The case for Local Agreements

[Woody Guthrie]

The case for local agreements always uses the false argument that the only alternative is a one size fits all national plan enforced by HQ. That's not what anyone wants.

What we're actually looking for is the entire union and business structure to be used to ensure every area has exactly the same opportunities to benefit from the agreement in exactly the same way.

That means all the Directors, Operational Management, Delivery Office managers, branches, Divisional reps and national officers singing from the same hymn sheet and no undue pressure on units to follow a branch template or a regional management plan.

Which direction individual offices then choose to take is obviously up to them subject to some necessary democratic tests overseen at Divisional level.

It isn't the binary choice you make it out to be Martin.

[freespeech]

If a bean counter somewhere decides all part time overtime must be stopped (as has happened twice over the past couple of years) what exactly is all this talk of local solutions going to do?
The DOM has little or no say in what goes on. Having a local decision making process with him involved is non sensical.

How does any of this address the profitability of the business?
Or are we still content to let GLS make all the profit? (Slave labour funds our shorter working week?)

Why would they stop PT overtime given that is at single rate so cheaper than both FT OT and agency?

[DGH]

They stop it because RM middle management are (generally speaking) obsessed with meeting their own targets and not giving a stuff about how that impacts on the wider business. Most targets seem tied to budgets.

Likely in this case they were trying to avoid the Absence Overtime budget being breached (presumably the Pressure Overtime budget having gone by the board long since, so it would no longer matter to them).

[Martin Walsh]

Woody,I am in total agreement with you on what you have said.

For to many years Royal Mail have operated a command and control style of management which forces the OPS manager and DOM to introduce standardisation which simply will not work in some offices.

This agreement has more emphasis on local solutions.

However where I agree with you we have got to ensure at Divisional and Area/ Branch level we give the local rep all the support to introduce their revisions based on the full terms of the agreement.

The Delivery Guidelines and Productivity measure will be built on the commitments within the Pathway to Change agreement which include all the following

No standard 1 in 6
The opportunity to have an innovative attendance patterns
No pre-determine savings
The Productivity measure is only looking at your office and not comparing it to any other.
Your revision must be agreed and signed of locally
There can be dedicated van duties
85% of the workload for now and in the future will be delivered on the core.
Whatever the new pipeline is agreed that out on delivery times will remain as present.
That Full time hours on introduction the revision will be 37 hours and with paid meal reliefs you actual work hours will be 34 hours on the same pay
Part timers will get a further pay rise as a result of the increase in hourly rate worth 2.6%
All revisions will be jointly developed and agreed
All base data and any associated data will be subject to local agreement
All revision activity will have full CWU involvement including local training , release and support.
All revisions are in line with the IR framework
Any deployment of a revision must take into consideration the impact of COVID.
MTSF will continue
There will be no compulsory redundancies
In addition part timers may get the opportunity to increase their hours in an easier manner. We have agreed WIPWH as the productivity measure that records all hours you have actually worked in a unit , so if a part time has work from 20 hours to 35 or 38 those will be in the work hours so providing when you have increased or maintained your productivity are still there than it makes it easier to get that part timer made up.


All of the above is actually within the Parhway to change agreement as it is now. There will be some issues added to but the above are the guiding principles .


So some who claim the agreement lacks clarity that is not correct.

The challenge once this agreement is voted in by the membership is that we ensure every office uses the above to ensure they get the best possible agreement for their members in their office.

[Cucumber]

I have been in the industry for 36 years.

I have been a rep at every level. I have gone to literally over 250 offices throughout the UK , some on a frequent basis.

In that time members within offices want different things such as attendance patterns , levels of SA , start times and finish times , when their meal relief is , their annual leave span , the hours that a part timer works over what days , their delivery span , how they do D2Ds , how they cover overtime , what model week you want to use. In addition all offices are at various productivity levels due to things like whether your inside your post code area or outside and have further to travel or you have secondary sorting or simply you have less parcel growth ,

Those who don’t want local agreements will be the first to complain if at National Level it was agreed you all had to start at a different time , finish at a different , change their attendance pattern , change their annual leave slots to standardise them , agree that all part timers would be on the same hourage regardless of the tasks .

It simply would not work if there was no local agreements.

This agreement allows for local solutions which cannot be done centrally , for example the number of dedicated parcels duties will depend on the number of larger parcels that an office has and whether that office can reduce from the core the hours from loss of letters to fund the dedicated parcel duty or not ?

Equally the ratio of full time to part time is totally different in offices. If you simply standardise this as you would have to do if there was no local agreements than you would in some offices be reducing the level of savings part time duties and increasing them elsewhere. That in itself would be a huge challenge.

This is why local agreements will remain the vehicle for moving forward issues as the members in the office should have a vote on their offices start time , finish times , their attendance patterns , the detail of their revisions. Rather than someone at Headquarters saying all offices have the following start , finish , hours , delivery span , overtime levels and attendance patterns.

I can guarantee that there would be far more complaints if the national agreement was to say that.

Local agreements have and never will work in our office. They are divisive and disproportionately affect those with under a certain years service. Surely you must have noticed that in your 250 offices visit? The things that you mention that would happen WITHOUT LA's are already happening, it can't really get any worse.

[renrag40]

Yes Martin let's put things into perspective.
An agreement has been reached by the heirachy of our union and Royal Mail that has, in your own words, 24 important outstanding issues which when agreed will be included into this agreement. The union has not been transparent about what these outstanding issues are. Why are these issues not listed in the agreement? Instead a cursory sentence is placed on the final page of the agreement. No detail whatsoever. Why?
This has the stench of a stitch up job from the union. I firmly believe that these "outstanding issues" have already been agreed in principle but the union know full well that they would not carry the vote if the membership knew what had been agreed. Therfore, the hierachy are trying to shoe horn them into this agreement without the membership knowing what they are agreeing to.
So I say it again.
It is a no and will always be a no until I know exactly what I am being expected to vote yes to.

[Ad_bee]

This agreement allows for local solutions which cannot be done centrally , for example the number of dedicated parcels duties will depend on the number of larger parcels that an office has and whether that office can reduce from the core the hours from loss of letters to fund the dedicated parcel duty or not ?

The fundamental problem is that RM assumes that a quantative statistic can be applied to a qualitative reality.

So, "the number of larger parcels that an office has"....guesswork.

"reduce from the core the hours from loss of letters"...?

Memo: quantity has reduced from the credit-boom years of the Millenium....to a new normal, taking into account E-Mail and the internet.

Call-rate has not significantly reduced.

Lapsing. The quantative statistics would, no doubt, suggest the viability of proving that savings can be achieved and that permanent lapsing is viable. However, this is pure speculation and blind ideology since the same technology that suggests a reduction in mail has actually provided a platform for an increase in call-time (parcels and packets) whilst the demise of paper communication is, as Mark Twain observed upon the report of his death.."The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".

Local (informal) agreements can be easily manipulated and over-ridden.

There needs to be nationally agreed frameworks.

Somebody/something has to be in charge. There must be a policy.

[Acca Dacca]

Yes Martin let's put things into perspective.
An agreement has been reached by the heirachy of our union and Royal Mail that has, in your own words, 24 important outstanding issues which when agreed will be included into this agreement. The union has not been transparent about what these outstanding issues are. Why are these issues not listed in the agreement? Instead a cursory sentence is placed on the final page of the agreement. No detail whatsoever. Why?
This has the stench of a stitch up job from the union. I firmly believe that these "outstanding issues" have already been agreed in principle but the union know full well that they would not carry the vote if the membership knew what had been agreed. Therfore, the hierachy are trying to shoe horn them into this agreement without the membership knowing what they are agreeing to.
So I say it again.
It is a no and will always be a no until I know exactly what I am being expected to vote yes to.

100%

Said this from the get go

The fact we are deliberately not even being told what these 24 important outstanding issues are rings alarm bells.

The fact we are being asked to vote before these issues are resolved is quite frankly either stupid or sinister and I dont know which is worse.

[SpacePhoenix]

Yes Martin let's put things into perspective.
An agreement has been reached by the heirachy of our union and Royal Mail that has, in your own words, 24 important outstanding issues which when agreed will be included into this agreement. The union has not been transparent about what these outstanding issues are. Why are these issues not listed in the agreement? Instead a cursory sentence is placed on the final page of the agreement. No detail whatsoever. Why?
This has the stench of a stitch up job from the union. I firmly believe that these "outstanding issues" have already been agreed in principle but the union know full well that they would not carry the vote if the membership knew what had been agreed. Therfore, the hierachy are trying to shoe horn them into this agreement without the membership knowing what they are agreeing to.
So I say it again.
It is a no and will always be a no until I know exactly what I am being expected to vote yes to.

100%

Said this from the get go

The fact we are deliberately not even being told what these 24 important outstanding issues are rings alarm bells.

The fact we are being asked to vote before these issues are resolved is quite frankly either stupid or sinister and I dont know which is worse.

Until we know what them 24 important outstanding issues are, as far as I'm concerned it's not worth the paper is written on and is a complete fail.

[Sugar]

The better option is what lots of office do throughout the Uk and that is to ensure that any local agreement is acceptable to the office and if it is not than collectively raise it through the IR framework. Remember there were 600 disagreements in the IR framework from our initial dispute, so can be done.

However the alternative is that if you don’t want local agreements you want a National Agreement making every office have a mandatory start time , finish time , productivity level , attendance pattern , absorbing level , percentage of full time to part time ratio , part time hours contract.

Royal Fail the only company I worked for, or know of, who has thousands of sites (D.O's.) all over the country all doing the exact same job but a completely different way. Talk about making a simple thing so unduly complicated and the CWU wonder why the membership are so utterly hacked off with them and are becoming ever more disengaged.

Diabolical.

[Woody Guthrie]

The challenge once this agreement is voted in by the membership is that we ensure every office uses the above to ensure they get the best possible agreement for their members in their office.

That's always been the challenge but it's a challenge we've failed to meet nationally on every agreement in the last 20 years Martin.

The inability to implement agreements consistently across the business and provide members with the same opportunities has been the achillies heal of both the union and the business for as long as I can remember which has led to local disputes, chaos and distrust in local reps and local agreements.

Without any guarantees of a more joined up approach by the business and with an agreement specifically aimed at more local solutions it looks like we're heading down the same old dead end.

What if anything is different this time, why should we trust that HQ will get it right when all the signs point to more of the same?

We've had the promises you're making before with the BT2010 nonsense , to be honest they didn't amount to much then. Dodgy planners, planning values and overcomplex tools did for us then and they'll probably be used to screw us over again.

[DGH]

One glaring problem with local agreements is that they get undermined (often quite quickly) afterwards.

For instance, an office has F/Ts working 5 days/6 and also 5 six-day weeks/6. It also as P/Ts working 5 days/6, 4 days/6 and 3 days/6, as well as some working 2 six-day weeks/3 (all on the same weekly hours).

Yet newly 'made up' F/T staff will only be offered 5 days/6 and newly joining P/T only offered 5 days/6. This is never opposed by the CWU reps, some of whom appear to believe it is CWU policy to get everyone working 5 days/6. This can be a massive cause of frustration, especially amongst newer staff.

Local agreements should be ideal. RM provide a 'framework' that's suitably loose as to allow offices flexibility to arrange duties in ways that suit the local staff and management. Three things combine to wreck it:

Local managers finding it easier to have everyone on the same rota pattern.
Middle managers at area level interpreting 'local solutions' as 'area solutions' and imposing their own (metric-driven) ideas on offices within their control.
Senior staff using their connections with CWU and/or management to secure their own desired rota pattern heedless of any 'fallout' caused by the above two pressures on junior staff.

[Woody Guthrie]

'm not sure how these revisions can possibly go ahead in the present circumstances or how any accurate planning values could be obtained.

If/once we get through this pandemic we don't know how much letter volume might recover and we don't know how much if any parcel volume might reduce.

We don't know how the shared van situation might look or how prolonged social distancing might impact the indoor operation.

What timescales do we have for the network implementing a separate parcel operation, do you build that in, increase duty sizes and offer people more hours and duty patterns just to find the business pulls the rug from under you because they can't sort out the network and distribution end?

It will be like throwing darts at a board while drunk and blindfolded.

[hans solo]

Ok let's go with their local agreement pish. Can we have a vote locally to reject their agreement .I don't think so . If we vote on a national agreement that's what it should be NATIONAL agreement end of and if hq can't understand why they should out of themselves to the sword and resign

[endofdays1982]

when is the members being balloted to accept? I want the ballot asap so i can get my back dated pay to April and get out of this job!