Time to Renegotiate

[TrueBlueTerrier]

You do know there is a difference between increase in revenue and increase in profit ?

Is there? I don't know i'm just a hairy arsed postman of 35 years. I see it in basic layman's terms that when the negotiations were going on Royal Mail didn't have two ha'penny's to rub together this was a blatant lie that the union took as gospel.

I believe Martins Point is that yes, profits have increased because of Covid, but also costs have also increased because of Covid. To be frank, the initial extra expenses caused because of Covid were probably overestimated by both sides, but I don't think there was a hidden agenda, after all, it was over 100 years since the last time we had a similar situation.

[kevbo]

Barry chuckle

You do know there is a difference between increase in revenue and increase in profit ?

Also the pay rise for 2020/21 and 1% for 2021/22 and the hour of the shorter working week which for part timers is worth 2.6% and for full timers increases the hourly rate which improves further pay rises.

The pay package and SWW is worth the 358 million which obviously makes a dent into the operating profit expectation from the whole of Royal Mail Group of 700 million very realistic.

You say how bad a deal , so you have the pay rise and back pay what are the bad things you have experienced so far and what are you expecting ? Let’s hear them and let’s see if they are further myths and rumours or facts ?

I would have thought this years pay award would be included in their costs already for this year and their forecast profit is £700 million. So that £358 million figure won't make any dent at all in the £700 million. Correct me if I'm wrong. Forecast Revenue is £8.6 billion by the way.

[kevbo]

You do know there is a difference between increase in revenue and increase in profit ?

Is there? I don't know i'm just a hairy arsed postman of 35 years. I see it in basic layman's terms that when the negotiations were going on Royal Mail didn't have two ha'penny's to rub together this was a blatant lie that the union took as gospel.

I believe Martins Point is that yes, profits have increased because of Covid, but also costs have also increased because of Covid. To be frank, the initial extra expenses caused because of Covid were probably overestimated by both sides, but I don't think there was a hidden agenda, after all, it was over 100 years since the last time we had a similar situation.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here but the forecast profit figure of £700 million is exactly that. Profit. Costs for whatever Covid, Pay Awards, new parcel automation will have been already accounted for.

[Woody Guthrie]

The pay package and SWW is worth the 358 million which obviously makes a dent into the operating profit expectation from the whole of Royal Mail Group of 700 million very realistic.

So what you're saying is that Royal Mail don't intend to increase their prices or recoup any of this increase in the pay bill by increasing productivity and efficiency?

1% was a poor result Martin and you can't hide behind the SWW to try to justify it. The SWW is subject to revisions and we don't know how much these revisions will wipe off the value of that 358 million.

Anyway are the discussions on Sunday pay rates still ongoing?

[theotherone]

The SWW is based on 1 in 6 duties getting axed to account for packet duties and an increase in duty time.Along with the usual increase in 'efficency'.
RM don't give anything away for free.
Not long ago RM where set to announce a loss of 500 million.
As our manager said to us this agreement aligns the CWU with the RM.

[blacov]

double

[blacov]

Without going into much details. Royal Mail could not have placed this pay rise better in time. It is difficult to fight our pay offer in the current climate where people lose jobs and many have had their pay frozen. Only ignorant would not take into account that Royal Mail costs have vastly increased. I suppose absence overtime, ppe costs, sick pay and investment into parcel hubs could have maybe doubled costs from previous year. However the main point is RM has history of "adjusting" the facts to what actually suits them. Like someone have already mentioned that we were not that long ago told about £1m loss a day and for me it just didn't add up. Unprecedented volumes of parcels basically throughout the year with biggest Xmas ever in my opinion off set any increases in cost of revenue and this translates to bigger profits. Just look at the share price, it reflects financial potential of company. Shares since last April have gone up over 300%.

Interesting that cnce they said we were losing money because of letter decline and that money is in parcel delivery, then we get tons of parcels and they suddenly change the tune that it's bad again for business because it costs so much to process. I can understand, we are not parcel ready in terms of automation and instead we are set up for letter delivery. Now we are seeing an increase in letter delivery and this was noticed some 2-3 weeks ago already. The letter incline trend should last at least until the beginning of April with financial year changing involving increased communication. I wonder what we are going to hear from directors next.

Surely this cast a doubt on whether we got a good deal or bad. In my opinion we had no chance for a better deal given how CWU handled the whole negotiations. There will be no further negotiations but I just hope that job will not get much worse in the future. At the end of the day it's better to get 3.7% than nothing. Even though it won't be a rise in real terms given that inflation is about accelerate and we are about to be hit with usual annual rises on council tax, road tax, utilities, petrol steadily getting more expensive. Not to mention weekly/monthly food bill that is certainly going to go up for an average family. Our pay rise will offset some of these price rises but will not improve our buying power at all. It's slow race to the bottom as each year we are becoming poorer and work harder for it. God bless all of us in our 20s,30s. I doubt we will be able to last in this job to retirement.

[postslippete]

You say how bad a deal , so you have the pay rise and back pay what are the bad things you have experienced so far and what are you expecting ? Let’s hear them and let’s see if they are further myths and rumours or facts ?

I wonder if you could clear up some of these for me please Martin. I'm not here to judge anybody but just trying to get a better insight


1. Will parcel hubs and increased automation mean that posties wil be delivering a 6 hour plus outdoor span?

2. With a SWW is there scope for local units to introduce a 4 day week? If so, will units get a chance to vote on this or is everything to be decided by the DOM?

3. How frequent will revisions occur? Our last revision happened yonks ago and yet some duties are still 1 and half times the size of other rounds.

4. Who reports delivery failures and are they being accurately reported? I've heard stories that just because the tracked items have been delivered or a loop has gone from that duty that it has not "failed". Is this true?

5. Will duty sizes be assessed through posties PDAs?

[Martin Walsh]

These are my answers :

1. The union aim of the 35 hour gross hour working week meaning OPGs will be working about 32 hours per week. Royal Mail automation strategy will not in my opinion lead to a 6 hour span unless an office agreed that for an attendance pattern. There will still be prep , still be IPS , parcel bull rings and travel the first to last letter so no there will not be a standard 6 hour delivery. Members in offices will have a say in the delivery span and understand the impact on duty patterns and Full time / part time duties.

2. The menu of options are in place and there can not be any imposed 1 in 6 duty patterns. Remember a 4 day week means you have to fill 9 hour 25 mins day based on a 37 hour contract. This will mean less full time duties as they will have to do double preps to fill their 9 hours 25 mins duties contents. They will have to potentially have a longer span. So the answer is yes you can have a 4 day week but there will be an impact.

3. If you have a structural revision this year on the indoor you will have a 3 year flight path so if your offices indoor hour reduction was 60 hours you would see 20 hours reduction this year and 20 in each of years 2&3. Your outdoor would be fully optimised but you will have a learning curve of hours built in which will be phased out. You will then have a review each year. The table top revisions will have a structural revision either next year of the following year.

4. USO failures have been high throughout the pandemic and yes I am sure there will be under recording of USO failures and quality failures. However we are planning the revisions based on a Covid free environment and if this does not happen then the table top offices will simply not hit their productivity targets and there will be a discussion on the structural revisions implementation date.

5. The table top revisions really do not need to use PDA OA as every office now has its target work hours for the revision. The structural revisions will be based on Geo route but as part of the process If Geo Route gave a block of flats 30 minutes to delivery and the OPG says no it takes 45 mins then PDA OA can be used as a guide but it is not the deciding factor.

[SpacePhoenix]

1. The union aim of the 35 hour gross hour working week meaning OPGs will be working about 32 hours per week. Royal Mail automation strategy will not in my opinion lead to a 6 hour span unless an office agreed that for an attendance pattern. There will still be prep , still be IPS , parcel bull rings and travel the first to last letter so no there will not be a standard 6 hour delivery. Members in offices will have a say in the delivery span and understand the impact on duty patterns and Full time / part time duties.

Does that factor in potential changes to break entitlements based on hours per shift?

[Dexydog]

These are my answers :
"2. The menu of options are in place and there can not be any imposed 1 in 6 duty patterns. Remember a 4 day week means you have to fill 9 hour 25 mins day based on a 37 hour contract. This will mean less full time duties as they will have to do double preps to fill their 9 hours 25 mins duties contents. They will have to potentially have a longer span. So the answer is yes you can have a 4 day week but there will bet and if this does not happen then the table top offices will simply not hit their productivity targets and there will be a discussion on the structural revisions implementation date."

Funny that, because when our manager was asked in the daily huddle the other day, if we would get a vote on how the duty patterns would be worked out, and indeed if a 4 day week would be an option, he looked like we were asking him to re-invent the wheel.
This whole thing is going to be a stitch up, management already know what they want and how it will be staffed.
They have no intention of including staff on the final make up of duty structures- yet another example of what an out of date company RM really are.
Do they not realise that including their workforce in decisions might actually make them happier?- I think we all know the answer to that one.

[Cucumber]

Martin, thanks for replying in the past to questions I've posed, we've not even been told in our office about the forthcoming revision, which is now only a few months away so any info is always gratefully received as it's the only info I get.
To pick up on a point you've made above about a 4 day week - only workable if you have a certain ratio of FT to PT staff - say if an office is 50/50 or even 60/40 FT to PT, could they in theory get a 4 day week by increasing indoor work (for FT) and reducing indoor overtime for instance?
The reason I ask is that I see a lot of concern on here that some shift patterns won't even be allowed to happen as they will be hard to manage, not impossible by any means, but it would mean managers having to ensure all the indoor work gets done.
We pay a huge amount of overtime out for PT staff to come in early and prep, so it's a double edged sword - stop that overtime and it will create the work for FT (and maybe some PT?) staff to do 9.5hr (7.5hrs for PT) days to get a 4 day week.

TIA

[Woody Guthrie]

Dexy to be fair (and I don't have a lot of faith in the revision process for other reasons) but why would your rep sign off even stage one of the revision process if there was no input from the members?

And more importantly why would you let them do it?

[Dexydog]

Dexy to be fair (and I don't have a lot of faith in the revision process for other reasons) but why would your rep sign off even stage one of the revision process if there was no input from the members?

And more importantly why would you let them do it?

The rep is off at the moment, and we were told an area rep would be dealing with it.
To which we made clear collectively, why should someone who won't even be doing the work, be in any way involved in organising it.
It was brushed over- the reason we know it will be a stitch up.
I hope I'm wrong, but worked here long enough to know when I'm being shafted.
Part timers regularly working max of 70 hours for years, and our rep has never to my knowledge brought up a weekly resource meeting, which as far as I know should be mandatory for him, that is if he had any interest in his members. (if he had, then why are part time doing this many hours, and 75% of early staff part time and in doing prep and IPS on overtime). This and health and safety is, and always has been, an afterthought.
For clarity and honesty, I am not in the union, because quite frankly they show no interest in any of the staff at my office at local level.
To be clear, I will personally be pushing for the staff to be involved in our revision, with or without a rep's involvement.

[Martin Walsh]

Dexy your manager would not know at this point. The guidelines were only finalised last Wednesday and the PE agreed them Friday.

They will be sent out Tuesday to all Branch’s.

There are 44 pages and 20 odd appendix’s which will be the structural revision guidance. There was a training session with the first 100 offices on Friday of which 250 DOMs , Local reps and Area Reps joined.

There is a clear paragraph on that the local rep / area rep will hold a meeting with CWU members to ask the following

What attendance pattern they want
What delivery span
What earnings
Full time / part time mix