Unite union

[daveyeff]

this is exactly why we think its been ''engineered''...its nearly always been the case the last ones in are the ones who get shifted about, not that its right on part timers and last ones in, but it is what it is, we were all moved about years ago when we were part time. they knew if they had of had this scenario in place then everybody would have stuck with the 9 day fortnights. its as if they've sat down and planned this whole thing. the last time they did it they said 9 full time jobs would go if we kept the 9 day fortnight, so they didn't even give us the option to choose it last time around. it was a f***ing smokescreen cos we knew damn fine the office couldn't have functioned with 9 staff gone. this time they've concocted this pile of garbage to get what they want. the com has even said he hates the 9 day fortnights cos they are too difficult to resource. they just dont want them in. the whole office is sick to the back teeth with them. dirty tricks brigade f****d us over again.

[postslippete]

Are there any timescales to when they are intending to get rid of these shifts? We are heading towards 'peak' when coms will obviously be asking staff to work overtime and if they find that quite a few staff are unwilling they might postpone plans until after Xmas.

Generally though, if the com doesn't like them it will be about the business needing flexibility and being able to resource the workload efficiently.

[daveyeff]

After xamas

[achak]

well, management yet again told us they were removing our 9 day fortnights, (second time). union came in for meeting, then said we could have a vote. but, if we voted to keep our 9 day fortnights, then 11 jobs would be ''at risk''. at the meeting it was said ''well the way the job is now, they would easily get 11 people who would take redundancy. their answer was...no, it wont be redundancies, it will be 11 people moved to other offices, but it wont be part-timers, it will be full timers with up to 20years of service. this seems to be an ''engineered'' and planned agenda to get us to relinquish our sacred shift pattens of 9 day fortnights. they've got us off them now because people were simply not prepared to take the risk of being sent to other offices. the union just seems to be giving in on everything these bastards want. the opinion in the office is our union has just caved on just about everything they want. there doesn't seem to be any fight left....what the f**k has happened to our union?? talk about being demoralised. we are just totally f***ing sick of it all now.

9 day fortnights tend to increase the number of PT jobs because of the way your work hours are fit into 18 days a month instead of 20, making the days longer and potentially causing inefficieny on your indoor workload because you would have more prep and sorting hours than you need.

The thing is all they look for is the savings in hours and they don’t care how that works but obviously us lot who are affected by it do, which in reality is where we as a union are supposed to negotiate and get the best attendance patterns and maximise FT jobs. So maybe the 5 day week is the best way to do that, or a mix of 5 day weeks and 9DFNs. But it shouldn’t be held over you with the threat of moving FT senior posties because the MTSF redeployment terms are based on seniority.