So what exactly does the joint statement mean?

[norris9]

The work has always had seasonal variations. We staff the depot at a level to cope with the quieter times then in the busier christmas period offer overtime for those who want it, restrict leave and employ casual workers. There is no need for any change to that.

This is true. Lapsing is there to fill the lighter summer days (as well as winter days) + we are all having work added to our frames - Not only are the walks getting bigger, but now we have to scan in our own tracked, do customer collections and faff about taking photos on the doorstep. All of which have come in within the last year.

Mail might be down a bit according to them, but parcels are up. When they say 'mail is down' I am sure they are only talking about the mech?, and if so, why is it only the mech they count, why do they ignore brochures, leaflets, magazines?

If anything I feel like I am delivering more mail nowadays. Saturdays used to be a breeze, going to 1 in every 3 or 4 houses, now I am going to most houses.

[theotherone]

Following a meeting with RM Scotland and on receipt of reports from workplaces it is very clear that there has been no re engagement under the terms of the Joint Statement. We have reported this to the national negotiators.
In the meantime there is no agreement to any measures imposed or due to be imposed in the workplace. Reps should offer no assistance or agreement.
We will report back as we are able.

This is from the CWU Scotland div Facebook page.
The whole thing is a mess.

[clashcityrocker]

When they say 'mail is down' I am sure they are only talking about the mech?,

No they are not.

[chrisj]

K 9 - you have achieved nothing with all your conspiracy theories and wonderful calculation how getting more than inflation busying pay rise will all make us better off.

I am worse off thanks to the CWU, so, yes, I am with my employer; the one that pays my wages now and hopefully in future.

Sorry, that some of you have not been able to crush RM - it was only a matter of time that the amateurish CWU will wake up before they disappear.

You can continue to be their fanboy or use your cursive language - that part just shows you have lost the argument.

Do the CWU are beginning to parrot Simon Thompson while at the same time trying to appear to have sidelined him.

When did the penny drop for them?

[chrisj]

When they say 'mail is down' I am sure they are only talking about the mech?,

No they are not.

Why would Norris write or believe that? All the details are available and anecdotally, all items have dropped; including D2Ds...

What we are having to do additionally still occupies a lot of our time but if the CWU is now vehemently arguing that items have dropped and we have to up our productivity; then it is no longer RM making things up...

In addition, we are losing more than £1 million a day; and that is also not a million compared to years before... Real loss! CWU have also now acknowledged!

We get what we can now!

[k979aaa]

Well cj why not just admit it you don't have the stomach for the fight if you keep real quiet we might let you have a pay rise of more than 2% that we fought for while you sniped at us all.

[aiden01]

The members are not going to vote for the kind of lousy deal that it appears that we are heading towards.

I'll take that bet.
What odds are you giving?

So will i.

[SpacePhoenix]

When they say 'mail is down' I am sure they are only talking about the mech?,

No they are not.

All mail streams are significantly down, not just the mech

[postslippete]

I don’t normally post nowadays but some of you do need to read between the lines :

The next week will be the most important in the dispute yet.

Hang on minute Martin, who's at fault for the companies finances?? Certainly not us thats for sure. We went on all-out strikes at the Unions request to give ourselves a good bargaining position for the future. Even as recent as a few weeks ago the CWU were planning to go on strike due to "un-agreed revision activity" but the union made a balls up of it and called it off because they knew legally it wasn't watertight. In some ways I'm actually glad we didn't strike this time round because everything that the Royal Mail board have done in the last six months has been a deliberate ploy to antagonise the unions, infuriate the posties and keep running the service levels and profits down. Now they are revealing their masterplan of how much they are losing and that the company will go out of business - if we don't adapt to the new ways of working. The company has lured us into their trap and are effectively holding a gun to our heads.

As for workload, everybody knows that the work drops off after Xmas. We don't need the agency, there is less overtime available etc etc. This is the best time for Royal Mail to push through the changes that they were really after all along - bigger outdoor delivery spans and later start/finish times. Now, I'm not in denial over the company needing to cut costs but surely there are other ways to do this other than to continually push up the price of postage stamps and throw more workload onto any existing posties? As an office we are already experiencing many USO failures. I see loops being brought back to be put back into the frames for the next day on a daily basis - where would you like me to report them to?? Because its almost like we are forcing more work onto posties just to justify the increase in the COMs salaries/bonuses and new members of the Royal Mail management team. If we are taking the hit, then why the hell aren't they?

Time for some more of those "intense" talks

[Splappy_McSplap]

I am worse off thanks to the CWU, so, yes, I am with my employer; the one that pays my wages now and hopefully in future.

Are you earning minimum wage?


Why aren't you earning minimum wage?


Please consider these two questions.

[k979aaa]

I don’t normally post nowadays but some of you do need to read between the lines :

The next week will be the most important in the dispute yet.

Hang on minute Martin, who's at fault for the companies finances?? Certainly not us thats for sure. We went on all-out strikes at the Unions request to give ourselves a good bargaining position for the future. Even as recent as a few weeks ago the CWU were planning to go on strike due to "un-agreed revision activity" but the union made a balls up of it and called it off because they knew legally it wasn't watertight. In some ways I'm actually glad we didn't strike this time round because everything that the Royal Mail board have done in the last six months has been a deliberate ploy to antagonise the unions, infuriate the posties and keep running the service levels and profits down. Now they are revealing their masterplan of how much they are losing and that the company will go out of business - if we don't adapt to the new ways of working. The company has lured us into their trap and are effectively holding a gun to our heads.

As for workload, everybody knows that the work drops off after Xmas. We don't need the agency, there is less overtime available etc etc. This is the best time for Royal Mail to push through the changes that they were really after all along - bigger outdoor delivery spans and later start/finish times. Now, I'm not in denial over the company needing to cut costs but surely there are other ways to do this other than to continually push up the price of postage stamps and throw more workload onto any existing posties? As an office we are already experiencing many USO failures. I see loops being brought back to be put back into the frames for the next day on a daily basis - where would you like me to report them to?? Because its almost like we are forcing more work onto posties just to justify the increase in the COMs salaries/bonuses and new members of the Royal Mail management team. If we are taking the hit, then why the hell aren't they?

Time for some more of those "intense" talks

Have to agree 100%

[Dorset Plodder]

Huge increase in workload?

I'm being brutally honest which seems to be in short supply on this forum. Everyone seems to be remarkably overworked even though we are woefully short of work at the moment.

I'm aware that some offices seem to get screwed over more than others but sometimes on here people try to imply that what happens in their office applies across the country. It doesn't.

The union has basically given our office the tools to protect our start times and attendance patterns, it was never about stopping joint revisions which were agreed to in the previous deal and which are badly needed if I'm honest. If your revision in your office turns out to be a mess there are tools available in the joint statement for addressing that but they don't work all by themselves. You have to also ask why it's a mess though.

Some Units have obviously been hit harder than others. We know that no two units are the same. And Posties love to moan about how hard done by they are, we also all have those "Mega Moaners" in our units. I too wonder how much honesty some Posties have when assessing their own problems?

I believe in my unit the original duties probably weren't "Correct" before this EA Revision (due to various reasons but including a lack of know how when setting them up). This New Revision can work, for all duties, on days when the mail is Lighter. It fails, for some duties, on days when there's more mail. The COM thinks that the duties that fail have "Lazy/Slow/Old/Uselesss" duty holders. We've pointed out that perhaps the duties that can complete (even with quite a bit of mail) were probably not long enough prior to the New revision ?.... and now they're actually a more realistic size. The "Mega Moaners" are finishing nearer their contracted times.

I feel the Attitude/Experience of Unit Reps and the Competance of Managers has a lot to do with how the Unit was originally set up. WG is obviously an Experienced and Pro Active Rep. Some Units don't even have a Rep, and some Reps could do better. Some COMs are assholes!

We haven't been hit as hard as some Units, but future improvements are very much in the hands of the Duty Holder. IF you're still coming in Early for FREE, NOT taking MR, Cutting corners etc then you've only got yourselves to blame... WORK PROPERLY!

[norris9]

When they say 'mail is down' I am sure they are only talking about the mech?,

No they are not.

All mail streams are significantly down, not just the mech

Definitely not the case at our office.

Sounds like they need to reduce staff significantly at the offices where mail streams are significantly down and/or give an extra 20% calls to each and every round. The sooner the better, then we can all get our pay rise.

[AlbertHerbertHawkins]

Huge increase in workload?

I'm being brutally honest which seems to be in short supply on this forum. Everyone seems to be remarkably overworked even though we are woefully short of work at the moment.

I'm aware that some offices seem to get screwed over more than others but sometimes on here people try to imply that what happens in their office applies across the country. It doesn't.

The union has basically given our office the tools to protect our start times and attendance patterns, it was never about stopping joint revisions which were agreed to in the previous deal and which are badly needed if I'm honest. If your revision in your office turns out to be a mess there are tools available in the joint statement for addressing that but they don't work all by themselves. You have to also ask why it's a mess though.

Some Units have obviously been hit harder than others. We know that no two units are the same. And Posties love to moan about how hard done by they are, we also all have those "Mega Moaners" in our units. I too wonder how much honesty some Posties have when assessing their own problems?

I believe in my unit the original duties probably weren't "Correct" before this EA Revision (due to various reasons but including a lack of know how when setting them up). This New Revision can work, for all duties, on days when the mail is Lighter. It fails, for some duties, on days when there's more mail. The COM thinks that the duties that fail have "Lazy/Slow/Old/Uselesss" duty holders. We've pointed out that perhaps the duties that can complete (even with quite a bit of mail) were probably not long enough prior to the New revision ?.... and now they're actually a more realistic size. The "Mega Moaners" are finishing nearer their contracted times.

I feel the Attitude/Experience of Unit Reps and the Competance of Managers has a lot to do with how the Unit was originally set up. WG is obviously an Experienced and Pro Active Rep. Some Units don't even have a Rep, and some Reps could do better. Some COMs are assholes!

We haven't been hit as hard as some Units, but future improvements are very much in the hands of the Duty Holder. IF you're still coming in Early for FREE, NOT taking MR, Cutting corners etc then you've only got yourselves to blame... WORK PROPERLY!

I recognise a lot in what both you and Woody are saying, our revision has gone through but it needs another pass to balance out the rounds. Our manager is chronically lazy and basically just absorbed the lapsed walks, which works for some but not for others. The unit is understaffed but because certain people always work their day off every week the manager doesn't see an issue (plus we still have a couple of agency knocking about), and suggesting they not work their day off to highlight some of the problem would not fly.

Having said that, the revised rounds for the most part are completing on Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and usually Friday, sometimes under by an hour or more. But they still go over by quite a bit on Wednesday and Thursday. Balancing between the rounds is not an intractable problem, just requires a bit of effort on the rep and COM's part, but balancing across the week I don't see how we can do it. Feels like this new Economy product, which defers items until there is something else for the house, just means that most days are light then an avalanche of junk comes through on one or two days.

This is not rhetorical by the way, I'm actually interested in suggestions as to how to fix the problem. Can't see the manager, or any of the shorter contracted posties, changing attendance patterns to concentrate on Wed and Thurs and go back to a lapsing system the other days, not least because she ultimately wants to remove the absorbed frames from the office. We have some long and shorts but most are on a fixed start and finish time. I can't see what the solution is, but it's always been a problem in a company with such a variable workload. It's no wonder they want to bring in flexi-time, but that's always been my red line in these negotiations, because a fixed finish time is the only real power employees have in the workplace.

[Acca Dacca]

Huge increase in workload?

I'm being brutally honest which seems to be in short supply on this forum. Everyone seems to be remarkably overworked even though we are woefully short of work at the moment.

I'm aware that some offices seem to get screwed over more than others but sometimes on here people try to imply that what happens in their office applies across the country. It doesn't.

The union has basically given our office the tools to protect our start times and attendance patterns, it was never about stopping joint revisions which were agreed to in the previous deal and which are badly needed if I'm honest. If your revision in your office turns out to be a mess there are tools available in the joint statement for addressing that but they don't work all by themselves. You have to also ask why it's a mess though.

Some Units have obviously been hit harder than others. We know that no two units are the same. And Posties love to moan about how hard done by they are, we also all have those "Mega Moaners" in our units. I too wonder how much honesty some Posties have when assessing their own problems?

I believe in my unit the original duties probably weren't "Correct" before this EA Revision (due to various reasons but including a lack of know how when setting them up). This New Revision can work, for all duties, on days when the mail is Lighter. It fails, for some duties, on days when there's more mail. The COM thinks that the duties that fail have "Lazy/Slow/Old/Uselesss" duty holders. We've pointed out that perhaps the duties that can complete (even with quite a bit of mail) were probably not long enough prior to the New revision ?.... and now they're actually a more realistic size. The "Mega Moaners" are finishing nearer their contracted times.

I feel the Attitude/Experience of Unit Reps and the Competance of Managers has a lot to do with how the Unit was originally set up. WG is obviously an Experienced and Pro Active Rep. Some Units don't even have a Rep, and some Reps could do better. Some COMs are assholes!

We haven't been hit as hard as some Units, but future improvements are very much in the hands of the Duty Holder. IF you're still coming in Early for FREE, NOT taking MR, Cutting corners etc then you've only got yourselves to blame... WORK PROPERLY!

I recognise a lot in what both you and Woody are saying, our revision has gone through but it needs another pass to balance out the rounds. Our manager is chronically lazy and basically just absorbed the lapsed walks, which works for some but not for others. The unit is understaffed but because certain people always work their day off every week the manager doesn't see an issue (plus we still have a couple of agency knocking about), and suggesting they not work their day off to highlight some of the problem would not fly.

Having said that, the revised rounds for the most part are completing on Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and usually Friday, sometimes under by an hour or more. But they still go over by quite a bit on Wednesday and Thursday. Balancing between the rounds is not an intractable problem, just requires a bit of effort on the rep and COM's part, but balancing across the week I don't see how we can do it. Feels like this new Economy product, which defers items until there is something else for the house, just means that most days are light then an avalanche of junk comes through on one or two days.

This is not rhetorical by the way, I'm actually interested in suggestions as to how to fix the problem. Can't see the manager, or any of the shorter contracted posties, changing attendance patterns to concentrate on Wed and Thurs and go back to a lapsing system the other days, not least because she ultimately wants to remove the absorbed frames from the office. We have some long and shorts but most are on a fixed start and finish time. I can't see what the solution is, but it's always been a problem in a company with such a variable workload. It's no wonder they want to bring in flexi-time, but that's always been my red line in these negotiations, because a fixed finish time is the only real power employees have in the workplace.

The solution to that, that was used in the past, was ''longs and shorts''

Half an hour less attendance on Monday Tuesday Saturday and half hour longer on Wed Thur Friday