Seasonal hours! Whats the point?

[LouBarlow]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you are still on job and finish. Otherwise you clock out on time anyway. The whole seasonal variation idea is an utter shambles no matter what office you work in.

[TopperGas]

Do you still work longs and shorts?

No idea what that is. I work the same hours everyday.

Long days and short days.
In most of the offices I have worked in (4/5) the full time staff work longer hours on heavier days and shorter hours on lighter days.
It is just the same principal.

The difference is that mid week has more mail/parcels, whereas mail and, particularly, packets/parcels don't seem to have dropped off noticeably during the summer.

[kazardaimenu]

Definitely way more packets than last summer when this scheme might have worked out. Combined with later arrival times from the MC it’s only worked out in about 2 of the weeks it ran for. 39hrs won’t be enough to clear Christmas pressure either.

[postslippete]

Yes so you keep saying. I think it is long established that I work in a decent office, which accounts for probably 1% of all the units in the country. It isn’t just down to the people of shite offices to post on here you know? Not everything has to be negative and moaning constantly. We are getting enough packets but mail volume is just dead.

I'm surprised the COMs haven't re-introduced lapsing in your unit! The new agreement hasn't completely done away with it, it just says that it will be significantly reduced.

Is your office overstaffed and are posties in your depot sent to other offices to help out I wonder?

[fb1969]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.

I feel for you guys. The other week on Facebook Martin Walsh implied that getting hours down from 39 to 37 was an achievement, forgetting that the "flight path" was 35 hours and newbies are on 40.

[SpacePhoenix]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.

I feel for you guys. The other week on Facebook Martin Walsh implied that getting hours down from 39 to 37 was an achievement, forgetting that the "flight path" was 35 hours and newbies are on 40.

I do wonder if long term it'll end up with everyone being back on 40hrs

[LouBarlow]

Yes so you keep saying. I think it is long established that I work in a decent office, which accounts for probably 1% of all the units in the country. It isn’t just down to the people of shite offices to post on here you know? Not everything has to be negative and moaning constantly. We are getting enough packets but mail volume is just dead.

I'm surprised the COMs haven't re-introduced lapsing in your unit! The new agreement hasn't completely done away with it, it just says that it will be significantly reduced.

Is your office overstaffed and are posties in your depot sent to other offices to help out I wonder?

We have been absorbing because we have been understaffed. This week is the first week we haven’t because we have taken on some new starters.

[ted_e_bear]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.

I feel for you guys. The other week on Facebook Martin Walsh implied that getting hours down from 39 to 37 was an achievement, forgetting that the "flight path" was 35 hours and newbies are on 40.

I do wonder if long term it'll end up with everyone being back on 40hrs

Yeah on the same money though is more like what they'll want

[tramssirhc]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you are still on job and finish. Otherwise you clock out on time anyway. The whole seasonal variation idea is an utter shambles no matter what office you work in.

Clumsy wording on my part. Martin Walsh stated that we could negate the effect of later finishes through seasonal variation and that seasonal variation was reducing the finish time by 25 minutes. Members all over the country struggled to finish at the seasonal variation finish time due to the workload.

[scotchy1962]

I can only assume that it works in some places. Perhaps ones that don't shift too much due to the network window change. We are failing just as badly if not worse at 37 hours vs 35.

We don’t have enough traffic to fill the summer hours at ours. This week we have shifted to the longer days without any real uptick in volumes (yet!) so on my shortest day of the week, we had to drive round trying to get rid of 739 items and still made over 30 minutes at the end of the day. Starting on time and having a break.

It doesn’t seem to work as intended anywhere really if some offices have too much time and others not enough even during the summer.

Hmmm it seems you work in some kind of Posties nirvana Lou and i would transfer to it except we would probably not make good work mates, but lucky you.
Today i had as many tracked as you would expect last xmas, so god knows what this year is going to be like if it's worse than this.

Yes so you keep saying. I think it is long established that I work in a decent office, which accounts for probably 1% of all the units in the country. It isn’t just down to the people of shite offices to post on here you know? Not everything has to be negative and moaning constantly. We are getting enough packets but mail volume is just dead.

Quite aggressive response Lou, not really sure why but who cares, you work in a well run office and i would love it that mine would be run like that, but it isn't and as you quoted 99% seem to be in that state it sort of slaps the face off of the negativity and moaning comment.
My original statement is really about the absolute shambles that is seasonal variation and how it doesn't work in anyones favour, a good union would highlight it's a ineffective tool as nobody except you could complete in anywhere near their time.

[scotchy1962]

Do you still work longs and shorts?

No idea what that is. I work the same hours everyday.

Long days and short days.
In most of the offices I have worked in (4/5) the full time staff work longer hours on heavier days and shorter hours on lighter days.
It is just the same principal.

Nothing like that in any of the offices i have worked in, sounds like s**t as who knows when it's going to be heavy.

[clashcityrocker]

Nothing like that in any of the offices i have worked in, sounds like s**t as who knows when it's going to be heavy.

Pretty much everyone.

[Smoothbackground]

Some of the long-time “full time” staff at our gaff do long and short days, with Monday, Tuesday and Saturday being short days, Wednesday and Thursday being long days, Friday being a medium day. The variation is about 55 minutes between a short and long day.

[LouBarlow]

Quite aggressive response Lou, not really sure why but who cares, you work in a well run office and i would love it that mine would be run like that, but it isn't and as you quoted 99% seem to be in that state it sort of slaps the face off of the negativity and moaning comment.
My original statement is really about the absolute shambles that is seasonal variation and how it doesn't work in anyones favour, a good union would highlight it's a ineffective tool as nobody except you could complete in anywhere near their time.

As you well know scotchy, I believe in responding to people in kind. The tone was perfectly in keeping with your own condescension towards my office and whether we would succeed in being friendly upon encountering each other, which I’m sure we would. I also have a long memory and remember many of the things you have accused me of in the past.

The irony is, we are in agreement. Seasonal variation doesn’t work, even in efficient ‘nirvana’ offices like my own. We are taking on staff if you change your mind about the transfer fwiw.

[pieoftheday]

You would have thought someone would have brought this up in the union.
The reason seasonal variation was brought in/enforced, was that during the light summer period we supposedly had less work and by letting us/making us work less hours in the summer they would be doing us some sort of favour and we should all be thankful. Then at xmas when it's busier we would have the hours to complete.
I don't know about anyone else, but we have been pretty much battered for the whole summer with parcel volumes through the roof and today has to be the worst tuesday i have had in 18yrs.
So nobody has been able to complete during the "lighter period" and from now until xmas chances are nobody will without o/t.
Now surely this defeats the purpose of seasonal hours and the reasons for doing them in the first place, and i know and do just work my hours, but surely there's some sort of argument to be had around this as there really isn't any need for the variation as there's enough work the whole year round.

None of it makes sense, revisions, seasonal hours, well at least not to us , but someone somewhere is making a lot of money, guaranteed