Royal Mail's proposals in the current pay, pensions and change strategy negotiations

[labbloke]

Looks like BMW are trying the same with their pension schemes. Two fingers given by virtually all the workers, brilliant

Mini production lineImage copyrightPA
UK workers at BMW have voted overwhelmingly to go on strike in a dispute over pensions, the Unite union has announced.
BMW workers making engines and the Mini and Rolls-Royce motorcars plan to strike over plans to close their final salary pension scheme.
The union says the proposal could see some UK workers lose up to £160,000 in retirement income.
BMW said it was "disappointed" but remained "open to negotiations".
The action involves up to 3,500 workers at plants in Oxfordshire, Chichester, Birmingham and Swindon.
The firm builds over 200,000 Minis a year at its plant in Cowley, Oxford, nearly 4,000 luxury Rolls-Royce models at Goodwood in West Sussex and about 200,000 engines at Hams Hall near Birmingham.
'Negotiate'
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "BMW needs to reflect on this extraordinary vote in favour of industrial action and the real possibility that its UK workforce will strike for the first time under its ownership in the coming weeks.
"We would urge BMW to stop pinching pensions and negotiate a settlement which is good for the business and good for the workforce."
The firm wants to close two final salary pension schemes from June and move staff to another scheme which new starters have been part of since 2014.

[daveyeff]

At the moment Royal Mail have already compromised and improved their offer on their DC scheme and a pension lump sum.

Can you elaborate? What is the improvement over the original offer/proposal ?

I would hazard a guess and say they've upped the derisory £750 compensation deal to a grand.

[jetblack]

Royal Mail have a team of negotiators including Mike Newby , Sue Whaley , John Milledge , Damien Kofe , Mark Rush , Gary Burgess, Tony Fox and a few others who come in on the various subjects.

Noob, Wally, Rush and the Fox - what could possibly go wrong

[Lynch]

One medium size carrot dangling and the turkeys will be voting for Christmas.cwu members need to stand together challenge our reps it's all about us,the foot soldiers the s**t on the soles of the managers shoes,because that's what the majority of them think of us, unless you complete!

[Martin Walsh]

No the move on the pension scheme is to increase their DC contributions at all tiers and a recognition of a lump sum based on CPI at retirement I am not going to detail the exact move but they done this because of the pressure. Nowhere enough but it is already a sign.

Fish the elements are all tied together there will be an agreement without all 4 pillars being tackled and that is not just the union saying this ! Equally how many on here criticised the union for decoupling pensions from the Pay and Mod deal ?

Now some of you may have never been in negotiations before , it does not work like you take 7 off the table and we accept 3 ! At this moment both parties have polar opposite strategies Royal Mail's to too cut and slash terms and conditions to make them more competitive and the CWU is to protect the terms and conditions whilst growin the business. Of course there will be change there has always been change but why would the union accept that our members lose 61 million in wages by giving up RRIS , TPM , Reserved Rights Payments and legacy bonus ?

Why would the union accept cuts to sick pay , MTSF and changes to new entrance terms ?

Now the real debate is what is the change to the pipeline ?

There are 5 distinct things Royal Mail want and they to trail in a number of offices in the U.K.

The first is the multi bundle delivery. The plan is for 90% of sequencing to come in boxes later and this not to be thrown into the frame meaning later start. The second buddle will be the remaining 10% which is walk sorted along with manual will be sorted into the frame but because will be less Mail than normally sorted than they will want staggered starts so say someone starts at 8:00 than someone else can us this frame at 10 by simply changing the fillets. The size of frames could be smaller. The end result is that there will be able to merge and shut offices.

The third buddle will be D2D being colleated and they have just got the authority to buy another D2D merger machine for Newbury.

These will mean your be required to merge out on the street or in the van and they want to trail this concept up and down the country in a number of offices.

The second factor is that want to have later acceptance times for Amazon , ASOS and a number of other big companies. So if someone orders up to mid- night on the internet this will connect with that day's delivery which again means later starts. They estimate they could capture an extra 100 million parcels if they moved the whole pipeline back two hours.

They also want to trail heavy and light days ! Many have speculated that they would do away with Tuesday or Saturdays from the USO. Instead they have adopted what many other European postal services do and that is to have lighter days. The Mail on the normal delivery round only around 40 odd % is classed as protected by the USO. Royal Mail already give second class a better service than advertised. So on a Monday , Wednesday and Friday you will Deliver all the normal Mail and on a Tuesday , Thursday and Saturday you will only deliver 1st Class and Parcels. Obviously this will mean a huge reduction in jobs. Royal Mail claim that this will protect full time jobs as on the lighter days a full timer can do two deliveries. They claim the average call rate is 68%. Again Royal Mail want to trail this concept in a number of offices throughout the UK.

The forth concept is they want to trail Data Capture and PDA actuals. They want seasonal variations meaning for 8 weeks of Christmas a full timer would work 43 hours per week , 20 weeks Spring , Autumn and Winter 39 hours and 24 weeks mainly summer 37 hours. They want to resource using the Data capture and PDA's again they want to run the trails. Part timers would also have a variation of hours.

The last trial they want is teamworking ! Working in groups covering their own leave , sick leave etc. This would allow them to have route ownership and trial estimated delivery time within a two hour window slot.

So you can see Royal Mail's strategy is to cut thousands of jobs so now is not the time to concede on anything.

[jetblack]

TLDR - RM want us to work all the hours God sends for peanuts. They want us to do this until state retirement age - at which point our pension provision will be shite. Tell us something we don't know.

Thanks for posting this stuff Dingo - its the only comm.s a lot of us receive.

But what is the cut and thrust of it all ? I mean, taking away the pie in the sky dreams and threats, where are we today ?

[Deadly]

It seems that most of these changes are aimed at deliveries. For example, how would the light and heavy days thing work at a mail centre or on a firms collection where a business still requires a collection every day if they have one letter or a hundred? Very interesting stuff though Dingo and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

[SpacePhoenix]

The first is the multi bundle delivery. The plan is for 90% of sequencing to come in boxes later and this not to be thrown into the frame meaning later start. The second buddle will be the remaining 10% which is walk sorted along with manual will be sorted into the frame but because will be less Mail than normally sorted than they will want staggered starts so say someone starts at 8:00 than someone else can us this frame at 10 by simply changing the fillets. The size of frames could be smaller. The end result is that there will be able to merge and shut offices.

If RM want wave 1 to be 90% of the sequenced mail, then you'd be looking at the sequencing not starting till around 03:00-04:00. Some offices probably wouldn't get their sequenced mail till at least 14:00 let alone the last 10% which probably would have to go out to the delivery offices the following day

The second factor is that want to have later acceptance times for Amazon , ASOS and a number of other big companies. So if someone orders up to mid- night on the internet this will connect with that day's delivery which again means later starts. They estimate they could capture an extra 100 million parcels if they moved the whole pipeline back two hours.

For deliveries you'd be looking realistically at start times being pushed back by at least 3 hours as the lorries taking the work to DOs would get stuck in traffic. DOs would all in effect be 9-5 for full timers

They also want to trail heavy and light days ! Many have speculated that they would do away with Tuesday or Saturdays from the USO. Instead they have adopted what many other European postal services do and that is to have lighter days. The Mail on the normal delivery round only around 40 odd % is classed as protected by the USO. Royal Mail already give second class a better service than advertised. So on a Monday , Wednesday and Friday you will Deliver all the normal Mail and on a Tuesday , Thursday and Saturday you will only deliver 1st Class and Parcels. Obviously this will mean a huge reduction in jobs. Royal Mail claim that this will protect full time jobs as on the lighter days a full timer can do two deliveries. They claim the average call rate is 68%. Again Royal Mail want to trail this concept in a number of offices throughout the UK.

The 2C would still get processed and sent out like now, MCs don't have the room to hold back lots of mail, so it'd have to be stored in DOs

The forth concept is they want to trail Data Capture and PDA actuals. They want seasonal variations meaning for 8 weeks of Christmas a full timer would work 43 hours per week , 20 weeks Spring , Autumn and Winter 39 hours and 24 weeks mainly summer 37 hours. They want to resource using the Data capture and PDA's again they want to run the trails. Part timers would also have a variation of hours.

That won't work in MCs as all dispatches go right to the wire, sometimes failing even in the summer

The last trial they want is teamworking ! Working in groups covering their own leave , sick leave etc. This would allow them to have route ownership and trial estimated delivery time within a two hour window slot.

This one must be aimed at DO staff only as in MCs staff already get moved between work areas (small parcels, large parcels, letters, flats, etc) as needed, it's been like that for years

[wacko74]

At the moment Royal Mail have already compromised and improved their offer on their DC scheme and a pension lump sum.

Can you elaborate? What is the improvement over the original offer/proposal ?

I would hazard a guess and say they've upped the derisory £750 compensation deal to a grand.

Still obviously a joke of an offer, but just out of curiosity would that be in some way pro-rata or just a flat rate across the board for all members of the current scheme regardless of their contributions to date?

[fishtank]

This multi-bundle delivery method has no legs dingo, it's not something that's compatible with parcel delivery and doorstep scanning, health and safety or in our members interests in the slightest and should be dismissed immediately. Bearing in mind a great deal of their other plans for later and staggered starts rely on such a flawed initial position it's important that both the union and the business do not waste a great deal of time and resources pursuing such an inherently bad idea. I know that the union thinks it can't do any harm to trial these things and it will just disappear but that's dangerous thinking.

If you don't believe me grab two bundles, fill your pockets with 6 D2D, grab a PDA and a couple of packets, a pen and a P739 card, wait until it's pissing with rain and give it a go. You'll soon see how much of a non starter it is. What this business tries to do is blindly take the bits it likes from other delivery companies around the world and graft them onto the UK delivery model, what it fails to do is understand the difference in these delivery models and what these other companies have done to make these models work.

You might have two bundles in Canada but you don't have parcels to deliver, you might have delivery only duties in Holland but they all have electric vehicles or bikes, you might have more delivery points in the US but you don't deliver to the door. We're in danger of allowing Royal Mail to cherry pick the worst parts of every delivery company in the world and turning this job into Frankenstein's monster. After the changes in BT2010 delivery staff need to be better protected. It's by far the most physically demanding role in the business and it's beginning to resemble an SAS survival course.

[LouBarlow]

You might have two bundles in Canada but you don't have parcels to deliver, you might have delivery only duties in Holland but they all have electric vehicles or bikes, you might have more delivery points in the US but you don't deliver to the door. We're in danger of allowing Royal Mail to cherry pick the worst parts of every delivery company in the world and turning this job into Frankenstein's monster. After the changes in BT2010 delivery staff need to be better protected. It's by far the most physically demanding role in the business and it's beginning to resemble an SAS survival course.

Nail on the head right here. Unfortunately, while you have suits from both sides, who have likely never performed the job in decades (if ever) proposing changes, then it's always going to end in failure. In an ideal world, there would be consultation between staff, management and the union, alas, there wouldn't be any savings made in that scenario, as anyone who is on the frontline knows, we are pretty much at breaking point already.

[Martin Walsh]

Space Phoenix second class will be stored in Hubs under Hub Optimisation so won't be done on the lighter days and 90% of sequencing is in 24 of the 39 Mail centres circular of 0200 according to Royal Mail.

Fish the union have rejected Royal Mail's multi buddle option our members are not going to become some kind of circus jugglers with theee buddies to merge whilst having parcels and the PDA balancing on their head. However Royal Mail are saying well if it won't work prove it by trailing it. Even if We shift Royal Mail on the multi buddle they do not want the first wave sorted into the frame which is going to reduce prep time.

Space Phoenix you really do need to look at not what is currently happening in Mail centre and think that they want to have collections along with the under the roof activity done in Hubs in Mail centres and second class stored in Hubs and only transported into Mail centres when needed. They want to have a 10:00 dispatch on second class. They want a later last dispatch apart from Track , PS and specials. They want Mail centre to change to support deliveries including getting rid of the traditional early late and night operation. They want to move the processing window 2 hours back. They believe this will mean a significant increase in Twilight shifts between 20:00 and 04:00.

They want to remove area distribution as clearly 90% of work can be put on 17 tonne vechicles and with the closure of DOs will mean that they can cut the Area Distribution grade.

That is their aim ! Not the CWUs

[LouBarlow]

dingo, Royal Mail won't even test duties, in our office, because they know full well that they are unachievable if workers stick to their guidelines. Why on earth would they care about the outcome of any multi-bundle trials? They will bring in what they want.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

In my estimation, their wet dream is 25% of the FT staff we have at the moment doing the high value deliveries (tracked, specials parcels and large businesses) from 9 - 5. With no IPS and no or very little indoor prep. Probably base these at MCs. Perhaps in car parks

and the rest will be casuals and waysiders on delivering letters and D2Ds only with a delivery span of their own choosing and on minimum wage. Perhaps they may even franchise some duties and provide staff to do the deliveries at some cost to the franchisee. Again these will be fed by 600s from MCs and meeting up in public locations before going out on delivery.

[Sbutts8182]

Me and my Girlfriend have based all our bill paying on my weekly pay, moving to monthly would be an absolute disaster, especially on 5 week months.