National Industrial Action Ballot

Martin Walsh · Post by **Martin Walsh** » 23 Aug 2019, 09:22

For the immediate attention of all London Divisional CWU Members

The National union have announced that all members will be balloted for industrial from 24th September 2019. The close of the ballot and result will be announced on 8th October.

The CWU have taken the decision to ballot all members for strike action because it is quite clear that the new Royal Mail senior management regime want to introduce a cheaper more flexible employee model , whilst at the same time reducing union involvement in shaping the direction of the company.

Rico Back the New CEO has built his reputation in business based on low cost employee models and with no union recognition or involvement.

Rico Back clearly believes that the GLS model should be the future for all in Royal Mail Group.

The CWU is calling on all members to reject Royal Mail’s new vision for the future and support your union in fighting to protect your jobs and your terms and conditions.

If you support the CWU by voting yes you will be rejecting the following Royal Mail proposals

1. Royal Mail’s vision of creating separate profit and loss companies which require staff to be TUPE over which means your terms and conditions can be changed at a later date. We have seen this being proposed for Parcelforce and Royal Mail have refused to rule out further business units becoming separate profit or loss companies ! What next Fleet LTD , Logistics LTD ,Processing LTD or Delivery LTD ?

2. They want to reduce the legal guarantees secured by the CWU when we were privatised. This potentially means they want to be able to break up the company , outsource work , franchise parts of the operation , introduce a two tier workforce and employ zero hour contracts ! This is unacceptable to the CWU.

3. They have designed a new parcel strategy without any involvement of the CWU and it is the cheapest possible parcel operation. This proposal will mean that larger parcels will bypass RDCs and inward Mail centres and over a thousand delivery offices will no longer have these larger parcels meaning job losses.

4. Those circa 300 LAT units who will get the larger parcels previously delivered by 1300 will be expected to absorb one delivery in every six to ensure that they than have later drivers to deliver the larger parcels and LAT.

5. The new Royal Mail senior management team are obsessed with using PDA’s to track every delivery duty and they want to be able to resource and carry out revision activity based on the outputs of the PDA. Royal Mail have been told loud and clear a PDA is not an efficiency measure as it does not tell if an individual has started on time , taken their meal relief , performed their indoor prep , carried out delivery to neighbour etc.

6. Royal Mail want to introduce Automated Hours Data Capture so they can link signing and signing out to what you are paid.

7. Royal Mail want to introduce Resource Scheduler which if the software provider ever gets it right will be able to introduce different duty schedules including summer and winter duty models as PDA’s , AHDC and Traffic all get put into the system to provide not only the number of duties you need but the actual individual duty contents. At the moment Royal Mail cannot get Resource Scheduler to work , however they are preserving with it as they know it is a total game changer if they get it right.

8. Royal Mail still want to introduce delivery methods even thou when it was trialed it was disaster. Royal Mail still want to introduce either bench merging or merging whilst on the street.

9. Royal Mail do not want to give you the further hour off the working week which is also worth 2.6 % pay rise to part timers unless every office agrees to over 5% savings.

10. The culture in lots of workplaces is broken and causing office walkouts through the UK as a result of unacceptable management decisions or actions.

11. Royal Mail have also proposed that they would want the 30 minute flex agreement to be extended to 6 days per week as they believe they need more flexibility as. Traffic is still unpredictable. They also want to make it mandatory.

12. Within the talks Royal Mail have made it clear that they believe they can make massive savings in London including by removing 4 days weeks and other improved attendances such as Wallingtons

The above issues are what this dispute is about.

Royal Mail want to weaken the union in order to attack your terms and conditions.

All members face a stark choice !

Even stand by and let Royal Mail marginalise your union and than systematically destroy your hard fought terms and conditions or

Vote yes for industrial action and send a message to Royal Mail that the membership is up for the fight to protect our jobs , our terms and conditions and our future.

So let’s all vote yes and rise up to defend our futures.

All London Offices will have gate meetings over the few weeks.

Please support your union at this crucial time.

A statement by the London Divisional Committee

Chupacabra74 · Post by **Chupacabra74** » 23 Aug 2019, 10:28

Still on about merging ffs!

leolion855 · Post by **leolion855** » 23 Aug 2019, 14:15

Are they after reducing our hourly rate as it currently stands?

Postie45 · Post by **Postie45** » 23 Aug 2019, 15:26

if only the upper management fought against DSA as much as it does its hard working employees the company would be in much better shape.

roadrunner bill · Post by **roadrunner bill** » 23 Aug 2019, 16:07

The company is run by deranged, manic psychopaths..

Woody Guthrie · Post by **Woody Guthrie** » 23 Aug 2019, 16:13

We need a set of focused aims Martin.
Are we fighting to protect the agreements we have, are we looking for a new deal? where does pay factor into this? why is no one mentioning the pension? are we going to pay lip service to bullying again? How many of these things can we actually stop and how many are we just looking to mitigate?

I'll throw my clogs at the machines all day long just for the sheer hell of it but I've got a lot less to lose than a 30 year old with two kids and a mortgage.

We need some honesty this time around.

pex · Post by **pex** » 23 Aug 2019, 16:54

All very good stuff looking after our backs, but what happened to the TW postcode part timers pay increase from October 2018 when the one hour reduction came into force?
It still hasn't been resolved after 10.5 months, nothing paid as yet, no back pay.
Same area TW, it took several months for the one hour time reduction minutes off to be agreed by the union with thousands of free hours worked until it was finally implemented.

What hope is there if it takes this long to resolve what should have been a simple issue.
How many permutations are there to losing 60 minutes a week?
I worry that the union team are not skilled enough to reach an agreement and we will go the way the miners went many years ago.

daveyeff · Post by **daveyeff** » 23 Aug 2019, 17:38

agreement was reached in 2018. but this rico 'stickleback' is undermining all of them.

chickenwittle · Post by **chickenwittle** » 23 Aug 2019, 17:43

Is there any other job out there that has to go through this every few years , it’s ridiculous , constant change all the time.

Post by **wacko74** » 23 Aug 2019, 17:56

roadrunner bill wrote:The company is run by deranged, manic psychopaths..

To be fair that applies to ALL large corporations... as well as other aspects of society such as banking and politics.

You'll find psychopaths at the top of all of them... ordinary non-psychopathic people simply don't have the same ruthless drive, determination and desire to achieve recognition and the obsessive need for power and control over other people that CEO'S, MP's etc possess.

daveyeff · Post by **daveyeff** » 23 Aug 2019, 18:03

aye, they go one of two ways......gaffers or serial killers.

scoobymunster · Post by **scoobymunster** » 23 Aug 2019, 19:37

What are Royal Mail using for the revisions plannings if they aren't able to use PDA Data? I know the CWU are no longer partaking as they won't be based on 37 hours. Seems a waste of time if they want a more fluid resource to workload model.

LouBarlow · Post by **LouBarlow** » 23 Aug 2019, 19:50

How can you argue about using the PDA data for revisions and then cite posties starting early as a reason? RM aren't asking them to start early. More fool them. I'd have no problem with my PDA data being used, and hopefully it would mean the runners and early starters and no-breakers end up being given more work. I don't see the issue there. The rest of it, I'm with you, and will of course stand with the union on.

seaside · Post by **seaside** » 23 Aug 2019, 20:57

What if your on holiday and a runner is on your duty for 2 weeks and gets back early everyday,

citypostie · Post by **citypostie** » 23 Aug 2019, 21:05

LouBarlow wrote:How can you argue about using the PDA data for revisions and then cite posties starting early as a reason? RM aren't asking them to start early. More fool them. I'd have no problem with my PDA data being used, and hopefully it would mean the runners and early starters and no-breakers end up being given more work. I don't see the issue there. The rest of it, I'm with you, and will of course stand with the union on.

So they use the data they've got to do a revision, what if the "runners" etc are high up the seniority list so just leave the new extra big duty behind and jump on a "do the job properly" left the same/reduced round? What happens then. It's pointless using the data they've got until they've got base data where everyone works the same way, even then that wouldn't take into account different working speeds unless they can factor that into the data