USO & takeover bid.

[Londonsburning]

Are you still a walk holder Martin?

[Rommagic]

Martin but some walks are struggling now to deliver letters more then three days a week does not help walks to big and added dpr.Customer collects for nothing and still we have the 1pm special?.

[Neverwasadoor]

Martin are you still looking at the 4 people cover 6 walks plan, which was muted a while back ???
That is definitely a non starter in our office. There is no way one person can do the Tracked and first class for 3 walks while the other 3 do everything on the other 3and then rotate. Please tell me that's been binned.

[Barnacle]

Are Work Place Coaches being rolled out - there is massive recruitment of them - to replace to role of Cover Manager?

Is anyone keeping an eye on this? A Work Place Coach can be earning more than a Cover Manager, with none of the responsibility and accountability.

Both are still OPG level.

[Mr Rush]

The Government would have protected the USO which is 14% of what is currently delivered and processed today.

The tradeoff of saving the company is that the USO is thrown to the wolves instead. Combined delivery of letters and packets has unravelled to the exclusive priority of the latter - everyone knows this. I recognise, of course, that the union's mission is protecting their members' jobs and not the USO. It's just that delivering the universal service is supposed to be our job.

Royal Mail had served notice on the planes so the question was did the union get an agreement which limited start times to a maximum of 60 minutes with a default of 90 minutes or did you have no agreement which meant everyone moved 3 hours later.

Oh, we'll get there eventually. I've been in the job long enough to now drop my first letter on a Saturday at a time I used to be done and back home when Labour was last in power. The salami slicing will continue.

[sindba]

The Government would have protected the USO which is 14% of what is currently delivered and processed today. All the rest of the mail DSA, Parcels tracked and specials the government could not touch as they could not use state money to fund a private company or every parcel company would have run to the high court.

Truth was we would have lost 30 thousand jobs overnight at statuary redundancy pay and that would have been the start of the job losses not the end of it.

This is disingenuous.

If RM had failed, the Government could have renationalised it with Parliamentary legislation. If that happened other parcel companies wouldn't be able to challenge it in the courts.

Moreover, I think the Government would have re-nationalised. Politically, it would have outflanked Labour and been popular with their core vote at the time (older, notalgic Daily Mail readers and angry, working class nationalistic Brexity types).

RM scared you. You could have called their bluff.

[Pidleypoo]

We are at the point where we can’t even do all of one delivery a day with the tracked off of both and it’s meaning that some part of the deliveries are getting their post once a week.

Every single day is a massive slog with bags rammed to the hilt even after you’ve had to split a loop in to 2.

You don’t get your round covered on your day off ( tracked apart ) so you come in to shed loads of everything.

I start on time and finish on time but the workloads are unreal these days.

We do not deliver what we are paid to deliver from letters to parcels and d2d’s.

The company is making out like we don’t have the work and that’s why uso reform is needed when the opposite is true.

Whatever changes are coming Martin , address these issues because lots of your members are out on their feet.

[richietns]

The Government would have protected the USO which is 14% of what is currently delivered and processed today. All the rest of the mail DSA, Parcels tracked and specials the government could not touch as they could not use state money to fund a private company or every parcel company would have run to the high court.

Truth was we would have lost 30 thousand jobs overnight at statuary redundancy pay and that would have been the start of the job losses not the end of it.

This is disingenuous.

If RM had failed, the Government could have renationalised it with Parliamentary legislation. If that happened other parcel companies wouldn't be able to challenge it in the courts.

Moreover, I think the Government would have re-nationalised. Politically, it would have outflanked Labour and been popular with their core vote at the time (older, notalgic Daily Mail readers and angry, working class nationalistic Brexity types).

RM scared you. You could have called their bluff.

I doubt that would of happened its private..Barr the USO..it would of been taken over eg,the sphinx or someone.

[Barnacle]

We’re shouting at pigeons now because he’s gone home for his tea.

[scotchy1962]

Scotchy it was nice to meet you and yes next year will see the USO changing and we are in discussions with Royal Mail over this. In addition we are also having discussions with EP group as we want to have an agreed way forward if they become the new owners.

Like wise Martin, not sure about replying on here as your fan base is somewhat limited on this forum.
As for your pitch the other day, after giving it a lot of thought my decision is...... it's not for me. Although i fancy it's not me you need to convince as i will be retiring hopefully in the not to distant future.
Having worked now since 1979 in all sorts of different jobs i have decide that the workplace is in need of a major overhaul, i know some of you youngsters all believe this is the new modern way of working, believe me when i tell you it isn't. You all think we are old and out of touch, but we aren't, we have what you don't have.... experience and with that comes knowledge, the knowledge to know that in 30-40 yrs time when you get to our age, your body and mind will be broken by the relentlessness of this job if it doesn't change and you won't be able to retire until you are about 80.

[A2B]

Nobody starting with RM now will ever get close to 10 years service let alone 30/40.

Staff turnover is being built into our way of working, RM don't want a settled workforce they want people desperate to please their employer

[Hyrrokkin]

Nobody starting with RM now will ever get close to 10 years service let alone 30/40.

Staff turnover is being built into our way of working, RM don't want a settled workforce they want people desperate to please their employer

Exactly - RM simply copying the Amazon/other couriers business model - high staff turnover is expected in fact encouraged to keep costs down as they see it.

[Valentina@1]

The Government would have protected the USO which is 14% of what is currently delivered and processed today. All the rest of the mail DSA, Parcels tracked and specials the government could not touch as they could not use state money to fund a private company or every parcel company would have run to the high court.

Truth was we would have lost 30 thousand jobs overnight at statuary redundancy pay and that would have been the start of the job losses not the end of it.

This is disingenuous.

If RM had failed, the Government could have renationalised it with Parliamentary legislation. If that happened other parcel companies wouldn't be able to challenge it in the courts.

Moreover, I think the Government would have re-nationalised. Politically, it would have outflanked Labour and been popular with their core vote at the time (older, notalgic Daily Mail readers and angry, working class nationalistic Brexity types).

RM scared you. You could have called their bluff.

[postslippete]

Regarding Martin's claims on RM going into administration..... This was used by the CWU to encourage posties to vote for a poor deal and the hypothetical worst case scenario was very unlikely as it would also involve GLS, which has allegedly always been profitable, as they are part of IDS as well. It would mean the company having to open its books and reveal the true financial management of the accounts of the company - something which the board are still very keen to keep under wraps. For a company that made record profits, gave all the money away to shareholders and then make record losses 6 months later raises big questions on those running the company. The board were bluffing all along. It still has debts due to the spending on parcel hubs and automation in recent years but these "losses" in RM are simply being used to justify watering down the USO. I don't understand the Union who still continue to spin RM's web of deceit for them by telling us all that the company have got no money when they can obviously afford to recruit new CEOs and give bonuses to management for achieving targets. And they still have a very healthy balance sheet with billions in assets, retained earnings and available liquidity.

While the union leaders might not agree with the company's wet dream of delivering 2c every other day, they don't care, because they are not the ones who have to go out and deliver it. But my concern is not whether we have a manageable workload of delivering a few days worth of post; but that the prospective new owner is only prepared to commit in writing to honouring the USO for just 5 years. That in itself could lead to thousands of job losses in the future. Surely if we are in a very competitive marketplace for parcels, why are we not actually trying to improve our only unique selling point by delivering letters reliably and on time? There might not be any real enthusiasm on delivering letters but we still generate tons of revenue from it.

I'm not against change, but I believe the best future in RM would be to better split the workload of posties between parcels and letters. We need more dedicated parcel drivers that focus on medium and larger parcels and regular posties who mainly just deliver the mail and the smaller packets. It's laughable that 2 posties are still going out in a small shared van that is packed to the rafters with large parcels, medium parcels, collections, specials, trolleys and bags of mail. The time spent driving round trying to deliver bigger parcels after walking the same loops is just time wasted imho and all it does is make the work that we are doing more difficult to work with.

[Barnacle]

The only people who believe the ‘brink of administration’ story are the union leadership. Every time one of them repeats it as a justification for fluffing the negotiations, I cringe.