Very true. But it basically exists at the moment with every office being 'responsible' for its own budget - work that can be offloaded onto another function is whenever possible (even within our office, some of our managers will 'poach' a postie from another manager's section if it serves them to do so (rather than looking at the office overall). That often leaves the other manager scrabbling to cover a duty late in the morning. It's silly but driven by the 'my section' mentality that pervades the business.

[Pidleypoo]

Picket line it is then.

[Woody Guthrie]

It is time for action! it is time for CWU Members to stand up and say enough is enough

It's really time for the national officers to say that Martin and they're committed to mediation.

We can't really do much more without a position to fight on, a set of demands, a plan even.

No disrespect to the London Division but the National Union needs call the business out and force it to communicate its long-term strategy to the staff, we're officially in the dark, we know it doesn't look pretty but until the business comes clean we will just be told by management that its not happening.

How does a local rep fight that?

[norris9]

Despite all this potentially happening...

1. Surely they are sooner or later going to have machines that can sort all walks into order and that probably will also bundle the post up.

2. Employ owner-drivers.

3. All medium to large parcels end up being delivered by owner-van drivers or Parcel Force.

4. They won't need as much depot space as they do now, therefore will sell off a lot of land.

5. Once bank statements, tickets, payslips, etc.. all go digital....then there will be far less post.


I'd assume this job will be a lot different 10+ years from now. There will likely be no sorting, just part-time hours / zero hour contracts and a lot more time spent walking....if you want the hours.

[DGH]

Once the majority of bank statements, bills etc go online and companies abandon paper-based marketing (and we can kid ourselves all we like that it won't happen, but it will), then mail is pretty much down by 90%+. Now that won't happen very soon, but it might well happen sooner than we'd think. Or like. At that point there's going to be redundancies and probably on quite a large scale. I'd hope the union is already putting a plan in place for when that unhappy situation arises.

More immediately I think the union probably need to accept that things are going to change and need to concentrate on making the changes sensible. Automated hours capture is pretty hard to argue against if you take the attitude that people should work the hours they are paid for.

However slicing the business into 'Processing Ltd', 'Delivery Ltd', etc is bloody stupid (except if you're aiming to 'cash-crop' from the business . . .) and that should be opposed on those grounds. RM management should not be running the company down to make a fast buck and please the shareholders in the short term.

[SpacePhoenix]

1. Surely they are sooner or later going to have machines that can sort all walks into order and that probably will also bundle the post up.

I wouldn't be surprised if machines exist (or at least being developed by the manufacturers) that can do that. I know the technology exists already to be able to sort packets down to walk level

[daveyeff]

If RM were to get machines that could sort and sequence letters and flats together, combined with packets being sorted by machine, I do wonder if traditional walks would be done away with walks being dynamically created each day based on what's coming through to the DO

according to our area rep, rico reckons all these new machines in the mail centres can be franchised out. saying 'ANY' company can do that sort of work. so it won't just be the D.O.s. we are heading for a very serious confrontation with this guy.

[norris9]

More immediately I think the union probably need to accept that things are going to change and need to concentrate on making the changes sensible. Automated hours capture is pretty hard to argue against if you take the attitude that people should work the hours they are paid for.

So this would be a clock in - clock out system?

This makes sense. Though the problem with it from RM's side is that Posties will slow down. At the moment, a lot of the time we have to walk round like we are doing an Olympic Walk race and don't have time to pause.

[eastie]

More immediately I think the union probably need to accept that things are going to change and need to concentrate on making the changes sensible. Automated hours capture is pretty hard to argue against if you take the attitude that people should work the hours they are paid for.

So this would be a clock in - clock out system?

This makes sense. Though the problem with it from RM's side is that Posties will slow down. At the moment, a lot of the time we have to walk round like we are doing an Olympic Walk race and don't have time to pause.

No we dont, just work at a normal speed and work to your time. Its not a race