20/04/22 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 20 April. Comments are welcome, as usual!

WITH THE PO WORKERS (NEXT DOOR!)!
The CWU has just announced that our Post Office workmates
will be on strike on 3 May. 97.3% voted to strike against a
pay freeze for 2021, an insulting offer of 2% (RPI=9%!) from
April this year, plus a £250 one-off lump sum... They can well
do with our solidarity - and since we're all in a similar boat, it
definitely makes total sense to walk out with them...

WARNING! KEEP OUT!
With the noise being caused by the floor reinforcement for the
PSM, managers say they care about our eardrums, but
apparently not about the air we're breathing! It's creating a
huge amount of dust! So can anyone tell us what's the
danger level of "respirable crystalline silica" (RCS), dust (and
not only that!), etc., which the floor drilling is creating? We
shouldn't have to breathe any of this dust at all!

TEMPORARY CLOSURE NEEDED...
This is typical of management: when we ask about the dust
levels, they have no clue. When we ask why there is no
proper ventilation installed to deal with the heavy drilling, they
don't know either. And what about spraying with water to
damp-down the dust? Can't wet the letters? Well yes, so in
fact the job can't be done safely unless they close the site.

UNTIL THE DUST (AND NOISE) HAS SETTLED
Okay, we have access to earplugs (it should be ear muffs) -
but we can't work all morning and afternoon with these in our
ears - we've not signed to work in a construction site! There
is only one thing left for us to do: to CLOSE the Mount until
the building works are finished...

FULL WEEKENDS!
So managers are preparing to "restructure" our duty system
after the PSM is installed? They'd love to include Saturdays
and Sundays in our normal duties, wouldn't they..? And yes,
the writing has been on the wall for yonks - but so far, many
of us have refused. So let's make sure they can't use the
resign this Summer to mess with our weekends!

AND BY THE 6th DAY...
And by the way, two rest days per week is not a luxury, it is
what our bodies demand to recover from a hard working
week. Which is also why we need two full days in a row to
rest, and not two separate days during the week.

AMAZONISATION STAGE 2
EVR application letters are still reaching us. Some of us (if
we have the seniority) are expecting offers any time soon.
But we know the real issue is that management is not
replacing us. In fact, they're bringing in a 2nd tier casual
workforce on a regular basis now...

WE'RE ALL 1st CLASS!
So last Friday and weekend, casuals were brought in on
Lates... There aren't enough hands to cover the workload?
We want workers recruited on the same T&Cs as the rest of
us to share the work, period. Equal pay for equal work!
We've had enough of seeing casuals treated as 2nd class
citizens!

FAILING IS THEIR MOTTO
Will the DSA work be gone by July, when Romford should be
able to take it back? Because that workload was dumped on
the Mount without managers thinking for a second who'd be
clearing it - Tuesdays and Thursdays are particularly busy
and a reminder that management can't plan a damn thing!

35-HOURS WORK ON 70-HOURS PAY!
Managers are definitely overtime-happy lately... We've seen
workmates doing 6 (even 7?!) Nights a week - let alone the
overtime on weekends, etc. And no wonder managers feel
they can use OT at will, since union officials have agreed to
OT on the basis that it is a sort of "Royalty" to top-up our
pay... But of course, it isn't! What we really want is to work
less for more pay. And let's not allow the bosses to tell us
that they can't afford it - we remember the £726m profits they
made on our backs last year!

NO MORE EXCUSES!
CEO Simon Thompson put out a video on 14 April, saying he
"can now start negotiations" on our pay. So much for an "ontime"
pay deal. But this video was all about preparing the
ground for a low pay rise - a deal with serious strings
attached! He tells us fewer people are going to buy things
online now, with lower GDP growth forecasts, an expected
increase in unemployment, and even the war in Ukraine!
What next?

NO STRINGS, JUST A PAY RISE!
He went on to say, "It's important for us to continue to invest
in the business, we need to keep changing, to keep
improving productivity ahead of inflation, and to build a new
operational model." So much for paying out £400m to
shareholders last year!
PS: The "Shorter Working Week" has been used as
substitute for paying us the increases that we need. We
need an even shorter week plus a big pay rise to meet the
cost of living crisis.

KEEP UP WITH PRICES!
So we cleaners got a copy of a document telling us that our
pay would be increased to the level recommended by the
Living Wage Foundation. But £11.05/hour (£9.90/hr outside
London), is still not going to be enough to pay our bills! We
need our wages to increase on a monthly basis, or even a
weekly basis if necessary, to keep up with prices!

HAVING OUR SAY
The CWU pay claim for RM-PFS is a long wish-list of
demands. And yes, most of them are about bringing us onto
the same conditions as postal workers, which is a no-brainer!
But we haven't had a chance to have our say and we would
like it. It's time negotiations were held in the open involving
us all, instead of behind closed doors. That goes for all of us
in RM!

A NON-STARTER
We read that the Eurest pay deal for a 6% rise went through,
on a minority vote. But 6% isn't going to be enough
(obviously!) so we will have to re-open the pay talks and
demand double!

[daveyeff]

''they'd love to include Saturdays and Sundays in our normal duties'' ......are Saturdays not part of a normal duty then?

[yellowbelly]

WITH THE PO WORKERS (NEXT DOOR!)!
The CWU has just announced that our Post Office workmates
will be on strike on 3 May. 97.3% voted to strike against a
pay freeze for 2021, an insulting offer of 2% (RPI=9%!) from
April this year, plus a £250 one-off lump sum... They can well
do with our solidarity - and since we're all in a similar boat, it
definitely makes total sense to walk out with them...

Not saying I agree with the law, but good luck with that:

Secondary action

It’s against the law to take part in ‘secondary action’ (going on strike in sympathy with people who work for a different employer).