15/10/25 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 15 October. We welcome your comments, as usual!

WORLD'S STRONGEST POSTIE!
Managers' new approach to process heavy
parcels (which weigh up to 30kg) is for us to drag
them across the floor one by one or even better, a
few at a time. We're even having to deal with car
tyres sent by mail. And what next? Attempting a
new world record in "static tyre flipping"?

OUR STRENGTH IS IN OUR NUMBERS
And then Processing managers had the cheek to
tell us all about H&S during last week's Work Time
Sleeping, while they've been running roughshod
over H&S rules. They put pressure on us to
process these heavy parcels. But if we say NO
collectively, there isn't a thing they can do about
it...

NOT FOR US
We all received the offer of 3 new Processing
duties on WhatsApp... Two of them kill our
weekends and the other a night shift, kills us.
Management adds that "these are physically
demanding duties" and that "light duty staff should
not apply". They must be joking.

THEY HAVE NO ANSWERS
Very reluctantly, managers (including the
supernumerary overseer) have admitted they
need more workers on the Platform, after happily
cutting us last year. But their answer is to play
musical chairs, by bringing in workmates from
other areas temporarily - as if that would make a
difference!

IS IT FOR THEIR BONUSES?
After going along with job cuts and the taking over
of heavy parcels from Parcelforce, managers are
now working on the shopfloor trying to help with
processing themselves. We don't care if they
break their backs, but the problem is that they
keep getting in our way!

RE-RE-RE-RETURN TO SENDER
What's going on with all the RTS that we now
have to process? During the morning shift, some
of them have the RTS sticker, but no date. And so
many end up being sent again to the wrong
address! Efficient, isn't it?

SICKENING
The new sick pay policies which came in with the
last agreement two years ago are bad, but they're
even worse for those of us with long-term illness.
Not only is it easy for managers to put us on stage
3, but on top of it all, we lose our OSP for the first
few days of illness! As if this additional stress
helps us to get better!

PARANOID?
In a recent Work Time Sleeping we were told not
to take pictures of parcels coming through here.
But why would we? And anyway, who has the
time to take a selfie with a big tyre or a door??

BOSSES' POCKETS ARE FULL - AND OURS?!
RM-PFS cleaners had a meeting a couple of
weeks ago, where union officials recommended
the bosses' pay "increase" offer... Seriously? For
roughly an extra 70p on our hourly rate?? We
obviously told them that peanuts won't help us to
catch up with the cost of living! We have nothing
to lose by voting NO!

MORE WORK NEEDS MORE WORKERS!
RM-PFS managers are so short of cleaners, that
they want us to cover duties in addition to what we
already do - to "help" them out of their "mess"?
Since they created it, they can "clean it up"
themselves!

YES, MORE WORKMATES!
Why were we asked to do management's survey
twice over this year? Perhaps we didn't give the
"right" answers first time round..? One question
asked: would we recommend working here? Well,
we certainly know friends who want a job, but
since RM's not employing anyone in Processing,
isn't that a silly question?

A GREEDY BIRD
Managers say that the "Peoples' app" will be
totally gone in December, so we have to move to
their new "Robin app" by then. Yes, while
pleading poverty when it comes to our jobs, pay
and conditions, they're splashing out a fortune on
this app, which in fact is provided by Workvivo,
owned by Zoom, a company which has a revenue
of $4.7bn! Obviously Robin isn't "cheep"!

[britwrit]

WORLD'S STRONGEST POSTIE!
Managers' new approach to process heavy
parcels (which weigh up to 30kg) is for us to drag
them across the floor one by one or even better, a
few at a time. We're even having to deal with car
tyres sent by mail. And what next? Attempting a
new world record in "static tyre flipping"?

We get insanely heavy boxes full of packets in our centre to cut and tip. Even with the proper electric lifter provided - and to be fair, it always is - you get guys who insist on saving the ten seconds by lifting the whole thing up by themselves. Seriously, the quickest and least fun way to mess up your back.

[SpacePhoenix]

We get insanely heavy boxes full of packets in our centre to cut and tip. Even with the proper electric lifter provided - and to be fair, it always is - you get guys who insist on saving the ten seconds by lifting the whole thing up by themselves. Seriously, the quickest and least fun way to mess up your back.

No electric lifters for any of our large or small packet setups. I'm sure if they'd mounted the powered conveyors about a meter from where they are located that some sort of automatic york tipper could have been installed.

RE-RE-RE-RETURN TO SENDER
What's going on with all the RTS that we now
have to process? During the morning shift, some
of them have the RTS sticker, but no date. And so
many end up being sent again to the wrong
address! Efficient, isn't it?

Any letters or flats that are RTS to a UK don't require a sticker, that's been the case for a good few years now, you just sort them to the return address. The only time they require a sticker is when they are being returned abroad, then they need the pink kill-off sticker. We sometimes have to send them back to the DOs to get the pink stickers.

Why do some staff in deliveries put the kill-off sticker over the original address? If it's printed direct onto the envelope, how is the sending company expected to know what record they have to update on their system? The other classic one is the kill-off sticker being placed over to the return address.

[TopperGas]

Perhaps if the MC's didn't continually return the RTS mail to the DO's posties wouldn't see the need to put the stickers over the address?

I can't understand why letters are returned to DO's when they clearly have "RTS - Gone away" written on them and the address including the post codes also clearly crossed out.

[SpacePhoenix]

Perhaps if the MC's didn't continually return the RTS mail to the DO's posties wouldn't see the need to put the stickers over the address?

I can't understand why letters are returned to DO's when they clearly have "RTS - Gone away" written on them and the address including the post codes also clearly crossed out.

If it's machinable mail the machine has read the orange barcode and sorted it to the DP encoded into it. We run RTS mail in a special mode on the machines which make them look for the return address. You need to make sure that the machinable RTS mail is kept separate from other machinable mail, if you don't it'll get run through with the rest of the mail in normal mode and be sorted back to you.

[TopperGas]

Perhaps if the MC's didn't continually return the RTS mail to the DO's posties wouldn't see the need to put the stickers over the address?

I can't understand why letters are returned to DO's when they clearly have "RTS - Gone away" written on them and the address including the post codes also clearly crossed out.

If it's machinable mail the machine has read the orange barcode and sorted it to the DP encoded into it. We run RTS mail in a special mode on the machines which make them look for the return address. You need to make sure that the machinable RTS mail is kept separate from other machinable mail, if you don't it'll get run through with the rest of the mail in normal mode and be sorted back to you.

I assume the RTS mail must be coming from customers returning mail rather than posties as we keep all ours separate at the DO.

I did wonder the other day why one large customer was also crossing out the orange barcode when they hand mail marked RTS, it's just a pity nobody ever trains posties on the correct procedures!

[yellowbelly]

WORLD'S STRONGEST POSTIE!
Managers' new approach to process heavy
parcels (which weigh up to 30kg) is for us to drag
them across the floor one by one or even better, a
few at a time. We're even having to deal with car
tyres sent by mail. And what next? Attempting a
new world record in "static tyre flipping"?

What about those of us in 'Delivery' who have to deal with these bl00dy things. In our area it appears PFW have gone AWOL....

And why put them in the bottom of one of the Yorks with the stupid plastic walls! How are we supposed to get it out of them?

[2chorizon]

WORLD'S STRONGEST POSTIE!
Managers' new approach to process heavy
parcels (which weigh up to 30kg) is for us to drag
them across the floor one by one or even better, a
few at a time. We're even having to deal with car
tyres sent by mail. And what next? Attempting a
new world record in "static tyre flipping"?

What about those of us in 'Delivery' who have to deal with these bl00dy things. In our area it appears PFW have gone AWOL....

And why put them in the bottom of one of the Yorks with the stupid plastic walls! How are we supposed to get it out of them?

Getting open cages in MC’s is becoming harder, about 80%+ are all white correx lined cages with missing doors (these arw the ones that get used for large parcels)
Obviously we prefer to use open cages too and we get proper scraped up by the white correx loading them.

There is about to be a new SSOW coming out nationally from HQ re: white correx sleeves, and apparently they are going to use a new “plasticiser additive” to make the plastic softer to reduce cuts and abrasions!!!

Damn i sound like the guy writing the mount pleasant bulletin!!

[SpacePhoenix]

Getting open cages in MC’s is becoming harder, about 80%+ are all white correx lined cages with missing doors (these arw the ones that get used for large parcels)
Obviously we prefer to use open cages too and we get proper scraped up by the white correx loading them.

There is about to be a new SSOW coming out nationally from HQ re: white correx sleeves, and apparently they are going to use a new “plasticiser additive” to make the plastic softer to reduce cuts and abrasions!!!

Damn i sound like the guy writing the mount pleasant bulletin!!

Open yorks seem to be vanishing from the system very rapidly, recently we've been having to use corex for manual letters, flats and mech letters. It's as if all the remaining open yorks are being converted to correx ones.

[Sean06]

Getting open cages in MC’s is becoming harder, about 80%+ are all white correx lined cages with missing doors (these arw the ones that get used for large parcels)
Obviously we prefer to use open cages too and we get proper scraped up by the white correx loading them.

There is about to be a new SSOW coming out nationally from HQ re: white correx sleeves, and apparently they are going to use a new “plasticiser additive” to make the plastic softer to reduce cuts and abrasions!!!

Damn i sound like the guy writing the mount pleasant bulletin!!

Open yorks seem to be vanishing from the system very rapidly, recently we've been having to use corex for manual letters, flats and mech letters. It's as if all the remaining open yorks are being converted to correx ones.d

d
Still using old red sleeves at times.