Why are they DETERMINED to put us out at the hottest point of day?

[captain kaos]

mmmm

because they take the health and welfare of their workforce very seriously

[wazer]

So why don't they supply sun block.Council workers now have it as there are now non allergie sun lotions I spend over 15 a month on cream for work.Had cancer scare yers age.

[glenfiddich]

Royal mail can provide you with long sleeve shirts and a wide rimmed sun hat so no need for sun cream

[Jpro747]

No ac in the vans is an absolute disgrace!! And before anyone says it would cost too much for poor RM, they are paying people twice as much as us to tell us how to do the job who are sat on their arse in the shade in an air conditioned office. I really think the union should be pushing for ac in all new rm vehicles.

[Pumpernickel]

Can you think of any other UK company which allows the work-force to work the hours around "the midday sun"?

Not trying to crap on you here, because you do kinda have a point, but there are lots of people working in worse conditions that are affected by the heat, and some of these have the potential to affect us. The biggest issue is there is little under law to incentivise businesses to deal with the issue.

Some instances of other jobs where summer heat can have a big impact:

Bus drivers. A few mates of mine work on the buses and have said about the conditions where they're driving for over 5 hours solid, with no access to any facilities (aside from 2 bottles: 1 of water, the other to pee in), while in control of a greenhouse full of sweaty people (and everyone on a hot bus is sweaty) that doesn't have AC because it would apparently cost too much in fuel. My mates advised me to bear this in mind when I'm on delivery in summer, thus to be very careful near them. They basically have 1 small window they can open, and possibly a small fan they can't really feel blowing (assuming said fan actually works). When they take over a hot bus they can apparently feel the previous drivers sweat that's soaked into the seat coming through their trousers, etc.

There's also those people in armoured money vans (those security vans with "video surveillance unit" on the side) who can't open their windows and have a load of gear on to protect themselves when they get out. Quite a few of of these vans don't have air con, though these people probably have better access to toilets than bus folk.

Then there's anyone driving any other large vehicle without AC (just be extra careful of anything on the road really).

I myself used to work in a cooker at a food plant (and this "cooker" was about the size of my delivery office). Temperature was in the 30's in the middle of feb, and could get well into the 40's in summer, but they had water stations everywhere and large fans blowing a lot of air around accessible areas (still no AC), and plenty of hosepipes (for cleaning, and we used to douse ourselves on occasion). This was probably the best equipped place in terms of helping staff deal with heat, but it was still bloody hot.

[SpacePhoenix]

There are obviously ways around that as has been shown by the D+4 product.

That D+4 product is dead in the water. For it to work we'd need extra CSS machines and to have our iLSMs extended. There are no CSS machines going spare as all the mothballed ones have been cannibalised way to much, meaning that RM would have to buy some brand new CSS machines. Also would the current design of stacker modules for Solystic's STAR product (the actual product name for iLSMs) even be compatible with our current iLSMs so there could be the same problem as the CSS machines.

RM basically don't have any choice atm but to send some of you out during the hottest part of the day. Social distancing stops them from having too many staff in at once. Probably the only viable option would be bringing back full van sharing which is obviously not allowed so in effect that's not an option

[yellowbelly]

...... And before anyone says it would cost too much for poor RM, they are paying people twice as much as us to tell us how to do the job who are sat on their arse in the shade in an air conditioned office.....

And meanwhile we've had a letter come round telling us to stop using so many 739's as it costs too much and that we might have to sign
a quantity out for use on delivery each day FFS! (I've just checked the date it's not 1st April!!).

[Streets4228]

As Pumpernickel wrote, we are not the only 1's, what about people who have to repair roads. Now that is a much harder job than what we are doing, and I bet they don't get paid as much as we do. Building sites, etc etc etc. The problem we have in this country is that we are not used to the heat that we seem to get every year now in the summer. Basically get on with it or get another job, or try the road repair job just to see how hard it really is to work.

[Woody Guthrie]

As Pumpernickel wrote, we are not the only 1's, what about people who have to repair roads. Now that is a much harder job than what we are doing, and I bet they don't get paid as much as we do. Building sites, etc etc etc.

Not even close, I've worked on both the roads and construction sites before I started in Royal Mail and neither are anywhere near as physically demanding as delivery work, even on the sites it's short bursts of physical work with plenty of down time between, most of the heavy work on the roads is done by machine.

Nothing I've done labouring on either comes close to the consistency of work rate required in this job and the toll that takes being outside in the heat all day. I have to say though that sometimes we are our own worst enemy, on the construction sites if you need a break you take a break, if you need a drink you take a drink but saying that there's always a toilet on site.

[2yearpostie]

As Pumpernickel wrote, we are not the only 1's, what about people who have to repair roads. Now that is a much harder job than what we are doing, and I bet they don't get paid as much as we do. Building sites, etc etc etc. The problem we have in this country is that we are not used to the heat that we seem to get every year now in the summer. Basically get on with it or get another job, or try the road repair job just to see how hard it really is to work.

Your missing the point, IF we HAD to go in the midday sun, fine, its awful but we'd do it, HOWEVER all the company need to do is advance the mail/hold some back so it gets to delivery offices between 6 and 7am so delivery could take place when its cooler. Instead they are trying to move it so work wont make to the delivery offices untill 8am putting us out in the midday sun when they have no reason to do so.

[SpacePhoenix]

HOWEVER all the company need to do is advance the mail/hold some back so it gets to delivery offices between 6 and 7am so delivery could take place when its cooler. Instead they are trying to move it so work wont make to the delivery offices untill 8am putting us out in the midday sun when they have no reason to do so.

Dream on. Our final dispatch is at 06:15 which has all the SDs (some DOs get what's available for SDs on their earlier run) and the wave 2 of sequencing goes out on the final dispatch as well. The furthest away DO probably doesn't get their lorry arrive until about 07:30. Our final arrivals mean that having the final dispatch any earlier than 06:15 is not an option

I think there was a plan at some point to have earlies sort some inward which would mean the final dispatch being pushed back, don't know if that plan got axed

[Woody Guthrie]

HOWEVER all the company need to do is advance the mail/hold some back so it gets to delivery offices between 6 and 7am so delivery could take place when its cooler. Instead they are trying to move it so work wont make to the delivery offices untill 8am putting us out in the midday sun when they have no reason to do so.

Dream on. Our final dispatch is at 06:15 which has all the SDs (some DOs get what's available for SDs on their earlier run) and the wave 2 of sequencing goes out on the final dispatch as well. The furthest away DO probably doesn't get their lorry arrive until about 07:30. Our final arrivals mean that having the final dispatch any earlier than 06:15 is not an option

I think there was a plan at some point to have earlies sort some inward which would mean the final dispatch being pushed back, don't know if that plan got axed

You do understand that none of that means a rat's arse if they change the USO next year.

The only thing driving a mailcentre work plan is the quality of service requirements driven by the USO.

If the bulk of the mail streams lose any time specific requirements what's still to be processed come final dispatch simply becomes tomorrow's mail, in theory then you could manipulate that final dispatch in any way you wanted.

You do keep saying no, no, no to change as if..

A) Your mailcentre reflects the entire network.
B) Nothing in the network will change.

Neither of those are true.

[Pumpernickel]

As Pumpernickel wrote, we are not the only 1's, what about people who have to repair roads. Now that is a much harder job than what we are doing, and I bet they don't get paid as much as we do. Building sites, etc etc etc. The problem we have in this country is that we are not used to the heat that we seem to get every year now in the summer. Basically get on with it or get another job, or try the road repair job just to see how hard it really is to work.

I'm not saying that people don't have a point about the heat in summer, because they absolutely do.

I'm just pointing out that we aren't the only ones that have summer heat as an actual issue, also we aren't the only ones that are left to fend for ourselves.

I have worked in industries that have more consistant need for heat management that are capable of managing it when they want to, but there are lots of people (like us) in industries that don't seem to consider the potential issues that come from working in heat (and it doesn't even matter if you're driving all day like my mates on the buses, or carrying bags on a walk, both have their issues when dealing with hot and humid weather).

[mjd24]

As Pumpernickel wrote, we are not the only 1's, what about people who have to repair roads. Now that is a much harder job than what we are doing, and I bet they don't get paid as much as we do. Building sites, etc etc etc. The problem we have in this country is that we are not used to the heat that we seem to get every year now in the summer. Basically get on with it or get another job, or try the road repair job just to see how hard it really is to work.

good one

[SpacePhoenix]

HOWEVER all the company need to do is advance the mail/hold some back so it gets to delivery offices between 6 and 7am so delivery could take place when its cooler. Instead they are trying to move it so work wont make to the delivery offices untill 8am putting us out in the midday sun when they have no reason to do so.

Dream on. Our final dispatch is at 06:15 which has all the SDs (some DOs get what's available for SDs on their earlier run) and the wave 2 of sequencing goes out on the final dispatch as well. The furthest away DO probably doesn't get their lorry arrive until about 07:30. Our final arrivals mean that having the final dispatch any earlier than 06:15 is not an option

I think there was a plan at some point to have earlies sort some inward which would mean the final dispatch being pushed back, don't know if that plan got axed

You do understand that none of that means a rat's arse if they change the USO next year.

The only thing driving a mailcentre work plan is the quality of service requirements driven by the USO.

If the bulk of the mail streams lose any time specific requirements what's still to be processed come final dispatch simply becomes tomorrow's mail, in theory then you could manipulate that final dispatch in any way you wanted.

You do keep saying no, no, no to change as if..

A) Your mailcentre reflects the entire network.
B) Nothing in the network will change.

Neither of those are true.

The only mail streams that I can see losing the time requirements are letters and flats. RM will need to keep the time requirements for packets and Tracked if they want to be competitive