03/05/23 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 03 May. You'll find a longer article at the beginning dealing with the rotten offer, comments welcomed!

WE ARE VOTING NO!
The union leadership has finally come back to us with a grandiose, pompous, self-congratulatory letter claiming this dispute
has been "the most bitter, intense and high-risk in our history"! (Did they forget they sold out on privatisation, without even
calling a strike?) They go on: "as we stand here today your support has overturned that plan... We have shifted RM on
every single one of their original positions". No they haven't! It's a backward shift for us - cutting most of what we've won in
the past!
How do the union leaders dare to say that "you know change is necessary" as some kind of justification for their sell-out?
Evidently the leadership went into this fight convinced that "change" (read "cutting"!!) was necessary - but we didn't! It's a
givaway that they use the pronoun "you" instead of "we". They don't think they are on the same side as the rest of us...
Our strikes started over pay. They tell us that the current pay offer of 2% for 2022-3, 6% for 2023-4, and 2% for 2024-5,
is higher than what the bosses first offered. But the bosses never offered a 3 year deal. Last year they just imposed 2%.
And all that goes unchallenged?! The lump sum (unconsolidated of course, but taxable!) is just £500! What's that
supposed to cover? We earn £10,000 a year less than the median required to live in London (£29-32,000)! But, the union
leaders tell us to look at this agreement "in the round"...
What's more, they want us to focus on the "huge victory" they claim over job security. Yet management is still constantly
cutting jobs - there were 10,000 job cuts announced last year and we believe these are going ahead. And furthermore, how
does a "no compulsory redundancy" agreement have any meaning, if it's time-limited to April 2025?
The "flexibility" which the company wanted from us is still written into this "offer". Its form might have changed - "agreed
seasonal variations" rather than "annualised hours", but really, what's the difference? It actually allows the bosses to have
us working extra hours for flat rate - and SA on higher rates will be gone for good. There is no way that we can allow union
officials to "hone the approach in a way that works for our members as well as the company" as they say they are offering.
There is nothing in this offer that we can support!

******************************************************************************************************************************

A LAST LETTER TIME... WHEN?!
For us on Deliveries, we are told that later starts are capped
to 1 hour, which is already bad enough. But then, we also
read that management "reserves the right to seek 90 minute
later starts" in some "minimal cases". This, with the 24-
minute flexitime, will give managers even more freedom to
mess with our finish times! Why would we agree to that?

WHERE IS OUR SWW?
In fact, it was not long ago that we were promised a shorter
working week... Every year, one hour was supposed to be
cut, so that we'd end up with a 35-hour week (without loss of
pay!). But - no real surprise - management stopped cutting
the yearly hour saying that it had become "unaffordable".
And now they are telling us that we might work a compulsory
39-hours during the busy season?!

WHAT'S MISSING
And as for sick pay, union leaders can do nothing other than
tell us, "it's materially better than the employers' original
proposals"! And they don't spell out what the changes
actually are: first period of absence on full pay, second on
just SSP for first two days, and the first four days of a third
absence on SSP.

TRUST? AS IF!
The CWU leadership wrote: "many of you will be asking the
question, can the company be trusted?". They answer on
our behalf: "we must give them the opportunity to change
their approach". But CWU leaders don't get it – if we want
the bosses to "change their approach" we have to force them
to do so - now - with an indefinite strike, until they back
down.

REINSTATEMENT NOW!
So what about the over 400 of our workmates and reps who
were suspended during this dispute? We read in this union
letter that there is a "completely independent review of all
conduct cases"... But the reality is that workmates across
the country are already losing their cases! We don't want a
single sacking, period! And that's enough reason for us all to
go on strike again - right away!

LAYING IT ON THICK
If this was such a good deal, why are we not voting on it until
17 May, after a few weeks of "communications and
engagement" by the CWU leadership? They've already
made a couple of slick videos that are meant to explain parts
of the deal to us, and had a couple of briefings with reps…
as if the offer was already agreed. And they have a whole
schedule of more "activities", focused on up-selling this
"offer" to us.

ALREADY TOO LITTLE!
It took RM-PFS one entire month to sort out our pay! But
finally the much-awaited pay rise came through. The Living
Wage Foundation rate of £11.95/hr that we're now getting is
already out of date - we need another raise to keep up with
rising prices!

NO MORE ACHES
Last week on Nights we had a "team huddle" and managers
asked us to speed up the PSM work... Yes, they have their
targets. But we also have ours: to work at a pace that
agrees with what our bodies tell us!

OLD SCANNERS TO THE BIN!
So finally on PSA we're going to get the new scanners...
They are long overdue! The new ones have been used
upstairs for a while, and we've been struggling with the old,
heavy, hazardous ones for far too long!

LET'S WATCH "LOOKING FOR ERIC"...
By the way, the PSM's falling apart... it's been weeks since
the screens stopped working. Not that we mind too much,
since they were supposed to show us how fast we need to
feed the machine. But if management's planning to repair
them, can we have a movie or a TV series to watch instead?

[clashcityrocker]

Hi, here is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 03 May. You'll find a longer article at the beginning dealing with the rotten offer, comments welcomed!

WE ARE VOTING NO!

Who is "WE"?

[TopperGas]

What's the alternative if everybody does vote No? There's no real signs RM will back down or staff are prepared to waste more money with IA?

[daveyeff]

What's the alternative if everybody does vote No? There's no real signs RM will back down or staff are prepared to waste more money with IA?

Wardy was asked this at Portsmouth. his reply was that the union and RM would both be on a path to self destruction.......another selling point of an unwanted deal if ever i heard one.