16/12/2020 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 16 December. The complete bulletin is attached, with front page editorial. The bulletin is taking its usual Xmas break... see you in January. Take care and stay safe!

HE'S SLIPPERY
Did we hear him right? In his Facebook update on
the negotiations over the new deal, TeePee tells us
that if they're taking so long, that's because they'll
cover “the next 2-3 years”...! But didn't we make it
clear that we need a 1-year deal on pay?! And
these bosses are already in arrears!
With Brexit, Covid, the global crisis, nobody
knows what will happen to price inflation over the
next period. So yes, we do agree when TeePee
says that the “economy is up in the air (...) and it's
a hurricane out there". It definitely is, which is one
good reason to agree to nothing - and fight
management's ongoing cuts!

PAY BOOM WANTED
By the way it's BOOM time for the Royal Mail and
any other parcel delivery company - and so we
want and need a "booming" pay rise ASAP! In fact,
even managers admit the pandemic has been like
going through 3 Xmases, with the increase in
packet volumes and all.
Yet in the meantime, they've given us a piddling
£200 Xmas bonus (and pro-rata, what's more)!
Hardly going to go very far, is it? Anyway, in
principle we're against bonuses. They cannot
substitute for decent, guaranteed pay...

CATCHING THE C-19 BUS
Sure, it's sensible not to share vans, when the 3rd
wave of Covid-19 is around the corner. But then
managers in Deliveries ask us to catch up with the
round, by taking the bus or the tube? So if we
catch the virus on the bus and not in a van it's OK,
is it? Obviously what's needed is a one-(wo)man,
one-van policy! More vans, and one for each of us!

A LOST CAUSE
Yes, tracked parcels are flowing in great numbers...
but not into the tracked pipeline any more! And
now managers are coming up with the lame excuse
that they didn't expect this many parcels this
month? Of course they didn't - they're all wings
and legs... no chicken heads among them. So yes,
some tracked 48s are taking 5 days to be
delivered... Shouldn't they be renamed "tracked
120s"?

OFCOM OFF WITH USO - OR UFO?
Bet RM was happy with Ofcom’s report that they
could save £225m by ending the USO in its current
form, by cutting Saturday deliveries! But we know
they've visions of even greater “savings” than that,
and of making us pay for them. Interim boss
Williams was even talking about replacing us with
drones! Good luck with that...

REAL WAGES NEEDED!
So this year, we hear that casuals were offered 10-
hour shifts, 6 days a week. And of course, with
such low pay, they need a lot of extra hours! But
that's precisely the issue – they wouldn't need to do
60-hour weeks, if wages were better!

STILL TOO BAD
In the end, part timers have been made up doing
2x13hr shifts plus 12hrs on Saturday. It’s not quite
the 51hr-week we thought we might end up doing,
but the shifts are still a killer. Once again: we're
for an 8-hour day, on proper pay!

WHEN YOU GOTTA GO...
Are managers getting a kick out of telling us when
we can and can’t take toilet breaks? Come on,
we're not at school here! With such long shifts, we
need to take even more breaks! And we're not
going to ask their permission first.

MAKING LETTERS OBSOLETE
So we'll see the price of the 1st class stamp
increasing by 12% (to 85p) from 1 January...
Seems it's a deliberate policy to price the public out
of sending letters... and Amazonise us postal
workers!

SOLIDARITY
It's always good news when workmates stand up to
management. We hear that 100 postal workers
walked out of Bridgewater DO (Somerset) over the
dismissal of a young workmate at the end of
November. They were right. That's the best way
to get that job back!

ONE THING “CLEARED”...
Last bulletin we wrote that Nights didn’t clear the
work in PSA, but we meant Lates. Sorry! But
while we might have “cleared” that up, the work on
the other hand, is still piling up...