02/06/21 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 02 June (with full editorial attached as well!). We appreciate your comments.

WHAT IT WOULD TAKE
So RM's made unprecedented profits out of our
sweat, blood and tears - a record £702m (operating
profit) squeezed out of us in just one year! And of
course, we saw this bonanza coming in the form of a
packet "tsunami" that hit us at the beginning of the
pandemic. But we've certainly not seen it in the form
of an increase in real pay - compare RM's 116%
increase this year to our minuscule 1% "rise"! We
need to shake their (giant) piggy-bank!

MAKING LIGHT WORK
Yes, in processing we've gone through one whole
year non-stop - many of us do feel it in our bones
and muscles. And this recent slight fall in the packet
workload is welcome, but who knows how long it'll
last. What's certain, is that we could do with many
more hands.

WHO'S MOMENT?
In the meantime, TeePee was very happy to be the
first union official to be invited to the shareholders'
Annual General Meeting. He tried his best to blend
in, but didn't quite manage. So when RM's chief
exec Thompson asked him "you feel okay, Terry?",
he answered, "I'm feeling, this is our moment, that's
how I feel". Oops, a little awkward... Pity he doesn't
realise he would blend in better with us on the shop
floor - if he remembers how to get here.

TURNING THE CLOCK BACK
Management is intent on taking a huge leap
backwards to Victorian times by bringing in "clock-in,
clock-out", along with the re-signs. Of course, they
want to make sure we work every single second they
pay us for. Whether this will work for them is
another question...

STICKING TO OUR TIME
Why shouldn't Night shift starting time be 11pm (or
be flexible) for those who drive to work? We’re not
paying £15 for a few minutes of parking, just so we
can be in the building "on time"! And by the way,
that's another reason not to have a clocking-in
system!

WHAT'D MAKE US FEEL THE DIFFERENCE
What difference will the shorter working week make
for us on distribution, we wonder..? Sure, a 38-hour
week is better than a 39-hour week. But unless
management cuts working time where we really
need it - like the beginning of a night shift to avoid
the CC - we won't notice any difference. A 35-hour
week, on the other hand...

NOT ON!
So what's this talk of national collection revisions?
Yes, managers have been playing with the idea of
having us on deliveries doing collections... in fact,
we already do some! But now they want more? We
hear the extra collections will be restricted to a few
postcodes for the time being... But we know that
they'll try to have us doing more, everywhere.
Another "revision" we don't want to hear about!

MORE PARCELS = MORE MATES
Apparently, the arrival of the Parcel "Sortation" (yep,
we also thought it was called "sorting"!) Machine is
now confirmed... but we still won’t see it until
January 2022. Well, fine. But we want to know now
what the consequences for us will be (if it does
actually turn up by then!). Because we can say now:
if RM has job cuts in mind it can forget that.

ACTUALLY "PRETTY STUPID MACHINE"
We know what RM says: that their PSM has
"Artificial Intelligence", and can sort all sizes and
shapes of parcels, etc., etc. But we also know that’s
plain fantasy. If it does indeed have "AI", it’s got an
"IQ" of 0! We know that in other MCs where our
mates use it, they are always re-sorting a lot of stuff
by hand! Yes, it could relieve our workload, but for
that, we’ll need our work mates (plus more!) to stick
around.

UP THEIR "POSTERITY"
And the union officials echo the management line
about the PSM "securing" the future of HMP… We
don't buy that either! It's our (and our daughters',
grandsons' etc.) future jobs that need "securing",
and only collective fights can do that!

NEED A HAND?
It is about time RM-PFS meetings were reinstated...
With so many changes affecting us, we have a lot of
questions to ask! So the Elephant can stop using
the pandemic as an excuse and find ways for all of
us to meet safely. If he's short of ideas, we can give
him some!
PS: And by the way, one of the things we need to
sort out is the election of a new rep... we haven't
had one for far too long!

THIS ISN’T A CASUAL SATURDAY JOB
We notice there are casuals here - in June?! Of
course, we'd be very happy to see these mates
employed on permanent contracts. But as it is,
they're being used to do the jobs we don’t want to do
on Saturdays and even Sundays. And for a tiny
wage! Whoever works these unsocial hours should
be getting a huge premium on their (equal!) pay!

[Tman]

ACTUALLY "PRETTY STUPID MACHINE"
We know what RM says: that their PSM has
"Artificial Intelligence", and can sort all sizes and
shapes of parcels, etc., etc. But we also know that’s
plain fantasy. If it does indeed have "AI", it’s got an
"IQ" of 0!

Speaking of low IQ's, "AI" in this case stands for "Address Interpretation" rather than "Artificial Intelligence", but as with the attached propaganda sheet every month, never let facts spoil a good story..