29/06/22 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi! This is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 29 June... Comments welcome, as usual.

OF COURSE WE'RE VOTING FOR STRIKE
At the round-the-clock union gate meetings on
Tuesday, union officials confirmed that RM bosses
are coming for everything that's left of the Ts&Cs
we've fought for over the years! Yes, after
imposing that pathetic and insulting 2% on pay - a
de facto 10% (and growing!) wage cut - they want
to remove all allowances, mess with our sick leave
and screw up our working week, with compulsory
Sundays! Do they really imagine we'll let them
get away with this?

ONE ALL-OUT STRIKE IS ALL WE NEED!
So, are we having one official strike or two?
Because for now there are the two votes - the one
over the pay cut and the other over the attack on
our Ts&Cs... It sounds as if RM bosses have been
trying to tie the CWU leaders in knots! According
to that 3-page "Letter to Branches", they're using
some kind of legal loophole which means a
SECOND Dispute Resolution Process has been
triggered! It's unbelievable!
Surely this doesn't mean that we have to wait
another 4 weeks while the union leaders and RM
bosses go round in circles? The sooner we walk
out the better, so that we are alongside the
already-striking railway workers, barristers,
cleaners, and the soon-to-be-out BT workers,
airport workers, doctors... etc..!

WE ARE THE UNION
We're glad the reps are getting us all to join (or rejoin)
the union. But what's remarkable is that the
message from union HQ sounds as if it comes from
an organisation which isn't our own, as it should
be, but one which is entirely separate from us!
Why does TeePee ask us to be "loyal to the union"
when surely that goes without saying? There'd be
no need for his plea for us to "back the union", if
the union on the ground had a real life and took
the decisions, feeding them upwards, instead of
them being fed downward, from TeePee, Ward,
and the rest!
We know that by voting for strike, we're
backing ourselves and we're totally clear about
this, even if the top leaders aren't! We're more
than ready for a fight!

OUR REVISIONS TO COME
There were meant to be revisions in Deliveries
next month… and that would have meant things
getting worse for us. But thanks to this dispute,
these revisions are not going through as they
usually would have. So let's hope that this time
we'll get the revisions that we want and not the
ones that management wants, when it does
happen.

WE WANT TO BE PART OF THIS FIGHT
RM-PFS bosses promised to pay us the Living
Wage Foundation rate of £11.05/hr (£9.90/hr
outside London) in May, back-dated to April. But
guess what? Our May payslip was still showing the
same old wage rate! In fact £11.05/hr is already
too little to live on in London, particularly with
inflation at 11.7%! So not only do we want the
new rate on our pay slip this Thursday (plus what's
owed to us), but we want to fight together with our
sorting, delivery and distribution workmates for
decent wages - and decent conditions!

SHARING NOTES
We feel totally in solidarity with railway workers,
who were on strike 3 days last week. Hopefully
we'll join soon! And on another positive note, we
were pleased to welcome some new faces
temporarily transferred here because of the
strikes. Especially as it gave us a chance to
discuss our own upcoming one!

SHORT OF HANDS? REALLY?
So where have those temporary full-time duties
advertised for the morning shift (for DSA-related
work) gone? There were at least 6 of them and
some of us PSA part-timers applied, but then we
were told they were cancelled?! Apparently Mr.
Witless refused to release us, because he'd end up
with too few hands on Lates... Now that he admits
the hands shortage, when is he going to ensure
that new workers are recruited?

YORK-JAM!
The more the PSM takes shape, the more it's clear
that it's going to cause a lot of problems. Space
around the machine was already limited, but now
that it's going to be on a raised platform, just
where do managers think the bullring yorks are
going to go? It's going to be a permanent traffic
jam, worse than rush hour...

WE'RE IN THE SAME BOAT
Some of us did get the time to go to the TUC
march on 18 June. The CWU had one of the
biggest contingents! It was good to see
workmates from all over the country, including
from the Warrington MC... They've been using the
Parcel Sorting Machine for a while now, and told us
that managers had to allocate more duties than
they first thought necessary, just to get the
machine to work properly. Yep, we aren't at all
surprised.

THE MORE THE MIGHTIER
The Post Office's "improved" offer (of 3%!) was
rejected by PO workers, and they'll be on strike
again on 11 July. But as it's only Crown PO
workers (excluding admin and supply chain
workers), this time let's join them on the picket
lines!

[aiden01]

Last time i read this shite.

[aiden01]

Last time i read this shite.