Later starts & Sunday working for everyone

[Pidleypoo]

It's actually the opposite.
The plan is to end the ready for delivery scan at the primary sort in the DO and move that to the individual duty prep so as you sort your parcels for delivery you'll scan all the tracked yourself.

It's being trialed at the moment at 6 offices in and around Warrington I think.
It's called Scan to route on prep of Delivery.

If that gets rolled out obviously there's no longer any need for an MC to segregate tracked from normal parcels and probably at some point someone will argue no real point in an MC scan at all.

It’s happening in my office an is a real pain in the arse to do and takes more time than you’d think.

[SpacePhoenix]

There'll still be a need for MCs to scan the Tracked as otherwise if something goes missing it could be anywhere between the outward MC and the DO.

Are they scanned in and out in an MC?

They get an Accept Item scan, which proves that they've at least arrived at the Inward MC. Missorts then get a missorted item scan before they get passed over to the early shift who'd Id assume dispatch them as normal to the proper MC with the Tracked 48. The first scan at a DO then proves that an item has at least arrived at the DO

[Woody Guthrie]

I think long term they're looking at bypassing the inward MC altogether.

Probably looking at focusing as much of the parcel work through the 300+ LAT offices as possible direct from the outward MC or the superhubs.

It's pretty much how every other courier does it.
One scan at outward, one at the "delivery hub" then out for delivery.

Not saying it will work, just that this is probably how they're thinking.

[SpacePhoenix]

I think long term they're looking at bypassing the inward MC altogether.

Probably looking at focusing as much of the parcel work through the 300+ LAT offices as possible direct from the outward MC or the superhubs.

It's pretty much how every other courier does it.
One scan at outward, one at the "delivery hub" then out for delivery.

Not saying it will work, just that this is probably how they're thinking.

If it's just the Tracked alone that they do that for then the LAT hubs will have 4-5k+ items each

[Woody Guthrie]

I don't think that's a major number.
We're an LAT and can handle those kind of numbers for our office alone.
It would require some uplift in resource but not that much, really just to christmas levels.

[2yearpostie]

Haha, our local LAT office cant handle the stuff they are meant to do for our office so they get sent to us. On average its 15 parcels a day over a 50mile area.

[SpacePhoenix]

I don't think that's a major number.
We're an LAT and can handle those kind of numbers for our office alone.
It would require some uplift in resource but not that much, really just to christmas levels.

We're one of the smaller MCs, the larger ones would probably have 3-4 times, maybe 5 times that.

You've got RM installing packet machines in MCs, some MCs have or are getting a second, then you've got the automated hubs which will be taking a load of parcels and Tracked. I can't see the packet machines in MCs having enough workload once the new hubs really start taking loads of normal packets and Tracked

[2chorizon]

[/quote]

There’s a brief just been put out by the CWU about hours/job losses in MC’s when the NW hub starts up. I would imagine RM will have all the Sunday stuff processed by these machines then just cross dock it in the mail centres.
[/quote]

Do you have a copy or link to this CWU brief please?

[2chorizon]

There’s a brief just been put out by the CWU about hours/job losses in MC’s when the NW hub starts up. I would imagine RM will have all the Sunday stuff processed by these machines then just cross dock it in the mail centres.

The NW hub is already online and we're already getting sleeves of Tracked from it. It can't be cross docked as it still needs to be sorted. All the hub seem to do is break it down into Primary and Secondary sort. I'd imagine that only the very biggest DOs will get direct selections from the hub.

I can't see how it saves any hours at the outward MC for Tracked as that still has to be scanned and unless they;re going to send stuff from hub to hub you're still going to need at least a Primary sort on outward dispatches

Well the union brief put out details which MC’s are losing which hours. South Mids seems to be the worst effected.

Can you share this union brief with us please? Be intersted to know in my MC is losing hours

[Clappedoutpostie]

There’s a brief just been put out by the CWU about hours/job losses in MC’s when the NW hub starts up. I would imagine RM will have all the Sunday stuff processed by these machines then just cross dock it in the mail centres.
[/quote]

Do you have a copy or link to this CWU brief please?
[/quote]

https://www.cwu.org/ltb/ltb-255-22-nort ... d-impacts/

[2chorizon]

There’s a brief just been put out by the CWU about hours/job losses in MC’s when the NW hub starts up. I would imagine RM will have all the Sunday stuff processed by these machines then just cross dock it in the mail centres.

Do you have a copy or link to this CWU brief please?
[/quote]

https://www.cwu.org/ltb/ltb-255-22-nort ... d-impacts/
[/quote]

Thank you very much sir

Wow, that explains why my MC was dead as a dodo last night

[SpacePhoenix]

Looking at that we don't lose that many hours which makes me think that none of our DOs will be on the direct sortation list.

[wallan]

Looking at that we don't lose that many hours which makes me think that none of our DOs will be on the direct sortation list.

All LAT Offices should have a Direct Selection

[POSTMAN]

LTB 268/22 – Royal Mail – Change Proposals

4. Sundays and Same Day Same Rate:

a. Sundays would become a normal working day in that it would be part of agreed core hours. However, we are not proposing that employees work every Sunday all the time. Nor are we proposing that employees work more hours (i.e., we are not proposing they work 7 days a week). This is about us about finding patterns that work for the business and employees by giving seven-day cover.
b. We appreciate that a Sunday can be an important day to spend with family Sundays are currently less than 5% of our parcel volume during the week.

We only deliver certain products for certain customers, and no letters on Sundays either. So, we won't need anywhere near a full team nationwide for some time. We would like to explore the number of Sundays people could be asked to work and how that would fit into the duty sets, including whether it might allow more Saturdays off. We can explore creative duty patterns and other resourcing options such as Sunday only or weekend working .

We would like to work with you to identify how seasonal working patterns and Sundays could be defined and what that would mean for duty sets across the operation, including how we could accommodate personal and family commitments using our existing family friendly policies.

Reasons for the Proposal

Sunday Working and Same Day Same Pay: This is to secure and grow our position as the UK’s no 1 parcel company. Delivery on Sundays is currently offered to our largest retail customers and is very popular. In the last year we’ve delivered more than 9.5 million parcels on a Sunday – from a standing start – with just the one product: Next day Tracked 24.

Expanding into Sunday deliveries has helped us win more business and retain a number of big contracts. That’s because if you can offer the seventh day, you get the business for the other six too. We're currently only delivering Sundays for around 75 major retailers, but over the coming months, we’re going to be expanding this out to more products and services, and a much wider group of customers.

Sundays are staffed by volunteers and agency workers. But if we're really going to scale this and grow that business, we need a better model that reduces our reliance on agency workers, and all the cost involved in that, and ensures that we have a reliable resourcing model so we can deliver guaranteed levels of service to our customers. This is why we’re proposing innovative duty patterns to ensure we have a consistent level of service on a Sunday.

We struggle to win contracts because we can't offer that seven-day service that our customers are demanding. Sunday is becoming like any other day in the delivery industry - much like shops and the retail industry went through this shift from the 1990s.

So, the question for us is - how do we make sure Royal Mail is at the forefront of this change in customer behaviour and we set ourselves up to win before it's too late and the rest of the industry taken our share of the market.

[norris9]

I don't think the later start and finish will happen. I don't think they've thought it through at all.

1. One of the perks of being a Postie is you don't start too early and you get to finish at ~2pm. That perk will be gone, which could put a lot of people off being a Postie.

2. You can't work in the dark as not all streets are lit, not all garden paths are lit, very few houses have numbers showing up in the dark. It's hard enough to navigate a round you haven't done before in the daylight. Even if we did it - we'd be slower than if we worked in the daylight and more accidents would happen.

3. You will have to work during School rush hour and evening rush hour. We will lose so much more time being stuck in traffic. I could imagine in some congested areas you might take 3 times as long to get back to your depot than you do finishing at ~2pm.