Boss's new plan?

[postslippete]

London's calling to the faraway town...

Anyone would think he's in the right place at the right time. He was the boss of BA and just look at them now due to circumstances outside of their control with no flights going anywhere and thousands of workers being made redundant. I won't be investing in airlines any time soon.

He's got previous from resolving a dispute with cabin crew unions and will try and resolve the dispute with ours. It's a nice initial gesture to award staff a bonus. I don't think he's the type of bloke to throw his toys out the pram and stop talking to the Union if he doesn't get his own way. It could be his last little business adventure before he retires.

[norris9]

Putting 'letters dropping' aside....better management would help.

-Making rounds equal. Why does it seem like there is a refusal for management to do this, is it too much of a hassle to change, or are they just unwilling to admit rounds need equalling up?

If rounds are more equal you wouldn't have people cutting off as much and then having to pay someone excess or overtime to finish the round.


-If you are going to send someone out blind...give them some guidance, don't just leave them in the dark and hope for the best....they will go over their time or cut off, either way you are going to be paying them extra or someone else extra on overtime.


-Introduce some sort of live tracking system where you can see where Posties are on their rounds and designate any extra post to those who are going to be finishing early and take the post to them so they don't have to come back to the depot.


-Encourage the public to get parcel boxes. Leaflet them about them and sell them/install them ourselves. If 50% of houses had them the amount of time this would save Posties is ridiculous.

[HTPostman]

Snip.

Some good ideas there norris. My own ideas:

The first thing that needs sorting is making everybody work their hours. I can’t think of many businesses letting staff go home early then paying others OT to finish the work.

Rounds need evening up for sure.

An app on our PDA for future when we are back doing park and loops so we can see where our van partner is and can go and help.

I’ve long thought the walk folders are outdated. We need information (either printed or able to be downloaded digitally) showing how to tie up, tricky addresses (eg where on the frame their number is 10 King street but it always comes addressed as The Hollies King Street). Also flat access codes, things like that.

Something needs to be done about the state of the vans inside. Leaving wrappers, half eaten food, bottles, banana skins. Something needs to be done to those consistently doing it.

Last but definitely not least, the holiday pay needs sorting ASAP. When it eventually goes to court RM are going to have to backdate a huge amount of money. An unpopular opinion I know but I’d accept 75% of what I’m owed if it’s paid within a month and going forward I’m automatically paid my average hours when I’m on holiday. By accepting less (but still a big %) I’d hope it doesn’t impact on RMs finances as much and so doesn’t lead to job losses.

RM must know they are going to have to pay it, they can’t keep kicking the can down the road.

[Grumpyoldmailman]

Last but definitely not least, the holiday pay needs sorting ASAP. When it eventually goes to court RM are going to have to backdate a huge amount of money. An unpopular opinion I know but I’d accept 75% of what I’m owed if it’s paid within a month and going forward I’m automatically paid my average hours when I’m on holiday. By accepting less (but still a big %) I’d hope it doesn’t impact on RMs finances as much and so doesn’t lead to job losses.

RM must know they are going to have to pay it, they can’t keep kicking the can down the road.

Can I borrow a £1000 off you please mate promise I will pay you back £750 within a month, sound fair?

[SpacePhoenix]

I’ve long thought the walk folders are outdated. We need information (either printed or able to be downloaded digitally) showing how to tie up, tricky addresses (eg where on the frame their number is 10 King street but it always comes addressed as The Hollies King Street). Also flat access codes, things like that.

Good luck getting them to do that, for some DOs they need to get their A+ updated first (when sequencing some batches get loads of rejects- the best time to check is with a bulk posting where every address gets something)

[Sugar]

Putting 'letters dropping' aside....better management would help.

-Making rounds equal. Why does it seem like there is a refusal for management to do this, is it too much of a hassle to change, or are they just unwilling to admit rounds need equalling up?

Because it will show nearly a decade of fudging the numbers and inept managers more interested in bonus payments than doing what they they are paid to do which is manage and it'll also upset the office favourites. All rounds were supposed to have been equalised during the introduction of van share and everyone knows how that went. It's never going to happen because of the s**t storm that would follow when its proved hundreds of hours were stripped out of offices shouldn't have been.

If rounds are more equal you wouldn't have people cutting off as much and then having to pay someone excess or overtime to finish the round.

Any right thinking manager would agree with you but this is royal fail with a management team made up of failed OPG's and people made up to managers who've only been OPG's for 18 months or graduates with overinflated egos and if it isn't written in a book just throw their teddies out of the cot.

Far easier to just bully and harass anyone who does the job correctly.

-If you are going to send someone out blind...give them some guidance, don't just leave them in the dark and hope for the best....they will go over their time or cut off, either way you are going to be paying them extra or someone else extra on overtime.

It's always been like that, even when I started 20 odd years ago. An attitude that any monkey can do the job and its unskilled. Any decent manager worth their salt helps those under them to improve and be better. Not royal fail managers its more about "I'm in charge cos I'm a manager". Its all about their egos.

-Encourage the public to get parcel boxes. Leaflet them about them and sell them/install them ourselves. If 50% of houses had them the amount of time this would save Posties is ridiculous.

I tried that with lots of customers over the years. Unfortunately most don't want to spend the money and much prefer to piss the postie off with multiple trips or get them to doorstep or green bin by "being nice" whenever they see them.

My own ideas:

The first thing that needs sorting is making everybody work their hours. I can’t think of many businesses letting staff go home early then paying others OT to finish the work.

Was supposed to stop when van share came in and a decade later people are still saying it needs to stop. It never will because some OPG's are still too stupid to see what's good for them. Short term gain long term pain.

I’ve long thought the walk folders are outdated. We need information (either printed or able to be downloaded digitally) showing how to tie up, tricky addresses (eg where on the frame their number is 10 King street but it always comes addressed as The Hollies King Street). Also flat access codes, things like that.

Folders were supposed to be updated on a regular basis but like everything in royal fail if it ever cuts into delivery time then it never gets done.

Something needs to be done about the state of the vans inside. Leaving wrappers, half eaten food, bottles, banana skins. Something needs to be done to those consistently doing it.

Same as above. Should have been done as part of a walks daily plan but soon went out of the window when managers, and OPG's, realised it could cut into delivery time or going home early.

Both managers and OPG's have been fools to themselves, now the company is built on such dodgy working practises it'll never change and only get worse.

The cost to put it right would probably bankrupt the company.

As an example we once had an ex army officer as a manager. They lasted about 4 or 5 months and left because they were not prepared to treat staff like the area manager expected them to. The running of the office was/is a shambles and the army officer said it would need a week of no mail going out to just get the running of the indoor operation up to standard and all the frames, opals and walk logs up to date. They also couldn't cope or deal with OPG's constantly moaning and acting like overgrown nursery children whenever the slightest thing went wrong or someone got something they didn't get. Basically OPG's inability to think rationally for themselves and stop acting as if every little thing was a major crisis.

They told the area manager to shove it and went back in to the army for a quieter life.

[HTPostman]

Last but definitely not least, the holiday pay needs sorting ASAP. When it eventually goes to court RM are going to have to backdate a huge amount of money. An unpopular opinion I know but I’d accept 75% of what I’m owed if it’s paid within a month and going forward I’m automatically paid my average hours when I’m on holiday. By accepting less (but still a big %) I’d hope it doesn’t impact on RMs finances as much and so doesn’t lead to job losses.

RM must know they are going to have to pay it, they can’t keep kicking the can down the road.

Can I borrow a £1000 off you please mate promise I will pay you back £750 within a month, sound fair?

Alternatively...

Sure, I’ll give you the full £1000 back mate. Only it’s likely to be going to court, it’s been ongoing for months if not years so you might have to wait a few more years till I give you the full £1000 back.

By the way once it’s sorted in a few years I’ll owe 30,000 of your part time colleagues £2000 each and 80,000 of your full time colleagues £400 each. Plus court costs. Looking at £100 million. Unless I can raise the finance I might go under and then you’ll be a creditor, being paid pennies for every pound owed.

Feeling lucky?

[postslippete]

Putting 'letters dropping' aside....better management would help.

-Making rounds equal. Why does it seem like there is a refusal for management to do this, is it too much of a hassle to change, or are they just unwilling to admit rounds need equalling up?

If rounds are more equal you wouldn't have people cutting off as much and then having to pay someone excess or overtime to finish the round.


-If you are going to send someone out blind...give them some guidance, don't just leave them in the dark and hope for the best....they will go over their time or cut off, either way you are going to be paying them extra or someone else extra on overtime.


-Introduce some sort of live tracking system where you can see where Posties are on their rounds and designate any extra post to those who are going to be finishing early and take the post to them so they don't have to come back to the depot.


-Encourage the public to get parcel boxes. Leaflet them about them and sell them/install them ourselves. If 50% of houses had them the amount of time this would save Posties is ridiculous.

These observations have been around for years Norris. But the biggest challenge Royal Mail face by far is the CWU and their respective policies, - which ironically serve to protect us all. For example,

1. Making the rounds equal. I completely agree with you on this but unfortunately you get some posties that are really slow and you get some posties that are quick. We have a postie that only takes roughly 4 loops everyday. He used to have 6 loops on his duty but he consistently left loops and cut off everyday for months and the bosses were that fed up of paying other posties docket to complete his round, eventually he got a much smaller duty in the last revision. He's supported by the CWU in that he only works the hours that he is paid for. I'm not aware of any disability nor performance management taking place

2. Sending someone out blind. This used to happen donkeys years ago before Sat Navs and Google maps but we used to have plenty of time to do the rounds in. At least going out in pairs gave newbies some reassurance of where they were heading. That said, I think those agency guys we employed at Xmas had no idea where they were going. They were just given a van, pda and a load of parcels and told to head off in a certain area.

3. Live tracking system. Do posties really want a manager just sat there on their computer watching everyone?? I don't agree with this sort of micro-managing, its problematic and could create more scope for managers to then discipline us just because we sat in the van for 5 minutes waiting for our van share partner to arrive, for example.

The easier way to reconcile points 1 and 3 by the way is to just give posties a set amount of work to do and its up to them how long they spend doing it. I can't see another way round it if you have made all the duties roughly the same. Some posties will take longer, some won't.
And then when we have done that the business might decide to get rid of line managers....

4. Parcel Boxes. An excellent idea but can you really see us pioneering this? Amazon maybe. They have got the resources, the capital, and just like the boxes inside some convenience stores - they have them for their customers. Other day couriers will just sling parcels over the back fence. I still don't understand why our customers have to pay a charge just to pick up their parcel from the post office; surely we should be encouraging more parcels to be delivered this way because it means that 1. we get rid of more parcels first time round, and 2. we give our customers genuine alternatives

[Celgar]

I agree all posties work indifferent ways. Some are are slow, fast, superhumanly fast, disorganised, like to talk to customers or avoid them like the plague. There are a multitude of variables such as some streets receiving hardly any mail or parcels and others snowed under on a daily basis. Walk route planning can only go so far so even if all the walks are measured to be the same length in duty time the posties will never all finish at the same time.
Maybe if RM paid the same amount of attention to posties finishing beyond their duty time as they do to those finishing early we might get somewhere.

[Celgar]

What's the general view on the new boss's strategy now that Rico has been ousted, ie. will we be looking to streamline involving redeployment, voluntarily redundancies, possible forced redundancies? Strikes still on at Christmas OR will Keith Williams hatch a new plan as it's difficult to see things staying as they are/were after CV19?

Cannot see industrial action being allowed or happening as even TP & Ward are almost allergic to the mere thought of us doing it or even threatening it. We have had the 200 pound bribe so now we just have to wait for the bad news to arrive.

The WHO is now advising one metre distancing is sufficient now but the UK government are consistently behind the curve and take weeks if not months to implement it. The controlling factor will be the furlough payments so once we get to the end of August and they drop to 60% and employers have to pay 25% of that furlough payment people will either go back to work or lose their jobs.

[Grumpyoldmailman]

Can I borrow a £1000 off you please mate promise I will pay you back £750 within a month, sound fair?

Alternatively...

Sure, I’ll give you the full £1000 back mate. Only it’s likely to be going to court, it’s been ongoing for months if not years so you might have to wait a few more years till I give you the full £1000 back.

By the way once it’s sorted in a few years I’ll owe 30,000 of your part time colleagues £2000 each and 80,000 of your full time colleagues £400 each. Plus court costs. Looking at £100 million. Unless I can raise the finance I might go under and then you’ll be a creditor, being paid pennies for every pound owed.

Feeling lucky?

Alway feel lucky. If your owed it your owed it. Don’t take a penny less that what you are owed if you have done the work. I can see the holiday pay being a more costly problem for RM that the Covid one.

[2yearpostie]

Can I borrow a £1000 off you please mate promise I will pay you back £750 within a month, sound fair?

Alternatively...

Sure, I’ll give you the full £1000 back mate. Only it’s likely to be going to court, it’s been ongoing for months if not years so you might have to wait a few more years till I give you the full £1000 back.

By the way once it’s sorted in a few years I’ll owe 30,000 of your part time colleagues £2000 each and 80,000 of your full time colleagues £400 each. Plus court costs. Looking at £100 million. Unless I can raise the finance I might go under and then you’ll be a creditor, being paid pennies for every pound owed.

Feeling lucky?

Alway feel lucky. If your owed it your owed it. Don’t take a penny less that what you are owed if you have done the work. I can see the holiday pay being a more costly problem for RM that the Covid one.

so youd take the 2 grand then happily loose your job if they bust?

[Grumpyoldmailman]

so youd take the 2 grand then happily loose your job if they bust?

I don’t get your point. What I said is that if they legally owe it they legally owe it so if you have worked the hours why would you accept less than a 100% of what you are owed. We will find out through the courts at some point if that is indeed the case or not.

[stodgy88]

Thought it was a industry wide legal agreement ,seen firefighters mentioned ,so if that's the case why would we go to court.

[Woody Guthrie]

What I said is that if they legally owe it they legally owe it so if you have worked the hours why would you accept less than a 100% of what you are owed.

The courts are never that cut and dried.
That's why 90% of compensation cases are settled out of court.
Businesses are never that forthcoming.
That's why a lot of settlements are never fully paid up.

It's a judgement call on how much you're prepared to accept and how much of your time and more importantly money you're going to spend on a possibly fruitless mission to recover 100% of what you're owed.

The worst thing you can do is throw good money after bad and the union has also got to think about the fact that it's using overall members contributions in any fight not just part-timers or even Royal Mail members.