Which MDEC is going to close?

[Grumpygoo]

The plymouth MDEC building is also owned by RM but i just dont see Plymouth closing down as being likely, its the most jobs to lose and the most people they would have to try and relocate should people decide to do that. And not being funny it also is the most effective in terms of speed

[newbie80]

The plymouth MDEC building is also owned by RM but i just dont see Plymouth closing down as being likely, its the most jobs to lose and the most people they would have to try and relocate should people decide to do that. And not being funny it also is the most effective in terms of speed

haven't you also got a s**t union membership which allows the management to treat you all like s**t? also if you're site is the biggest then they would probably earn more money selling off that building. Is the building plymouth MDEC is housed in solely for keying or like Stoke is it a call centre aswel?.....Thing is with Stockport is that it is a rented floor which in the current financial climate could work out better for royal mail to sell off buildings and rent office space as keeping buildings and getting rid of Stockport is in effect only saving them the cost of the rent each year which would be considerably less. The other thing with the Stockport site is that a hell of a lot of local delivery office's/mail centres around the local greater manchester area like bolton,crewe and a few others have recently closed and people from these have relocated to the manchester mail centre so they might struggle finding alternative jobs around this area as with the Stoke area with regards that article somebody posted. Top and bottom of it is the amount of jobs they are looking to get rid of adds upto the amount currently working from the Plymouth site or Stoke and Stockport sites combined.......so i reckon it'll either be Plymouth that goes or Both Stockport and Stoke sites......if i had to plump for 1 i'd say it will be Plymouth due to not much union membership down there and also the selling off of the building to raise funds. Let's hope none of us end up losing out though eh, on the plus side though we'll either get a tidy little sum hopefully or a new job.

[Oddbod]

I have heard that there are plans to close all the MDECs and re-introduce the work back into Mail Centres, but only when AI can get to a level where only around 2% or less of the images go to MDECs.

[Vim_Fuego]

If I was thinking logically, I'd say Plymouth would be the last to close, being the first MDEC established and the largest of the three sites. However, this being Royal Mail, it won't have escaped their notice that - as others have pointed out - Plymouth MDEC is situated on a very lucrative bit of real estate near the city centre, where prime development land is at a premium.

I'd be a little surprised if Plymouth MDEC went first, but not that surprised, given the goldmine it's sitting on...

[Khelben]

personally i wouldnt be surprised if it wasnt stoke 1st. The stoke site is run by bods from stockport so obviously they're gonna want to keep stockport open, look after their own. Plymouth are MDEC champions apparently, being the largest of the 3 sites, i would think that tbh, all mdecs will close eventually but plymouth will be the last to go. Stoke haven't recruited anyone on a permanent contatract in years now and staff numbers continue to drop with no replacements and its probably (staff wise) the smallest of the three sites and could but wont operate 24/7 so that creates (in my opinion) inefficency when compared against the other 2 sites. I wouldn't be surprised if staffing numbers at stoke are being kept deliberately low in order to make the decision over which site to close easier because mail volumes will inevitably become an issue before long if numbers continue to drop like they have been over the course of next year and they could potentially be no longer economically or commercially viable but thats just my take on whats going down, it will be even harder for them to argue the case to keep Stoke open if customer services are also got shut of since its a joint opperations building i think.

I think that the testing time for all of MDEC as a business section will be when webdeck comes in. See, with that being done over the internet, you could potentially put it in any RM building and just have mdec staff train other contractual workers. See, what confused me over Webdeck is what is it for? I understand that its a complete revamp of the old system but the keying experience will be no different, the system isnt designed to make our jobs any easier so why bother spending however much time and money on it when essentially nothing is going to change? All i can think is that it is going to be outsourced into other parts of RM at some point and have regular RM contractors do the job, possibly in house at the Mail Centers but only time will tell. Essentially it has the potential to eliminate the need for both MDEC and agency staff at christmas, and no matter how much i think about it, thats all i keep coming back with. That strategy would save them loads of money in the long run i reckon. They could pick and choose which office to put online each day so they wouldnt need agency at all and MDEC's as an entity would cease to exist. At the minute MDEC have a limited job security in the form that MDEC are the only ones who can do what they do due to cetralized on site servers, once web deck comes in then that job security is essentially circumvented.

but like ive said above, all this is mere conjecture, its just my take on whats going on. I could be completely wrong, it wouldn't be the 1st time for that.

[Typing Monkey]

Stoke 1st - initially set up as an overflow for Stockport, smallest. The "it's a RM building so we're safe" misses the point that the 10 year agreement between RM and the council finishes in 2012, and buildings can be sold.
Stockport 2nd - set up because the volumes at the time were too high for Plymouth alone, rented building.
Plymouth to stay open, bigger and was originally going to be the only MDEC.

[proopster]

My money is also on Stoke because we have just lost the weekend shift and the night shift. We are now basically a 2 'till 10 operation, and half of that is not particularly busy. I think VR may be offered next year for the keyers working those hours, leaving the late shift 6 'till 10, which is and always has been a busy period for us.