Removal of Indoor Duty and thoughts please

[Mezza]

There are two (three if you include the callers) duties clased as indoor duties in my office the DOM Support and the RLE.
These were always purely indoor duties before our revision about 14 months ago, when they both had a full delivery shared between them (works out at around 1.30-2 hrs each).
The addition of the delivery was done without any of the normal daily workload on these duties pre revision being removed and so caused numerous issues.

The RLE duty was just about able to absorb the delivery, but has meant rushing around like an idiot for the first 3 hrs of the day with security being a major issue (security is now almost non existent).
The RLE also used to help with the scanning and booking in of all items returned to the callers and now that's pretty much left for the caller to sort out (which causes problems there).

The DOM support has been unable to complete his duty since the delivery was added. regular daily failures are surcharges, custom charges, A plus work and a good deal of other jobs.
The DOM support has sent an email at the end of each day to the DOM listing the jobs he has been unable to complete.
There have been countless arguments with the DOM about this as even just the surcharges have often been left sitting there for as much as 4-5 weeks at a time. They tend to get cleared up when someone is on light duties or someone gets OT to do them.

We have tried to get the union involved and even gone as far as a level 3 grievance, but gotten nowhere.
The DSM is fully aware of the situation but to date has done nothing.

Things came to a head this week with the DOM support having a huge row with the DOM and threatening to walk out with stress.

To try and reach a solution the DOM has come up with a novel idea:

Remove one of the indoor duties and combine the two roles to make just one indoor duty with no delivery and the spare person going out on a delivery.

Now my first thoughts were that simply taking two 8 hour duties and then trying to squeeze them into just one 8 hour duty would be impossible.
OK, take out the delivery side - 4 hrs
take out the other meal relief - 40 mins.

That still leaves about 11 hrs to squeeze into 8.
Add the fact that when the RLE is sorting out the SD's in the morning the DOM support is sorting and processing BRP's.

DOM suggested the indoor duty start an hour early, but as our 2nd wave is about 6.45-7.00 am that wouldn't solve anything.


My concern with the delivery role was would it be a regular delivery or would they simply float about covering sickness etc - but it turns out it would probably be a regular HCT delivery.

As i said at first i simply wrote the idea off as being impossible to achieve on the indoor role.
However, it has been suggested that we agree to do this on the basis that it's the DOM's idea and when it all falls down it will be purely down to him.

Obviously it solves nothing for us in the short term and would simply delay any actual resolve to the indoor issues.
There is also the question as to if the DOM is actually allowed to do this as the duty builder has obviously dictated there should be 2 indoor duties and things would be affected there.

The simple solution was always to take the delivery away and leave us to get on with our indoor duties but the DOM refuses to do that, which is ironic as with his new idea we cannot take this delivery as the delivery one of us would do and it will be lapsed daily.

We are contacting the Area Union rep on Monday to get his feedback, but would appreciate any thoughts and input in the meantime?

[Gold Fox]

(1) How many deliveries in your DO ?
(2) Do you have combined locker ( specials issuing to delivery staff and Callers office ) ?
(3) Who does balance of staff ( OT hours and DTD paper work) ?
(4) Whats your Callers Office opening hours ? ( specially Wednesday and Saturday ) ?

[dundee]

Personally I would go as far up the union as you can get for one of them to back you up,in the mean time let the dom do what he wants,when it goes to pot its his fault not yours.You have a start time and a finish time do whatever he asks you to do in that time,sweep the floor if he asks,Doms get paid to make these decisions not us,even though it seems the wrong decision,let him deal with it.

[Mezza]

(1) How many deliveries in your DO ?
(2) Do you have combined locker ( specials issuing to delivery staff and Callers office ) ?
(3) Who does balance of staff ( OT hours and DTD paper work) ?
(4) Whats your Callers Office opening hours ? ( specially Wednesday and Saturday ) ?

(1) 49 Delivery duties made up of 36 shared duties (18 vans), 7 HCT duties and 6 firms delivery duties.
(2) Locker is seperate to callers.
(3) Dom
(4) callers is open Mon, Tues, Thurs and fri 07.00 - 12.00pm, Weds 07:00 - 20:00, sat 07:00 - 14:00.

Personally I would go as far up the union as you can get for one of them to back you up,in the mean time let the dom do what he wants,when it goes to pot its his fault not yours.You have a start time and a finish time do whatever he asks you to do in that time,sweep the floor if he asks,Doms get paid to make these decisions not us,even though it seems the wrong decision,let him deal with it.

Im inclined to say that unless our DOM simply removes the current delivery duty then that is exactly what we'll do. Agree to anything he wants and watch it collapse into total chaos.
All the indoor staff have always worked our full hours, everyday and i really don't care what i do during my duty time.

[dvbuk55]

The problem with letting the DOM do what he wants is that invariably genuine people try to make it work and generally succeed after a fashion but the stress value on those individuals is increased and undoubtedly the next step would be a little lapsing here and a little lapsing there. RM are forever trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.