08/01/25 Mount Pleasant bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, Happy New Year! Here's the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 08 January. Comments welcome!

MORE OF THESE NEEDED!
Despite the "busy period", we organised our own Xmas
get-togethers. Of course, RM doesn't offer us even a
book of stamps, let alone a Xmas party! So we brought
our own festive food, and had a good break with our
workmates, including with some of the "Xmas Casuals"!
We need more of these Pleasant breaks at the Mount,
whatever the occasion might be!

THEY SHOULD STAY FOR GOOD
Unfortunately, there were not many casuals left here
after the 24 December. On nights, most were already
gone by the 21st! Management said they didn't "need"
them and sent them home after barely 3 weeks of work...
but these same idiot bosses had to bring some of them
back almost immediately afterwards!

USING AND ABUSING
In fact, casuals are being brought in literally at the last
minute: on Processing Nights, managers call them up to
start at 11pm or even midnight, when the shift starts at
10.36pm! And when we say this is no way to treat
workers, they tell us it's not their fault, since they can't
tell how much work there'll be in advance! Maybe they
can't tell, but the real problem is there aren't nearly
enough of us, and they know that, for sure!

WHAT 'S NEEDED
And by the way, another 18 or so workmates are taking
VR at the end of the month! So who's going to cover
their duties? Our answer is simple: create full-time jobs
for part-timers and offer the casuals - who have already
been routinely covering weekend duties - the permanent
contracts they need!

THAT'S WHAT WE WANT!
So is this going to be the year when us cleaners get
duties that are decent? The current duties are left-overs
of that time when the Elephant butchered-up the resign,
which was only good for the dustbin. So a new year
with new workers, and new, lighter duties?

FAIR WEATHER VEHICLES!
In DOs around the country, the Xmas rush exposed the
state of RM's fleet! Because the shiny new electric vans
we have here are more the exception than the rule in
most depots - they're still outnumbered by stinky 16-
year-old diesels. And with all hands to the pump,
delivery workmates have posted stories about gravelly
puddles in the driver's footwell and driver windows
stuck half open - in this weather!

HE'S COMMITTED, OR SHOULD BE...
When the government signed-off Daniel Kretinsky's EP
Group deal to buy RM last month, it claimed it had
agreed "legally binding commitments" . According to
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, the most
important of these were to keep RM HQ in Britain and
"protect the brand"...! And, when he was asked
repeatedly in parliament to confirm that jobs were
protected, he merely answered that the CWU was
"speaking positively" about the deal too...

ALREADY IN BED WITH DANIEL
In fact CWU leaders have made their own deal with EP
Group, details of which they have sent to us on
WhatsApp. It runs to 12 pages, and also claims to be
"legally binding" (unless of course "the very future of the
business is threatened", hmm, where have we heard that
before) - like the "commitment" to"no compulsory
redundancies"...

PS: Dave Ward "reminded" us that "we must never lose
sight of the reality that whoever owns RM, the only way
our members and the company can really prosper, is if
we adapt and grow the business" . It's the same stuff
we've been hearing for years, but somehow, it's the big
shareholders who grow and prosper, not us, thanks to
his great "deals"...

HYPE AND HOT AIR
Not only that, union leaders claim their deal (called
"Rebuilding Royal Mail") "changes the very nature of
how a private company operates". How? Apparently
because there'll be a joint "Advisory Committee" set up,
composed of CWU and EP Group representatives to
"recommend" to the Board what decisions they should
make. As if such company councils don't exist in most
big businesses (including the railways), precisely with
the aim of turning workers' reps into bosses' reps (if they
weren't already)...

WE CAN'T ACCEPT THIS!
Worst of all, union leaders have now signed up to
piloting the "new USO", even though Ofcom has yet to
publicly confirm any changes! So, 37 DOs next month
(including "W" Deliveries here, and North Finchley and
Stoke Newington) will only be delivering 1st Class and
parcels 6 days a week - and 2nd class and DSA on
alternate days of the week... that is, 2 or 3 days per
week! And of course, cutting deliveries would mean
getting rid of jobs. How can we agree to this pilot!?

OUT WITH THE CLASS SYSTEM?
This new "Optimised Delivery Model" as they call it,
means delivering 2nd class Monday, Wednesday, Friday
one week, then Tuesday and Thursday the next week. It
means in some cases, delivering 3 days' worth of mail at
once! Obviously not at all acceptable for us. But neither
for the punters, who RM bosses no doubt expect to
abandon 2nd class altogether, and pay (£1.65 per stamp)
for 1st Class.

CHEAPER TO FLY TO FRANCE!
First class is so expensive, in fact, that someone on LBC
summed it up like this: if you have 100 Xmas cards to
post, it's cheaper to buy a return flight to France, post
the Xmas cards in France, and fly back! We also reckon,
much quicker...