Duty of Care

[stevejm]

It is generally recognised that all employers have a duty of care towards their employees. Employers that are found to be negligent in court cases are punished. As such, responsible employers promote policy that leads to good health and safety outcomes.

The Royal Mail, in my short experience, recognises this and as such there are many good practices in place including vehicle checks, high viz waist-coats, procedures to minimise dog bites to name but a few. The main issue is that due to poor supervision and management, lip service is paid to these issues but there are too few checks and balances. Which postie for example marks every letter where there is a dangerous dog at the home? Does the management check that? Which postie does a vehicle check every single day? Which office has every single postie wearing standard issue shoes? Lots of rules, little policing. It's time-consuming and costly for management to check. As long as they have us sign a form saying we've had the training then the legal liability shifts to us.

And so on to the corona virus specifically. Some changes have been made which are welcome. Yet so much more can and should be done.

It is now clear, or should be, that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic transmitters. This means that the virus is spread simply by being in close proximity to an infected person and breathing their exhalation. If the infected person talks a lot or worse still shouts, then more virus particles are spread.

The management should be more pro-active than they have been concerning social distancing. They MUST fulfil their mandate of duty of care to employees. Otherwise they are open to accusations of wilful and criminal negligence !

In order to save unnecessary sickness and loss of life I recommend the following :-

1/ Immediate staggered start times to increase social distancing. Any manager who doesn't implement or permit this is failing in their care of duty in my opinion.
2/ Procedural changes to minimise time in the delivery offices, for example, suspend all door to door deliveries for a number of weeks
3/ Minimise talking at work. Yes, this takes enjoyment away. But we are absolutely not in a normal situation. "Talk costs lives" is literally correct at this time.
4/ Why do we need to wait for an employee to die for an office to be deep cleaned. Deep cleaning every week!
5/ Cleaning of van interiors with antiseptic wipes at the end of a shift. And checked by a line manager!
6/ Masks for all employees as soon as they are available.
7/ Improve ventilation especially in small management offices.
8/ The need for face to face meetings should be reviewed. For example, we know that back-to-work meetings could be done in less than 30 seconds but procedure means
they take 5-10 minutes in my experience. Adjust to the new reality - find a way to drastically shorten them so we are not sitting in a stuffy, non-ventilated office for
an unnecessary amount of time.

Adjunct: Should the CWU be doing more? I know they sent out the letter but what else? Letters and videos are communication, which has a part to play, but what of concrete action, pressuring DOMs to take action etc.

[Chelseablue]

Check out the bbc news today highlighting how bad the rm offices are reg ppe etc. They say theyv spent 15 million on ppe lol .

[stevejm]

Check out the bbc news today highlighting how bad the rm offices are reg ppe etc. They say theyve spent 15 million on ppe lol .

They are full of shite. The qualification to work at a PR job for these large organisations is to be able to bend the truth in the most obsequious manner possible. They get a load of flack in the media about delivering junk mail and send out a statement saying that they are "now only delivering door to doors with addressed mail."

Huh? It's always been like that in the D.Os I've worked in.

[Chelseablue]

THe journo shdv asked him about this £15 million ppe and where its gone ? Was that macauley guy

[norris9]

Surely it's in RM's best interests to make things as safe as possible for us and it's really not that difficult to implement, it is really very very simple. Yes, it's not going to be perfect you are still going to walk past people and forget to distance from others when having a conversation.

I am not sure what the chances are of government shutting RM down due to safety concerns, maybe it's next to zero as we are pretty crucial for a lot of things, delivering important documents, government letters, medicines, products that keep large and small businesses going, and items to keep the public sane. So by shutting RM down the government will be shutting off another chunk of the economy.

I don't understand why some RM depots can't make things safer for their workforce. If the government don't shut us down, then the workforce might do that themselves. Why risk this?

[stevejm]

Surely it's in RM's best interests to make things as safe as possible for us and it's really not that difficult to implement, it is really very very simple. Yes, it's not going to be perfect you are still going to walk past people and forget to distance from others when having a conversation.

I am not sure what the chances are of government shutting RM down due to safety concerns, maybe it's next to zero as we are pretty crucial for a lot of things, delivering important documents, government letters, medicines, products that keep large and small businesses going, and items to keep the public sane. So by shutting RM down the government will be shutting off another chunk of the economy.

I don't understand why some RM depots can't make things safer for their workforce. If the government don't shut us down, then the workforce might do that themselves. Why risk this?

I'm not saying that the government should shut us down or even that we should walk out en masse (yet) but there are certain things that can be implemented IMMEDIATELY such as staggered start times which cost no money as far as I can make out - maybe they'd have to have an LM coming in later too.

But .... I don't see that it is happening. It could be in place by Tuesday, 2 work days from now. If they don't exercise care of our health when they could then, I'm sorry, that is criminal negligence and in the aftermath they will leave themselves open to massive class-action lawsuits for manslaughter.

[norris9]

I'm not saying that the government should shut us down or even that we should walk out en masse (yet) but there are certain things that can be implemented IMMEDIATELY such as staggered start times which cost no money as far as I can make out - maybe they'd have to have an LM coming in later too.

This has happened in some depots......what are the other depots playing at. Managers..... what are you doing?!


The BBC report today made me laugh. Showed Posties complaining about the situation in depots, but in quite a few instances it was Posties themselves not social distancing. They showed people in a canteen sitting next to each other. So Posties are as much to blame. They showed one depot who had a walkout and the posties were all standing in a group together outside.

Then they mentioned that RM are very busy and showed a clip inside a van and there wasn't much post/parcels in it compared to what I get. If that postie thinks that is a lot of post then he or she is having a laugh.

[Chelseablue]

Yeah bad reporting , back door opens a few parcels wooopppeee. Parcels gone through roof in every office , but they show that in report !

[PJ101]

Every DOM should complete a H & S risk assesment of the impact of the virus and implement solutions appropriate for their office. This should include firm procedures and actions when a colleague reports symptoms.