Joint statement now let's get into the real negotiations

[clashcityrocker]

Benefit for Managers:
-No time wasted harassing Posties.
-No post is left behind. Walks are cleared.

What happens on a really busy day when you have to be finished to pick the kids up from school/attend a hospital appointment etc?
Don't you think they would make every day too busy and then point at the agreement that says you promised to clear every day?
Piecework/annualised hours - every managers wet dream.

[Celgar]

I don't think any of the results of previous negotiations can be considered legally binding except for probably anything that RM wants to happen. I think the wording used at the time left most things open to change or further negotiation and nothing was set in stone.
From what we are hearing locally from DOMs and the next tier up of management it sounds like even if or when the coronavirus is defeated or brought under controlled we will NOT be going back to sharing vans. Given that RM do not want to supply more vans this will be a major change which takes us where RM is rumoured to want to go. In effect it will leave us where we are currently in a mess with posties having their hours moved later into the day if not into the early evening.

There has been differing talk on this forum with some offices not allowing posties to get paid overtime or work their days off and other offices continuing to do so. Up until a couple of weeks ago in our office we could still get paid overtime or work days off but this has now changed and is no longer possible. With staff vacancies seemingly not allowed to be filled and occasional sickness some walks are backing up with days of mail which is detrimental to quality of service.

Pretty much zero chance of RM being allowed to ditch the letters part of the business unless they want to lose the Royal Mail branding and maybe revert to the GLS monicker. As others have stated the obvious remedy to the situation is to change or drop the DSA agreement. It was never fit for purpose and never brought about a fair competition regime but just stole our revenue.
Other than not going back to shared vans the other major changes will either be every other day delivery for letter & small packets or shutting down the operation on Saturdays. Most likely they will go with six day operation for parcels & tracked combined with every other day six day operation for letters & parcels. No voluntary redundancies but relying on 'natural wastage' and not filling vacancies to manage lower staff requirements. Reducing staff costs would more than cover some of demands of the union.

[SpacePhoenix]

Other than not going back to shared vans the other major changes will either be every other day delivery for letter & small packets or shutting down the operation on Saturdays. Most likely they will go with six day operation for parcels & tracked combined with every other day six day operation for letters & parcels. No voluntary redundancies but relying on 'natural wastage' and not filling vacancies to manage lower staff requirements. Reducing staff costs would more than cover some of demands of the union.

I wonder if RM would do away with sequencing if they went every other day for letters, they could potentially axe all iLSMs, IMPs, CFCs, T2Ks and CSSs, making room for every MC to have a PSM. They could have "letter hubs" which would sort and sequence letters covering two or 3 MC areas

[Acca Dacca]

This IMO is their biggest flaw - rather than grow the company they’d rather spend time and money on screwing us and monitoring our every move to catch us out. Very odd way to run a company and where they’ve neglected growth in pursuit of harassing the staff they’re now finding the chickens are coming home to roost.

It would be really nice if they could stop the harassment. I know it's easy to say 'Just stop it', but that's not going to work. Can't they just set up a way of working where we don't have to be harassed to take more post....

Can't we just set up walks so they are all as equal as we can possibly make them and no matter how busy or light it is we have to deliver everything on our designated walk. So once you are done delivering you can go home. Then we have no harassment by management to take more post and there is no Posties pacing themselves or waiting to go back to the depot. It is stress free. Yes you may have busy days where you are finishing 'late', but you will also get the light days where you can go home early instead of having to wait it out until your finish time. Xmas would obviously involve longer days therefore the Xmas bonus should be a guaranteed £1000 to make up for this busy period.

Benefit for Posties:
-Go to work knowing they aren't going to get harassed to take post they cannot deliver, no extra post, no lapsing.
-They can go home once they have finished.

Benefit for Managers:
-No time wasted harassing Posties.
-No post is left behind. Walks are cleared.

We already had that

It was called Job and Finish

[postslippete]

Letters are terminally in decline. They have been for years.
There was a time when everyone got quarterly bank statements, a quarterly phone bill, a quarterly electricity bill, a quarterly gas bill, a credit card bill and they paid for everything by cheque. Those days are not coming back.
realising this RM sold off half of their mail centres and got rid of 1000s of staff.
We now no longer have the capability to do all the work.
I doubt RM are going to invest billions in a dying mail stream.
But maybe they will?

According to the business the lockdown period saw substantial packets being delivered and fewer letters...but less profits?? I know covid19 has thrown a curve ball to the company but its obvious to me (and I repeat) that we only seem to profit right now when we deliver the parcels with the letters. It doesn't take an Einstein to realise that there has been a trend in letter decline. I'm a glass half full sort of a guy and predict that letters will pick up as businesses start to open up in July and we may get a bit of Autumn pressure.

Its fair to say that RM have also been aggressively pursuing the decline of our own letters business for years because deregulation back in 2000 has enabled many DSA providers to come in and cream our profits. This is work that we used to process which has been taken away from us and still we are forced to deliver letters 6 days a week via our USO. Someone on another thread suggested that RM should focus on trying to change DSA companies getting their hands on our business rather than on devaluing the USO, and that makes a lot of sense as it would help keep our jobs. Its one key way of trying to make our letter business more profitable. Will it happen or is there a workaround? Whatever it is, we need to find it.

Investing billions into these parcel hubs and parcel automation is quite high risk if we don't have the necessary capital to do it. Amazon have literally got billions to spare and its the reason why they established a UK delivery network as quick as they have; they really don't need to get involved in letters. Whether we like it or not, our USP over all these couriers is our letters. We may not be able to reverse the trend, but we should at least try and change the regulation. Our government aren't that daft - they know companies like Amazon should be paying hell of a lot more tax as well.

[milly]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

[iainwilson]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

I work in Rotherham Parcelforce we cover Sheffield Barnsley Doncaster Rotherham Peak District Wakefield Huddersfield Chesterfield Worksop Scunthorpe Goole Grimsby and anywhere in between from the one depot. We also have a Royal Mail temporary sorting area in the depot as well.

[milly]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

I work in Rotherham Parcelforce we cover Sheffield Barnsley Doncaster Rotherham Peak District Wakefield Huddersfield Chesterfield Worksop Scunthorpe Goole Grimsby and anywhere in between from the one depot. We also have a Royal Mail temporary sorting area in the depot as well.

I am sure it would be much cheaper to absorb all of that work into the local DO's for delivery.

[deltaforce]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

I work in Rotherham Parcelforce we cover Sheffield Barnsley Doncaster Rotherham Peak District Wakefield Huddersfield Chesterfield Worksop Scunthorpe Goole Grimsby and anywhere in between from the one depot. We also have a Royal Mail temporary sorting area in the depot as well.

I am sure it would be much cheaper to absorb all of that work into the local DO's for delivery.

You wouldn’t have the room and the vans would need to be much larger.There would be collection to consider as well. My local Parcelforce depot has a few 40 ton trucks on premises. I’m sure they wouldn’t fit in the typical d/o

[milly]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

I work in Rotherham Parcelforce we cover Sheffield Barnsley Doncaster Rotherham Peak District Wakefield Huddersfield Chesterfield Worksop Scunthorpe Goole Grimsby and anywhere in between from the one depot. We also have a Royal Mail temporary sorting area in the depot as well.

I am sure it would be much cheaper to absorb all of that work into the local DO's for delivery.

You wouldn’t have the room and the vans would need to be much larger.There would be collection to consider as well. My local Parcelforce depot has a few 40 ton trucks on premises. I’m sure they wouldn’t fit in the typical d/o

The Parcels would be unloaded from the 40 tonne vehicle into the 7.5tonne vehicles then onward to the various DO's, this is what happens in my office.
As for deliveries Royal Mail would have to buy more Sprinters but they would also be using Parcelforce's as well if we were to amalgamate.
When we get back to normal and have two people to a van it would be far easier to deliver large parcels between two people.
I work on collections and quite often Parcelforce don't even bother picking up from Post Offices(quite often Parcels are not picked up for a few days) I could easily take them as I would usually have space in my van for them.

[SpacePhoenix]

It's time to merge Royal Mail and Parcelforce into one company,it makes no sense to have both companies delivering Parcels.
Most decent size towns and cities will have separate Royal Mail depots and Parcelforce depots when it would be more economical to use one site.

I work in Rotherham Parcelforce we cover Sheffield Barnsley Doncaster Rotherham Peak District Wakefield Huddersfield Chesterfield Worksop Scunthorpe Goole Grimsby and anywhere in between from the one depot. We also have a Royal Mail temporary sorting area in the depot as well.

I am sure it would be much cheaper to absorb all of that work into the local DO's for delivery.

You wouldn’t have the room and the vans would need to be much larger.There would be collection to consider as well. My local Parcelforce depot has a few 40 ton trucks on premises. I’m sure they wouldn’t fit in the typical d/o

The Parcels would be unloaded from the 40 tonne vehicle into the 7.5tonne vehicles then onward to the various DO's, this is what happens in my office.
As for deliveries Royal Mail would have to buy more Sprinters but they would also be using Parcelforce's as well if we were to amalgamate.
When we get back to normal and have two people to a van it would be far easier to deliver large parcels between two people.
I work on collections and quite often Parcelforce don't even bother picking up from Post Offices(quite often Parcels are not picked up for a few days) I could easily take them as I would usually have space in my van for them.

A couple of of the DOs we cover I believe they have to unload the 7.5 tonne vehicle in the street as they physically can't get it into the DO yard

[Woody Guthrie]

A couple of of the DOs we cover I believe they have to unload the 7.5 tonne vehicle in the street as they physically can't get it into the DO yard

We're talking about the future not the present or the past. Delivery offices and even mail centres that aren't fit for purpose just won't exist.

[SpacePhoenix]

A couple of of the DOs we cover I believe they have to unload the 7.5 tonne vehicle in the street as they physically can't get it into the DO yard

We're talking about the future not the present or the past. Delivery offices and even mail centres that aren't fit for purpose just won't exist.

That would be near enough all the DOs being relocated (and probably merged at the same time). Possibly the number of DOs cut by 2/3 with "super-DOs" being created?

[iainwilson]

Some of the Parcelforce items are 2.5 m long and loads of bulk deliveries as well. Car doors and bonnets bumpers flat packed furniture mattresses. It takes up a load of room.

[milly]

Some of the Parcelforce items are 2.5 m long and loads of bulk deliveries as well. Car doors and bonnets bumpers flat packed furniture mattresses. It takes up a load of room.

Our office is quite rural with many small towns so we collect around 5 or 6 yorkies a night for Parcelforce as it is uneconomical for Parcelforce to collect them, now and again there are some very large items but from what I have seen there is nothing that Royal Mail couldn't deliver providing we had more Sprinters.