Polling cards and election material

[Danmor80]

Hi, I know that we get paid ‘extra couple of pence’ for delivering these items. Do we have to prep them in our own time though? This is what my dom is trying to tell people this morning.
Didn’t think this was the case and we was meant to have time within our duty time to prep and deliver them?
Can anybody point me in right direction please

Thanks

[Woody Guthrie]

The polling cards are supposed to be prepped and delivered in your own time.

That has always been the case.

In reality what that means is that there is no resource allocated in the indoor workplan for prepping and no overtime should be paid for delivery that is directly attributed to the delivery of the polling cards.

Now what actually goes on in some offices can be an entirely different case...

[SpacePhoenix]

I wonder how it's affected where a MC or MPU runs then through their machines and they're DSA. If the office dies the DTS then many could effectively get held for up to 5 days. Where they've got out with RM has Mailsort or DSA been used

[redlen]

Subject: RE: Elections 2014 <IGNORE DATE>

Sent: 02 April 2014 11:44
To: Bobby Gibson
Cc: Hayley Nutley; Andrew Martin
Subject: RE: Elections 2014 <IGNORE DATE>

Dear Bob

I’m happy to confirm that we take exactly the same view on the extended delivery issue. The unit payments mean we don’t pay overtime for the election material or poll cards but if the volume of ‘non-election material’ workload requires overtime then yes that should be paid in the normal way. The fact that we make election material unit payments on the day does not mean there can be no extended delivery overtime.

Andy and I can make this clear to colleagues.

On your second point you’re right we do recognise there may be occasions where the volume of poll cards and other mail mean is it simply not possible to maintain the full product service specification. But we have to be careful about how we can say this in our communications. We ask people to do all they reasonably can and if having done so some poll cards fall back to the next delivery we would not withhold the unit payment. As you say we will be pragmatic where necessary. I sent the words in red below to our heads of IR in response to a request for clarity on what DOMs should do in the event that volume made it impossible to clear the poll cards on one day.

While we make every effort to meet these service standards there are occasions when volumes make this impossible and some fall into the next delivery. We do not intend to withhold unit payments in the event of this happening.

Dale Lang, Royal Mail head of Industrial Relations

[POSTMAN]

ELECTION MATERIAL:EXTENDED DELIVERY OVERTIME ISSUE:AND MORE:UPDATE:May 6th 2021 Election

Nothing should change, what is in my link should still be relevant today.

Let the games begin.

[steve1873]

I always claim half of any overtime I work as a result of poll cards/ election materials. For example, if I go 1 hour over, I will claim 30 mins as well as the unit payments for said products.

If either my overtime is not authorised or unit payment withheld then cool, no more overtime at all. Which is a wee bit cutting my nose of to spite my face, but I feel that it's a reasonable compromise, given the ludicrously low unit payment which hasn't increased in my 18 years working for Royal Mail (as far as I can remember)

[thebigeasy]

]This has always been a grey area with RM your DOM will always say you have to complete them in your own time however they know that they cannot force anyone to start before there time or finish after it hence I always say I’ll do the polling cards no problem but I won’t go over my contracted hours

[RavingPostie]

How many people have been paid for theirs? Our office seems to be dragging there feet. For three weeks been told they’ve been or being processed but still got to wait? Just wandering what’s happening in other offices