Royal Mail's New One Plan!

[motherhubbard]

Now no one said that the country should support offices in categories 4&5 as their IR records show they are quite able to look after themselves !

For me that line tells me everything I need to know about you and the London Division.
You appear to have an admiration for the broken offices because they stand up for themselves!
But they don't.
Within a broken office there will be a range of performances.
There will be honest and hard working postmen and women and others who have brought the performance of the unit down.

I have no idea about how the efficiency of a unit is measured but let's take it down to our micro level.
I am on park and loop and my driver is supposed to have ensured all the SDs meet the 1pm spec but he doesn't. The next day WE are called into the office. It wasn't my fault but I take the rap along with him.
Or I am a part timer. I arrive to find my full time colleague hasn't prepped the D2D and is champing at the bit to get out. We fail the D2D. In order to hide the fact he puts the D2D on a York and blocks the fire escape. This isn't made up s**t, this is the reality of a "broken" office, one that looks after itself!

My view is that to protect jobs we need work.
Your view appears to be that to protect jobs we need to protect the workshy.
I don't think that is what a trade union is for. You, to me, represent the antithesis of trade unionism.

As a basic start why don't you ensure that in the offices you cover, nobody starts before their official start time and nobody goes home before their official finish time?
Why should they?

[Martin Walsh]

In terms of the Working Time Directive there are some individuals who including meal breaks have been working over 70 hours for over 15 years. Now no one is condoning it but Royal Mail have turned a blind eye too it and let's be honest in a lot of offices these individuals are DOMs dream as they take any walk out. Due to the recruitment crisis over the last year the numbers who have breached the WTD have increased. We are not talking big numbers less than 1% of the work force.

However there are other WTD requirements such as 11 hour minimum rest period which also stops individuals working on a collection or night duty if a DO or Mail centre has any. Equally a 48 hour minimum rest period every two weeks which say stops a Wally Week being able to open in line with Sunday Enquiry Office opening extension. or Stops someone volunteering for the M25 Sunday Parcels Roll out.

Equally Royal Mail under the WTD wants to introduce new signing in and signing out and back sheets and this is currently being rolled out into offices. The union believe this has nothing to do with WTD but is data gathering for Production Control.

Over and above this Royal Mail want to limit SA to 12 hours per individual which will impact on lots of individuals. Whether you like or not the pound in your pocket's worth is different in various parts of the U.K. Hence why the above needs to be handled in the right way when dealing with individuals who may have set their life around some of these earnings.

This is why Sue Whalleys. Letter to Operational Managers was wrong 2 weeks ago.

In terms of quality of service well we all want to ensure this is right . However Royal Mail's decision not too recruit last year against the vacancies has really impacted on quality of service. The fact we saw hundreds of managers on delivery was also a reason for poor quality.

In terms of tracked door step scan well we do want to improve this everywhere but remember tracked increased by 54% last year and door step scan only came in last year so you should bear the s in mind.

With regards to Delivery to Neighbour , yes it is something the big posters want but there is w world of difference knocking on a neighbour in the Lake District than knocking on a neighbours door on the Broadwater Farm Estate !

These is why comparing offices which have total different challenges not fair or realistic !

[trythat]

I'm hoping with the few changes there have been within CWU HQ, that they get a better deal to put to the membership, personally I'd rather they concentrate on this 'one' thing and the numerous things Dingo reports that we don't get to hear about normally, rather than money, as I would imagine we will be lucky to get more than 2%.

What ever RM want to do, without the correct number of staff, I just don't see how small, let alone major improvements can be made. Trouble is, most opg really don't want to argue the toss or make themselves a target. Local reps can't fight these things on their own, they need help from HQ and the local membership.

[Martin Walsh]

That tells you all you need to know about the London Division !

You fail to mention there are offices in the NW , Wales , South Wet , South Central , Anglia , Midlands , South East as well as London. One of the reasons they are in the bracket is poor IR if you read the slides provided hence my comment.

Again you say we should become more efficient but you fail to list the measurement which is included in the one plan formula it is Weighted Items Per Gross Hour.

So a tracked item is X 8 against every hour spent on each office be that sick leave , rehab etc.

Door too Door has the lowest weighting 0.25 per hour.

Your solution is that people should come in at their time and only work their hours ! It makes no difference to the WIPWH efficiency measurement and where offices are in which category as the calculation is based on the cost of each office ie cash what is paid.

Now the majority of London Offices are in category 3 the average.

Maybe it is the way I reading your post but you seem to be saying that Royal Mail is a business and as we should all do what they say ! Personally with Royal Mail's track record of getting things wrong I will continue to view their plan with suspicion and challenge what measurement they wish to use to compare offices

[music4essex]

Maybe it is the way I reading your post but you seem to be saying that Royal Mail is a business and as we should all do what they say ! Personally with Royal Mail's track record of getting things wrong I will continue to view their plan with suspicion and challenge what measurement they wish to use to compare offices

most of the things that dont work out in Royal mail is a management decision , but it seems that opgs have to pay the price for there mismanagement

Everything you have mentioned in your post Dingo goes on in my Office which is the one in CAT 4,

Are there going to be any guidance from Area CWU or Divisional or are we going to be left out to dry

Should we as an office be contacting CWU for guidance on these letters that royal mail are putting out

[motherhubbard]

With regards to Delivery to Neighbour , yes it is something the big posters want but there is a world of difference knocking on a neighbour in the Lake District than knocking on a neighbours door on the Broadwater Farm Estate !

Since the regeneration, Broadwater Farm now has one of the lowest crime rates of any urban area in the world. In the first quarter of 2005, there were not any reported robberies or outdoor assaults on Broadwater Farm, and only a single burglary, from which all property was recovered and the suspect arrested.

That aside.
No matter what measure you use for efficiency/inefficiency, how do you obtain a realistic figure if people are starting early before their contracted time?
Either they are working for free (which will skew your figures) or they are starting and finishing early in which case the stat times need to be realigned to arrivals.

Similarly why should some people be allowed to go home early every day? Simply getting these people to work all their contracted hours would increase the efficiency of the office.
What is wrong with that?
Why would someone in your position not just sit down with your oppo and make that agreement?

And I find it bizarre that there moves to protect earning opportunities for people on 39 hour contracts when that obviously means keeping some people on 25 hour contracts. Those overtime hours could be used to improve p/t contracts.
In those cases it is not RM and their one wave plan which is preventing improvements in p/t contracts, it is the CWU.

[Martin Walsh]

A senior Manager was challenged to go on a walk last year on the Broadwater Farm. This senior manager had been a senior manager on DPD had championed first time delivery and said he FTD could be done anywhere , well this senior manager had a different opinion after he had done the walk. You can google stuff but it means nothing unless you have done the walk or know what the office is like. If you want to do a similar walk on the Broadwater Farm as you believe it is so peaceful now PM and I will arrange.

I have been in the job 31 years and people starting before there time and not having their meal reliefs have been there for all 31 years. Let's be clear the reason why the majority of people start before their time and don't have their full meal relief is because they think they will finish early before their due finishing time. So obtaining the hours they actually is not so easy. However the measurement which Royal Mail want to use is WIPWH which is cash so if they pay someone full time hours than it don't matter what time an individual starts or ends. As the WIPWH measurement is not influenced by this.

Of course I have lost count of the union campaigns in those 31 years to do the job properly and I have lost count of the members meetings I have had at various offices asking people to do the job properly. The reality is that some members believe they work for themselves. The sad thing is they put pressure on reserves who cover their jobs when they are absence and maybe are a reason why there are not more hours in the office.


In terms of people going home early , I don't recal I said I was defending this. However often a OPG is far more productive when he or she thinks they are going to finish early than they are if they are going to work too time. That is the culture of the business.

Royal Mail's mantra of working all paid for hours is a bit of a sham because they don't stop people coming in before their time or having their paid meal relief or even having their full entitlement of annual leave.

Production control is their new idea for real time recording of tasks and individuals but this will also aim to introduce individual performance targets.

Now your last point is the old classic , those who do overtime to survive should sacrifice their need to work extra hours to pay for the cost of living in order to share this to part time contract. In my belief this would simply lead to full time staff retention problems as we saw in the 80, and 90s as without overtime some full timers in the South East of England due to higher rent , housing prices and the higher cost of living cannot afford to live in a flat Royal Mail wage. Part timers should get the opportunity to increase their hours in line with the Agenda for Growth and we have just done a deal in London which will see over 75 part timers getting increases in contracted hours some up to Full time. But the answer is not just stripping SA and overtime off individuals who have performed this overtime for years and have built their lives around it .

So it is easy to have a view from an ivory

[motherhubbard]

A
Now your last point is the old classic , those who do overtime to survive should sacrifice their need to work extra hours to pay for the cost of living in order to share this to part time contract. In my belief this would simply lead to full time staff retention problems as we saw in the 80, and 90s as without overtime some full timers in the South East of England due to higher rent , housing prices and the higher cost of living cannot afford to live in a flat Royal Mail wage.

Using that argument it would be impossible to recruit p/t staff as it is harder to live on a 25 hr contract than a 39 hr contract.

I thought the trade union way was to use our collective strength to protect the weakest.
Who is in the weakest position - full time or part time?
Who is the union willing to protect?

[toomuchcoke]

It's just yet another continuous improvement program, another doomed to failure because the average line manager, let's call him Shouty McFubar is a failed postie with a full bag of McCain's finest on his shoulder and he just isn't up to implementing it properly.

We had a "Shouty McFubar" ...

The background is that a few years ago our original manager (who was nice enough, if a little ineffectual) gathered us round for a huddle one day and announced that he'd been dragged off to a meeting with more senior managers and told we where one of the worst performing offices in the country (from a financial POV) and that obviously "something had to be done". He also said that compared to all the other offices at the top we where at least getting the job done, and we're not failing rounds every day or leaving Yorks of packets behind. However he was then replaced by "Shouty McFubar" who promised big, and failed to deliver anything much of anything other than not paying the overtime he'd agreed people could do and replacing the full-timers who quit in disgust[1] with part-timers. He then left (before he was pushed, according to some) and we took one look at his replacement and kicked up a big enough stink[2] that the RM "moved them elsewhere". We then got our current manager ... Who to be fair, is not a "Shouty McFubar"!

Who has just informed us that last week we where >100 hours over the budget for our office! I would add it's worse than that because these days a week in which we fail a delivery once is no longer something worth noting on nor is coming back at the end of your delivery and discovering a York or two of packets that haven't gone out today, including Tracked (and on at least one occasion, a Special!). So not only did Shouty McFubar fail to fix the problem(s) they in fact made us worse!

Personally I would think it would be easy to find the initial places to try and fix that. Take all the overtime booked in the office in the past month. Strip out any that was people working their day off, and any that's due to part-timers working full-time hours. What you have left should (IMHO) show that a lot of it is booked by the same people and/or a lot of it booked on the same rounds so find out "Why?". Maybe the round(s) in question are too big, or badly laid out? (The latter is certainly reasonably easily fixable.) Maybe those people are taking the p!ss (in which case the conduct code is always available), maybe they're badly trained (point a workplace coach at them), maybe they're doing the job entirely properly, the round's too big and it's everyone else coming in early, running, not taking their breaks, speeding, use the PDA whilst driving, etc etc that's hiding the problem(s).

... but if you've got a "Shouty McFubar" doing any of the above involved actual effort, so it'll never happen. Much easy to shout at people to work faster, whilst not giving them any guidance on which particular part of their job they need to be faster a or how they should do that. And then, when/if something goes wrong as a result of them rushing claim "Oh, well I never told you to do that!".

[1] CWU membership rocketed too ... You'd think HR would notice if a fifth of an office quit in about 6 months and the number of CWU members tripled in the same time period? Personally if I was senior management I'd want that sort of thing flagging and bringing to my attention, as it could indicate an office with problems.
[2] It might have helped that it was December, and there was the prospect of the entire office walking out until January! Plus we did have some grievances that the RM would've found practically impossible to defend.

[Martin Walsh]

The union is not just about protecting the weakest , it is about protecting and promoting members terms and conditions.
The union would not survive very long if it said we only protect the weak by using the strong ! The simple fact is a that we would lose the support of the strong.

The job has changed over the decades. You use to have adverts for full time jobs with the saying overtime was available to top up wages. Some have built their life's around overtime ! So I'm your ivory tower you suggest the union adopt a Robin Hood style approach remove all the overtime and give it too increase part time contract staff. I suggest you do it in your office first and see what agreement you get from staff ! I rather see a balance between the two positions which is possible and that is reduce the working week so the gap between the full time and part time contracts reduce and will increase the hourly rate. The choice for offices is how they use the variable hours as say an individual works their rest day on SA than they are working an extra day if you simply give this to the part timers than that part timer would have to work 6 days each week to get their hours !

[motherhubbard]

I can't actually believe you have posted any of that.
It would be acceptable for the p/t staff to all arrive on Shanks' pony while the full timers arrive in their top of the range Range Rovers paid for by their overtime?
It would be acceptable for the unemployed to be begging on the streets because the jobs aren't advertised because some people are used to working 60 hours/week. They now need to work 60 hours/week to keep themselves in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to?
Heaven forbid we should upset the status quo.

It's a bit like Sam and Dave - why shouldn't they squirrel away money in offshore accounts. That is what their ilk have done since time began.
Heaven forbid anyone should suggest things could be done any other way.

Absolutely f***ing gobsmacked.

[fishtank]

If I was a part-time member of staff at royal mail I would have to think long and hard about whether I would join the union, if I was working in one of these cat 1 and 2 offices expected to be more efficient and carry more than my share of part-time staff to protect the terms and conditions of a few cat 4 and 5 offices I would have to think long and hard about whether I would join the union.

If instead of using the strong to protect the weak you expect the weak to shoulder the burden then come running to your rescue with a national ballot one day you'll be told to get lost.

[mark.cup]

I work in a cat 4 office and we are understaffed before anyone goes sick 95% of us are really hard working and do what it takes to get the job done SD performance and scanning items very good! minimal staff on the sorting every morning with probably twice as much work as they can handle and we still get told we are basically all sh#t

[fishtank]

I think that's half the problem, there are many reasons why an office might be failing, If we point blank refuse to address these offices we are not only protecting outdated and inefficient working practices that most of us have moved on from years ago but we also risk leaving offices and members who are genuinely struggling without support.

The union has failed in recent years to protect a great deal of its .members from royal mail's savings plans, in my opinion that's mainly because certain sections of the country have far too much influence and have used that power to protect themselves at the expense of others. That needs to change, If it doesn't the union will continue to lose members and influence in the workplace.

I'm not sure this One Plan is the answer, It reads like an overcomplicated box ticking exercise but we need to find some way to address failing offices. The union and the business.

[Martin Walsh]

Motherhubbard I can't believe your saying people who work overtime are all driving around in range rovers ! I really don't know what office you come from but I can assure you it does not reflect the normal offices.

The National Rate of Pay is £405.81 plus £23.50 delivery supplement for only delivery staff per week
Outer London £481.31 plus £23.50 per week
~Inner London is £509.05 plus Delivery Supplement of £23.50 per week

The average price of renting a studio flat per week in these postcodes are :

Acton £212
Anerley 187
Islington £427
Camden £407
Balham £223
St Pauls £657
Barbican £532
West Kensington £271
Battersea £297
Paddington £342
Victoria £360
Hampstead £276
Bethnal Green £245
Blackheath £275
Hammersmith £263
Brockley £202
Rotherhithe £280
Popular £377
Chelsea £382
Chiswick £274
Hornsey £233
Deptford £209

I can list loads more and these are just studio flats. The reason why some individuals have performed overtime is not to buy range rovers as you suggest but to survive living in the most expensive city in Europe to rent. London has 89% of full timers and part timers have an high retention issue especially those employed near Heathrow.

We have to look after part timers and as I said we have made numerous of part timers up in terms of increasing their contract but it cannot simply be at the expensive of someone who was doing overtime to survive and then to cut that.

Fish protecting the weak is something which this union does all the time , but do you protect the weak by sacrificing the strong ? As if you do you may not have the strong around to support the weak in the future. In 2003 when members voted no in an national industrial ballot over one delivery and London along with Essex , Warrington , Greenford and Coventry took unofficial action for two weeks which led to the union getting an agreement which got delivery staff the 5 day weeks and the £26.28 pay rise so you don't need to convince me about standing up for the weak !