Awaiting announcement end of July or mid August

[mags999]

there stalling cant make any changes till the uso is changed

[aiden01]

there stalling cant make any changes till the uso is changed

but they can still offer a pay deal which the joint statement at start of july commited it to be agreed by end of july.

[Phantom]

So nothing from the Union then and nothing from RM - Read into that what you will.

But in my opinion there is a serious lack of direction and innovation from the Company, there is NO plan for growth.

[SpacePhoenix]

there stalling cant make any changes till the uso is changed

iirc it's the ballot reaches 6 months old at the end of September and can only be extended with the agreement of the CWU and RM, so if RM refuse to extend it, then the CWU would need to hold a fresh ballot

[mags999]

sounds like whatever royal mail decide to do it will be agreed by the union as long as there is a carrot which may be 35 hour week ,vrs ,and decent terms and conditions oh and a pay rise also cant see any revisions hapnin anytime soon due to covd he did mention the van situation but that's not negotiable surely as what has suddenly changed with the pandemic

[Cedar_Room]

sounds like whatever royal mail decide to do it will be agreed by the union as long as there is a carrot which may be 35 hour week ,vrs ,and decent terms and conditions oh and a pay rise also cant see any revisions hapnin anytime soon due to covd he did mention the van situation but that's not negotiable surely as what has suddenly changed with the pandemic

I must have missed the part where he mentioned the van situation,what did he say,please? Thanks

[rogersh]

This is taken from a recent reminder 30th July myroyalmail. (see coronavirus discussion - Poll : Is social distancing still happening?)

"Temporary changes to some operational processes including the one person per van rule, staggered shift times and meal breaks, the cancellation of WTLLs and changes to doorstep deliveries, remain in place."

[Woody Guthrie]

sounds like whatever royal mail decide to do it will be agreed by the union as long as there is a carrot which may be 35 hour week ,vrs ,and decent terms and conditions oh and a pay rise also cant see any revisions hapnin anytime soon due to covd he did mention the van situation but that's not negotiable surely as what has suddenly changed with the pandemic

I must have missed the part where he mentioned the van situation,what did he say,please? Thanks

He said that they were exploring safe options for bringing back van sharing. Nothing more than that really.

Edit. The actual words from the transcript are:

So as things move forward if we can find safe ways of people two in a van again and try and get back to some sort of normality in the operation that will help as well.

Thanks for making me read through that..

The union obviously would be in favour of returning to van sharing if the alternative is members using their own vehicles.

How they're going to find a safe way to bring back van share that the members will accept is a different story. It's a difficult circle to square.

If you could guarantee at least 1m then masks would do as a form of mitigation but most vans do not allow for 1m so then you're looking at installing screens but there's a cost and safety issue there.

The government guidance is

3.3 Social distancing in vehicles

Objective: To maintain social distancing wherever possible between individuals when in vehicles:

avoid multiple occupancy vehicles where safe to do so

vehicles should not be shared if possible

if it is not possible to maintain social distancing guidelines inside vehicles (2m, or 1m with risk mitigation where 2m is not viable), consider additional safety measures

This gives RM some major headaches that would be difficult to overcome. The problem they have is that they have a very safe system of work in place right now with 1 person per van. Any move away from that would be purely based on cost and that's not a great excuse for increasing the risk level for staff.

There are several red herrings that people keep throwing in to justify a return to van sharing.

Other courier companies are doing it.

Unless you know exactly what the individual company policy is you don't know whether these employees are allowed to do this or whether they're just ignoring guidance. In the case of smaller employers they may consider the risk to their small number of employees to be one worth taking but at the end of the day it's irrelevant what other companies do because you can't turn up at court with the defence that everyone else was doing it.

Police, emergency services and driving instructors are doing it.

Most of these jobs REQUIRE multiple occupancy to work, we don't as has been shown over the past 4 months. Necessity is a defence in law.

Nobody is socially distancing in the office so what difference does it make?

Probably the dumbest reasoning but here goes...

Royal Mail has procedures in place to socially distance at work, whether it's adhered to or not isn't really an issue for RM lawyers because they can either throw the office manager to the wolves or just blame the staff.

It's ultimately up to yourselves to police your own health and safety and that includes social distancing but if you're not it's obviously more dangerous to van share because there's more chance you're infected and will infect your partner, two wrongs don't make a right they just increase the R number.

At the end of the day guys you have to look yourself in the eye and ask yourself why you want to return to van share and if it's just to make your own life easier or because it looks like someone else has it easier maybe that's not a good place to be in your life.

Remember the same s**t applies as in any other situation , you have a start time and a finish time and what happens in between is just paid employment.

[SpacePhoenix]

Long term with the big increase in packets will van sharing even be viable? It might reach a point where you can't get 2 walks worth of mail into a van on a regular basis

[2yearpostie]

Simple answer to this,' heres a voluntary sheet if you want to van share with a mask please sign, we will pay sick pay but you cant sue us.'

[Acca Dacca]

Simple answer to this,' heres a voluntary sheet if you want to van share with a mask please sign, we will pay sick pay but you cant sue us.'

Cue people putting enormous pressure on their partner to sign it

Quite frankly, eff that.

[Sugar]

Long term with the big increase in packets will van sharing even be viable? It might reach a point where you can't get 2 walks worth of mail into a van on a regular basis

Simple answer.

Larger vans like UPS who do work with two people to a van.

With the emphasis on delivering tracked items later in the day and how rm wanted to cut down on the number of offices doing parcels of a certain size they'll probably be a reduction in the overall size of the delivery fleet and an increase in larger sized vans to transport the additional mail and small packet volumes because they've increased walk sizes by reducing total number of walks in each office. Less vans, less maintenance and overheads, less head count due to less total number of walks would easily cover any additional costs of hiring larger vans but less of them overall.

Not to mention another possible reduction of collections because deliveries will end up doing even more of that in the next 1-3 years.

[Woody Guthrie]

Larger vans like UPS who do work with two people to a van.

Never seen a UPS truck with two guys in it.

[Sugar]

Larger vans like UPS who do work with two people to a van.

Never seen a UPS truck with two guys in it.

We get them around here, though not every van.

DPD also have 2 to a van on the larger transit style ones.

[wallan]

Larger vans like UPS who do work with two people to a van.

Never seen a UPS truck with two guys in it.

We get them around here, though not every van.

DPS also have 2 to a van on the larger transit style ones.

My local UPS for the last 5 or 6 weeks has been 2 staff ( female )