USO pilots, can anyone on the trial give an honest appraisal

[Acca Dacca]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

[richietns]

Our office is one of the trial offices and had our meeting this morning. Its majority rural office and they are pretty much leaving them alone apart from Saturdays when only parcels and first class go out so an early Saturday. There is also an option for them to have 2 saturdays off per 6 but this needs looking into.

Town duties will do 2nd class 2 days one week and 3 days another. In essence 3 people doing 4 duties. Duties will no longer seemingly exist but instead Routes which we have been told can be signed for at some stage. Bulk postings, door 2 doors and sickness etc seemingly is going to be worked out as the trial continues.

Its all as clear as mud and at no stage sounded like a trial but a tick boxing exercise before complete implementation. Union reps reminded us of the repercussions if trials fail by reminding us of what happened to the Belgium postal service(mass job losses). Seemingly there won’t be forced redundancies but a more natural loss of people due to retirement or leaving.

Hard to know what to make of it all.

Love how they are trying to sell it in the column on the right. All very chipper and upbeat

Yeah "longer serving colleagues will see all products return to a more traditional postie role offering more stability" stability?

[toonshola]

Confusing as hell. Seems having to still take first class letters 6 days a week is making this way more complicated than it should be. Just offer a new tracked letter service for the whole 17 people in the uk who might desperately need a letter the next day and just completely cut letter delivery to 3 days a week entirely.
Let’s be honest it’s 2025 there doesn’t need to be a 6 day letter service anymore it’s bloody archaic. Things change.

[A2B]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

Yeah I see that but what about HCT duties, all gone? They make sense in dense urban areas, will it be a blanket ban on HCT or will they be used if that's the best delivery method?

Most of the senior posties in our office don't drive for RM, going to be a massive shock to the system for them if they have to van share, I already feel bad for their future partner

[qwerty2]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

Yeah I see that but what about HCT duties, all gone? They make sense in dense urban areas, will it be a blanket ban on HCT or will they be used if that's the best delivery method?

Most of the senior posties in our office don't drive for RM, going to be a massive shock to the system for them if they have to van share, I already feel bad for their future partner

You don’t have van sharing now?
Thought van sharing was in every office for the last 10 years

[qwerty2]

Confusing as hell. Seems having to still take first class letters 6 days a week is making this way more complicated than it should be. Just offer a new tracked letter service for the whole 17 people in the uk who might desperately need a letter the next day and just completely cut letter delivery to 3 days a week entirely.
Let’s be honest it’s 2025 there doesn’t need to be a 6 day letter service anymore it’s bloody archaic. Things change.

You’ll rather see 20-30 thousand jobs lost then?

[Barnacle]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

Yeah I see that but what about HCT duties, all gone? They make sense in dense urban areas, will it be a blanket ban on HCT or will they be used if that's the best delivery method?

Most of the senior posties in our office don't drive for RM, going to be a massive shock to the system for them if they have to van share, I already feel bad for their future partner

For our office, the pilot is in the planning stage, but as it currently stands, HCTs will work as usual.

[Mr Rush]

Our office is one of the trial offices and had our meeting this morning. [...]

"Project Mars". Am I to interpret that as being beyond even a Moonshot? How humble! First thing that comes to mind about Mars, mythologically: the god of war.

By Wednesday no-one will have any clue what has been done and no-one will know what needs done. All I want to do is deliver the f***ing letters in the AM in peace.

[Dexydog]

When are the union going to come out and admit what's staring us all in the face- for every 4 posties, 1 is going to lose their job.
That's the reality.
We all know it's not going to work, but that's not going to matter.

[Dingo99]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

Yeah I see that but what about HCT duties, all gone? They make sense in dense urban areas, will it be a blanket ban on HCT or will they be used if that's the best delivery method?

Most of the senior posties in our office don't drive for RM, going to be a massive shock to the system for them if they have to van share, I already feel bad for their future partner

You don’t have van sharing now?
Thought van sharing was in every office for the last 10 years

In my small DO of only 8 duties (used to be 9), we have never had van sharing.

[toonshola]

Still no clearer about non drivers and HCT routes

By the looks of it every 4 rounds will need 3 posties and 2 of them must drive

Yeah I see that but what about HCT duties, all gone? They make sense in dense urban areas, will it be a blanket ban on HCT or will they be used if that's the best delivery method?

Most of the senior posties in our office don't drive for RM, going to be a massive shock to the system for them if they have to van share, I already feel bad for their future partner

You don’t have van sharing now?
Thought van sharing was in every office for the last 10 years

In my small DO of only 8 duties (used to be 9), we have never had van sharing.

As somebody who has van shared for 11 years now I’ll give you some advice if I may. Every morning before you head to work stand in front of your mirror and say to yourself “thank f**k I don’t have to van share today”, it’s hell haha. We had a 2 year reprieve from it during Covid and it was bliss lol.

[Dingo99]

Lol, I have a singleton HCT duty, I did do van sharing many years ago in a neighbouring office, I enjoyed it to be honest, did a few different duties, but I s'pose it depends on your partner, it was nice to have someone to chin wag too. Although I am happy doing a trolley duty, the only problem is fitting the entire duty into one trolley as we have no places to leave mail. Last Wed I could only fit half the duty , well just over half, into the trolley because of the amount of packets and by the time I got back to office I didn't have time to go out again with more , can be a headache sometimes.

[Pidleypoo]

They won’t be doing anything other than putting all parcels back on core and one will do the walking on one delivery and one will do the big parcels off both.

Anything else and especially the picture shared above will not work as managers can’t handle what we do now.

Also to answer another question above about hct duties , there will be an awful lot of them that are in town centres where you couldn’t have a van share due to parking restrictions, any other hct duties will go back into vans.

[Barnacle]

When are the union going to come out and admit what's staring us all in the face- for every 4 posties, 1 is going to lose their job.
That's the reality.
We all know it's not going to work, but that's not going to matter.

The union HAVE stated that if the pilots are success/if the USO changes, it will mean job losses of approx. 10,000.

However, it seems even now as though RM are gearing up for those job losses regardless.

[A2B]

You don’t have van sharing now?
Thought van sharing was in every office for the last 10 years

No abandoned years ago