PEC REPORT JAN 08

[lovejoy]

Dealing with the Issues

January 2008 Executive Council Report

The Postal Executive has met three times in January to deal with the main issues facing us. The tight timescales involved means that no-one can afford to take their foot off the gas and over the next few weeks most of our members will become involved in one way or another.

Pensions

Royal Mail’s formal consultation process ended on 16 January. The number of responses were disappointingly low, around the 13,000 mark, but management have accepted that they will have to continue negotiating with both the CWU and CMA/Unite to try and reach a final agreement. We have been having discussions with the CMA to see if we can agree a common position with them, as this would strengthen our hand, but it remains to be seen whether this comes off or not. Management, for their part, have agreed to put off closing the current scheme to new members to the end of February to avoid souring the negotiations.

Our negotiators have already informed Royal Mail that we don’t accept their current proposals and that although we accept the need for some change we are looking for significant improvements in a number of areas as a result of the feed-back we have had from our members. The main areas we are trying to negotiate changes in are
• Final salary scheme. We are examining if there is any way we can retain the final salary scheme.
• Retirement age. Is there a compromise possible between the current age of 60 and management’s proposal of 65?
• New starters. We are looking for some way for new starters to join the main scheme after a certain period of employment.
• Future changes. We want the right to review any changes in the light of future revaluations of the scheme and also if the financial position of the business improves as a result of the Government’s review of competition.

The aim is still to negotiate an agreement with the employer that will then be put to all our members in a ballot. If management refuse to do this then potentially we could be back where we were last Summer. If defending the status quo is not a credible option, we still believe that our members deserve better than what’s currently on offer.

Pay & Modernisation

A large amount of time has been spent over the past month dealing with the practicalities of implementing the Pay & Modernisation agreement and, especially, phases 2 & 3. Left to themselves, management would come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas and so several meetings have been held at national level and between Divisional Reps and Area Managers to try and get a joint understanding of what’s involved. This has resulted in a joint guidance and monitoring document which has been sent to all branches. We have also issued general advice for Reps which stresses that they must be involved in all discussions and get the necessary release time. Everything has to be jointly agreed and Area and Divisional Reps can be
brought in if there are any problems. Management have accepted that although the date for finalising phase 2 revisions remains at 31 January, they will be pragmatic about this.

The main emphasis is on concluding the phase 2 revisions but that doesn’t mean the phase 3 trials have been forgotten. Discussions are still going on at national level to agree an implementation process/joint monitoring programme and to set a realistic timetable for achieving the 1.5% pay rise. In the trial offices, the members themselves need to decide what it is that they want to trial and the best way to organise themselves. As for the phase 4 working groups, discussions are still going on to decide who sits on what one and how they will operate. Each working group will have members of the Postal Executive and at least one Divisional Rep on it as well as National Officers. Both sides have agreed to take a realistic view of what can be achieved by April 2008.

Review of Competition

The Postal Executive sub-committee dealing with the campaign around the Government’s review of competition in the postal industry has met twice so far. The committee has discussed a document outlining the sort of campaign we want to run as well as the policies we will be campaigning for. This will involve branches campaigning at street level as well as the usual lobbying. The document will first have to go to the PEC to be ratified and then to a national briefing on both the review and pensions, which will take place in Northampton on February 19/20. A meeting has been held with Richard Hooper of the Review team and meetings are planned with Unite and the GMB, who organise in competitor firms.

Burslem

Following the extremely successful demonstration and rally at Burslem, a Joint Statement was negotiated with the business covering the issues involved in the dispute. This provided for a decision in all the conduct cases to be reached by the end of January, for any appeals for Reps to be heard by a National Appeals Panel and for other members by a manager from outside the territory after the Reps appeals had been concluded. It also set up a review of the industrial and employee relations in the office. The members at the office met to consider the statement and voted to accept it and return to work, which they did on 24 January. At the time of writing this report, the decisions in the conduct cases are still unknown. Obviously, having been on strike for a month, the members at the office are still feeling the pinch financially, so branches are still being encouraged to send donations.

Even if everything at Burslem can be sorted out, this still leaves the issue of the way management operate the bullying and harassment procedure outstanding. The PEC have demanded a joint review of the procedure. As part of that review we will be looking for improvements to the current scheme which hopefully can prevent abuses of the procedure similar to Burslem happening.

Walk Sequencing
We have been told that the contract with Solystic to provide the walk sequencing machines has now been signed. The hold up was due to the changes in design that Royal Mail had asked for. The deployment programme has also changed. The plan now is for 4 machines to go into the Bristol ECDO in June-August. These will be used for testing but could also be used operationally. A further machine will be used for purely testing purposes and another group of machines will be used in an operational environment. It hasn’t been decided where these will go yet. Beyond that we haven’t been given any more information, except that the whole instillation programme will take three years.

Management have also provided us with their preferred sites, which have been circulated to branches. Surveys will now be carried out at these to check if they are fit for purpose and it is expected that there could be a number of changes. Area H&S Reps should make sure that they are involved with this.

We have also discussed the allocation of work between engineers and operators on the new machines. At the moment operators get a TPM allowance for carrying out certain tasks such as cleaning and clearing jams. Management want to move further tasks such as changing belts over to operators. We are also discussing who trains the operators as we believe that work is proper to engineers.


Vehicle Telemetry & Drivers Risk Assessment

We have held a further meeting with management to get an update on their plans for telemetry in vans and on the roll out of the drivers risk assessment (DRA) programme. They’ve now fitted around 95% of the vehicles in the first phase, which is in mail centres and the three largest DO’s in each postcode area. The aim is for the whole system to go live in around June. Before that happens we need to get agreement on the ground rules as otherwise there will be a large number of people taken off driving or coming under the conduct code. The same thing applies to DRA.

Management presented us with a draft to their guide to managers. As it stands, this would not be acceptable as there are references to discipline and removal from driving throughout. In place of that we gave them a form of words dealing with DRA that were similar to that agreed in Parcelforce that removed references to discipline and dealt with it in a positive way. They have accepted this and the programme will now commence shortly. Information will be sent to branches explaining what it’s about. We have also told them that we wanted to deal with telemetry and issues dealing with collisions separately and they have agreed to that. We will now work on a form of words which hopefully will be acceptable to our driver members.

Vehicle Services Pay

Negotiations have carried on over this and a report detailing a possible settlement is due to go to the first PEC meeting in February. Further details will be circulated when they become available.

Pete Keenlyside
Postal Executive
31 January 2008

[k979aaa]

Well i sent my letter of disatisfaction to the pension trustees and if all is lost i can at least hold my head up high!.

[dvbuk55]

Well if that is the PEC report and it leaves a million and one questions to be still addressed then how on earth do they expect the ordinary rank and file reps, who I have no doubt, are very capable, to negotiate the myriad changes at unit level?

It is going to become increasingly obvious that this deal has done nothing to assure the 1.5% increase and the £400 bonus and that the goalposts are liable to be changed from area to area.

The SDD changes which was supposed to be easily achieved actually took our office 9 months to get the increase - and here we have yet another example of where increases are individually based office by office. Now what exactly are the CWU negotiators going to the table with in 2009 when there will be a disparity in pay?

I wait with bated breath for RMs response on the pensions issue.

[tomangoe]

So what's happening about D2D's,monthly pay,annualized hours and "The New Delivery Model" ?