Mount Pleasant Bulletin 3 November 2016

[anna]

From Anna: sorry I don't know how to insert our primitive cartoon image (of the amorous elephant) into the page so you can't see it!

THE FALSE ACHIEVEMENTS OF WCM
Oh dear, what terribly devastating news! The WC-M team, which was sprinting confidently for the finishing line, didn’t make it - unlike the Paralympians! So, no silver medal. Precisely why this even matters is hard to fathom. Altho’ some would say that management has an interest in losing , since a “win” pushed by “workers’ good suggestions”, which is what this Kaizen “continuous improvement” is supposedly about, could put them out of a job... We always said it was about cuts.

HARDLY A CLIFF-HANGER
So after months of rumours circulating about drivers’ night shift hours changing, now we hear managers saying we can expect an announcement on the issue any time “soon”… (?) Do they think if they keep us in suspense we’ll be “pleased” when we finally hear the result?
They couldn’t be more wrong. We don’t want to hear anything about our shifts being changed to such an ungodly hour, for managers’ convenience! We suggest they go and fetch Moya Greed and her big shareholder-cronies to come and drive the vans.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Yes, we know that the Swindon packet-sorting machine is delayed, doesn’t work with all packets and can’t recognise certain bar-codes… but what we really want to know is what’s going to happen to our jobs, particularly for us on the CSS machines - if and when? We know RM will use any excuse to cut jobs, so we want to prepare for this one!

SAD BECOMES TRAGIC
We had yet more goodbyes to say this last week when a number of our workmates left/retired. We wish them well. And we also wish RM would replace them. This is getting to sound like a broken record - but when we find ourselves confronting a floor full of yorkies piled high and we know we can’t even begin to deal with them - the exodus of more of our mates without permanent recruitment to replace them, isn’t just sad, it’s a disaster!

“EXPERIENCE IS THE MOTHER OF WISDOM…”
Yet, in its infinite wisdom, RM has gone for another wave of EVRs in December, the time of the year when it gets the busiest! Not that the rest of the year is an easy walk.
So, as per usual, we’re heading towards a chaotic Xmas… we thought that after all this time, RM would have learned the lesson – but as another well-known (!) saying goes, “greed is the mother of all evils”!

NO MORE PART-TIME JOBS!
And now we hear that most of our mates taking EVRs in December are on full-time jobs?! Far from the 25%/75% ratio of part-time/full-time jobs, we are getting closer and closer to 100% PT. And how can part-timers make ends meet on our wages? Our rents and bills are not halved when we are on half-time!

TRY “A” LEVEL FIRST
What’s this fashionable mood among managers to try to enter the field of medicine? Since when are they competent in providing health advice? And even worse, why do they think they should send our mates, when they are sick, to be assessed by ATOS (whose incompetence is also very well-known)? Certain managers can barely put an etcetera (1+1+etc.,) together, so maybe they should start with something a bit more basic than medical advice?

WHAT’S HAPPENING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS?
The Pat-hetic Dumbo has now covered the window in his door with some paper, so nobody can see in… If he doesn’t want to see us cleaners, nor talk to us, we really don’t mind… Quite the contrary, if he stays in his office all day long, we definitely won’t complain! But we suspect it’s because he needs a bit of “privacy”...?

TRAINING IN LEGO
The (colour-coded!) scanners are in bits - if we use them, we’re going to have to learn how to put them together again! And that’s really going to slow things down.... So sorry to those bosses who wanted to use the scanners to push us to go faster, but we just can’t do...

BAGS DOWN?
As for bad managers - well if there was a contest and the worst got gold medals, we’d have those cowboys from EC all dangling them on their unhairy chests. Because they’d win, hands down.

[britwrit]

From Anna: sorry I don't know how to insert our primitive cartoon image (of the amorous elephant) into the page so you can't see it!

That's ok. I think we've had enough commentary on the American election elsewhere.

[anna]

good one!