RM latest changes to service

[themailman]

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[cpsteve]

What have the Union won.

Royal Mail still aren't delivering letters on Saturdays, if you looked at the 5 year plan this would be right up near the top of the list. So we kept out rotas at the moment, in the bigger picture it means nothing.

This is what they won, If the company had their way our start times and our rest days would be changed and ot would be gone. If we stay as we are they will be delivering letters Saturday very shortly.

[Murdoch]

Everything is falling down around the governments ears at the moment due to the effect of social distancing. We are a key factor in keeping the car on the road so it does look like they stepped in to inject a little common sense.

Can some please tell me what has changed since RM made the announcement of suspending Saturday letter deliveries? Nothing changed, the letter deliveries still got suspended. As for the changes to duties etc etc, RM never actually stated they would change deliveries, all they said was they were suspending letter deliveries and would concentrate on delivering parcels, which is exactly what happened. You delivered your duty parcels then you went and delivered left over parcels on other duties. The union changed nothing and the government changed nothing. Rico said he wanted to do this for 3 months and now it is 6 weeks, does anyone believe that the union or government made him change that number, I doubt it was ever changed in the first place, , all he needs is 6 weeks (I think he will keep it going for much longer) to show that Saturday letter deliveries are not needed and are an inefficient use of RM resources and money. Then when the USO comes up for renewal (which under this government could be brought forward to this year with the pandemic used as the excuse to do this IMO), Rico will be fighting to scrap it and now the union have allowed him to get the data to back him up. Well done Union once again you played a blinder, outfoxed by the lazy fat greedy capitalist coward hiding in his bunker in Switzerland. 5 day letter delivery weeks will be here to stay within a year IMO, with thousands of jobs gone, and the union just rolled over and let them do it. It's hard to stomach in the current situation, but if you are like me and not a full-time duty holder then I would start looking for a job in the next few months or retrain/learn a new skill because our future career at RM looks bleak IMO. TBH the way Rico is being allowed to run the company, the ones leaving the company might be the lucky ones.

I do wonder what data Royal Mail are looking to get out of this that would support a permanent reduction in the USO. If that is the plan, they're not going about it in a manner that will get good data. If you wanted to do a proper trial, you'd have to implement some sort of plan for Parcel Duties on Saturday, ahead of time.

What they actually did, was throw this onto the business at a time when everything is a bit of a mess. They gave managers no time to plan anything. They've chosen a time with all the Bank Holidays, which will screw up the data. The offices with large amounts of parcel backlogs, will have all of their staff working their time on Saturday trying to clear the parcels, but will still have a letter backlog. And in the offices without a backlog, they have artificially created one today by giving everybody an easy Saturday. 3/4 out of the 6 weeks will be a total mess data wise, and I don't think there's a chance in hell that by the 5th or 6th week of this, we'll have 50% of the usual people working on a Sat. With the Bank holiday on friday too, it'll just go from mess to messier.

I think we give Rico far too much credit, the more and more I look at what's happening, the more I think he's completely out of his depth.

[Woody Guthrie]

There's a lot RM could get out of this for future reference.
How best to approach it.
What works and doesn't work
How many packets are achievable.
How many staff are needed.
How much space it frees up in the pipeline.
Whether some managers are up to the task or not.

If they had simply implemented this by executive action they would have learned nothing because we would have deliberately screwed it up which is why I doubt they ever intended to.

[Murdoch]

There's a lot RM could get out of this for future reference.
How best to approach it.
What works and doesn't work
How many packets are achievable.
How many staff are needed.
How much space it frees up in the pipeline.
Whether some managers are up to the task or not.

If they had simply implemented this by executive action they would have learned nothing because we would have deliberately screwed it up which is why I doubt they ever intended to.

Yeah sorry, I was coming at that from a point of view, of the data that would be used to support a case to OFCOM, for a reduction in the USO. As in, I don't think they've approached this in a manner that would give them good data, or make a particularly compelling case for a permanent reduction in the minimum requirements of the USO.

But, you're correct, it gives RM a lot of valuable information for next time.