A letter from Simon Thompson

[Wolf91]

People can joke all they like. It's not f£cking funny anymore. WHERE Is TERRY. TERRY and his minions where are you when we are being insulted? As a reserve I am f£cked over on a daily basis and now this. What the f£ck. Enough. I'm done.

We can laugh and joke but that is just rolling over and being shafted by these c£nts. We have to stand up and reject this s**t.

I was literally just thinking the same. It is feckin awful. Is he still in his bunker?

[Jahpostie]

We need action. We can all play our part to highlight the utter stupidity of the current situation. Greed and greed on Royal Mail's part. Reject lapsing. Finish on your time every day. Condemn and return those so so embarrassing letters. Refuse extended delivery and only accept overtime at a proper rate. Royal mail prospers on fear and intimidation, particularly intimidation of reserves, floaters, the under confident and weak. Royal mail is rife with the under confident. It exploits to the max. Give it them back tight if you can. Oh yeah and start looking for another job because Christmas is coming..... It is going to be bleak by the sound of it regarding temps. Also I suspect it will be the busiest ever in terms of volume.

[SpacePhoenix]

We need action. We can all play our part to highlight the utter stupidity of the current situation. Greed and greed on Royal Mail's part. Reject lapsing. Finish on your time every day. Condemn and return those so so embarrassing letters. Refuse extended delivery and only accept overtime at a proper rate. Royal mail prospers on fear and intimidation, particularly intimidation of reserves, floaters, the under confident and weak. Royal mail is rife with the under confident. It exploits to the max. Give it them back tight if you can. Oh yeah and start looking for another job because Christmas is coming..... It is going to be bleak by the sound of it regarding temps. Also I suspect it will be the busiest ever in terms of volume.

To a degree how busy it's during Xmas will depend on if we do end up back in lockdown. At this point it's anyone's guess as to if we'll end up back in lockdown

[Andy51]

40 years been in this job never seen so many walks fail a day there was a time you could get fired for wilful Delay don’t ever try that again Royal Mail .we need more staff foe examples if four people go sick we are f****d

[Jahpostie]

40 years been in this job never seen so many walks fail a day there was a time you could get fired for wilful Delay don’t ever try that again Royal Mail .we need more staff foe examples if four people go sick we are f****d

No, You have to do more. Simon says....

[priority102]

I think it won't be too long now before Simon's "Team" ethos is dumped, either by him or he will be dumped for not delivering. Nothing appears to be moving forward in the way of efficiency and new ways of working. Huge investments being made in new PDA's, wage increases etc but what RM want in return just isn't happening and it won't be too long now before the shareholders and Board are on his back as money will always dictate.

I think he genuinely has good intentions but the pressure being put on posties and DOMS from above them and below him are the problem. If Simon sorts out the higher level causes of the problems then there may be a way forward. But until then......

For all we know there's probably top level secret talks going between RM and the CWU that the strategy isn't working.

[DDDJAM36]

Honest , clear and transparent reporting by lower management up the management chain about lack of staff / walks failing / vacant duties / absentees / staff morale etc , would help , , , i know , what a crazy idea

[DDDJAM36]

To quote from the letter , page 2 , , ' Now that we have a better balanced workload ' , , , , where is this happening ?? It's the opposite at the moment , just more and more to do every week

[Deadly]

Quite ironic that the walk that delivers to my home hasn't gone out today.

[krussel]

I dont know if Simon is a genuine person or not. However his advisors are not doing him any favours by letting him put his name to a letter like this.

For staff that have worked as hard as they can for the past 18 months the letter feels like a slap in the face. "Dont just worry about clearing your own frame each day but you need to worry about clearing the office". This is upon a recent "down to the bone" level of cuts and more lapsing. Your doing well to clear your frame at all and most likely going over to do so, prob not paid.

In the REAL world right now staff (Amazon etc) are walking out of low paid jobs all over. Companies are having to pay bonuses just to get the staff to turn up and not look for another job. So after the all the crap we have been through and with Christmas coming upon us all we get is a letter telling us to work harder to clear the office and letting us know they will be cutting back on xmas agency staff. Not exactly inspiring is it.

Finally this fairer work load where we will find the extra time to achieve more is a joke as in my office everyone just got more lapsing added. Right across the board. No actual PDA data was used to spread the load so heavy rounds struggling just got more on top.

This letter is a PR disaster for Mr Thompson.

[SpacePhoenix]

letting us know they will be cutting back on xmas agency staff. Not exactly inspiring is it.

It would be chaos if they cut back on our Xmas staff. We'd probably have to have the mech as walk sort only at best in order to get the Tracked done, at worst just send all the mech as manual

Finally this fairer work load where we will find the extra time to achieve more is a joke as in my office everyone just got more lapsing added. Right across the board. No actual PDA data was used to spread the load so heavy rounds struggling just got more on top.

With your DO as a whole, if you added up the amount of time that people finish early each day, would it add up to a lot? if it does, the DOM has probably been told by his boss that he's having that amount of hours taken out of his budget

[krussel]

letting us know they will be cutting back on xmas agency staff. Not exactly inspiring is it.

It would be chaos if they cut back on our Xmas staff. We'd probably have to have the mech as walk sort only at best in order to get the Tracked done, at worst just send all the mech as manual

Finally this fairer work load where we will find the extra time to achieve more is a joke as in my office everyone just got more lapsing added. Right across the board. No actual PDA data was used to spread the load so heavy rounds struggling just got more on top.

With your DO as a whole, if you added up the amount of time that people finish early each day, would it add up to a lot? if it does, the DOM has probably been told by his boss that he's having that amount of hours taken out of his budget

Yes i think your spot on. She was told the hours to cut and simple took out 2 walks and split them up adding them to everyone.

[goneaway]

Oh look, Simon is following this very thread on Workplace and asking the "Team" for their views!

https://royalmail.workplace.com/groups/ ... 428012424/

[sindba]

Would live to see Simon spend a few weeks as a postie, see how he copes.

Absolutely clueless. How these mediocre grifters always manage to fail upwards is a stain on modern Britain

[Dorset Plodder]

"Trust at the doorstep" in the way that Simon Thompson is hoping for, certainly isn't happening in my office anytime soon. We've been understaffed for years and are currently 9 people down (out of 95) on the number of duties that were in our recent re-pick after revision. It's not unusual for failed duties to be numbered in double figures when sickness is added into the mix, and of course lapsing is still king ahead of ones signed for duty. Hardly delivering everything on time, is it?

New starters are thrown to the wolves with very little support, and the attrition rate is quite scary with half leaving within a few weeks due to management pressurising them to take more and more and more before they've had time to find their feet. Add to this the people in their 20's and 30's thinking, "Sod this for a lark until I'm 67" and looking elsewhere, then we're in a permanent hole.

Put your coffee cup down, Mr Thompson, and see for yourself what is really happening in DOs up and down the land before making a complete arse of yourself with patronising letters like this to "your people".

Good Post Ozzvaldo. I Agree that staffing levels seen to be the main cause of our problems, and judging by a lot of the posts on here I'm not the only one. Our Recruiting Strategy is abysmal. 12 weeks from a standing start once the guys walked out the door?

We've got several guys retiring next month.... the lead time for their replacements is .... JANUARY FFS! DOM said we'll probably be able to get more casuals for Christmas, we said don't bother they're worse than bloody useless, and not worth the money you're paying for them.

We know the biggest cost to RM is Staff. We don't make anything, we don't produce anything to sell so we don't need to buy materials (so no savings there by buying cheaper). I believe RM just think, "Employ less people and we'll save on the wages bill.... simple" Well you Reap what you Sow and this cock up is what happens when you let your staffing levels drop too low.

It sounds counter-intuitive by I'm now happier with our DOM Failing 3 or 4 duties a day than I was when he was rushing around trying to get EVERYTHING delivered, so he only had to report Partial Failures. He had to go and see his Boss and got a bollocking but he did make the point that he was severly short of staff. Once his boss had done the maths he realised the truth of the situation, so at least he stopped chanting, "Everything's got to be Delivered Today ... or else"