When I spoke to Tony earlier, I started by asking where we're at with the USO reform pilots.
So now we've got six USO sites that are live out of the 37. The six that are live are two in Northern Ireland and four in Scotland.
We've got another office in Wales that's due to go live on Monday, a small office in Nusk. So that'll be seven out of the 37 that are live. And then the remaining 30 are due to go live from the 12th of May onwards.
Q:What do we know about them? I mean, people were worried about the work-life balance. I suppose also the point of them in a way was to test whether the Royal Mail will be able to meet the new USO obligations. What can you tell me about that?
Yeah, so I think we put a comprehensive letter to branches out last week, the 15th.
So if any of the members haven't received that yet, it's important to signpost that. So that's 075/25 LTB. And that literally lists out some of the things that have gone out in the six that are live.
So it pulls out in Newt and Mearns that there's been a duty gone in. There are some issues around some of the challenges around completing some of the call walks. Same in Cumbernauld, Eyre and Gervin, where we've got some network issues.
And we've got to address some of that. But the key thing is what the pilot offices are showing is that nothing we didn't expect, that the call walks when they go out with all mail days are a challenge. And we have to try and work through for some fatigue.
So on Tuesday this week, we've launched a fatigue study. So it's going to there's eight of our members in Cumbernauld that have volunteered. So it's like 12 of our members have volunteered in Cumbernauld, which is great.
30% of the office have volunteered to be part of a joint Royal Mail and CWU audit on what does the change and the way of working do to those as individuals. Because obviously, we want to ensure that this is fit for purpose in the longer term. And obviously, if we have to tweak the design and the concept to ensure that any challenges with regards to fatigue, we've got a fix in place for that.
Q:And from reading that document today, some of the challenges about fatigue seem to be sort of drivers versus non-drivers and non-drivers having a particularly sort of difficult time with their new rotas. What can you tell me about that?
Yeah, so that is an issue. And that is definitely something we've picked up.
So across the Royal Mail group, there's about 8,400, maybe 8,600 of our members Royal Mail employees that don't have a driver's licence. So again, we've got to try and find a solution to that challenge. So is it because people don't have a driver's licence? Is it they've never been trained to drive a Royal Mail vehicle? So we're working through that in a bit more detail to capture that data.
But likewise, one of the things we're now looking at, is there a way that we can put a non-driver into a vehicle with a driver and potentially change the way in which core and combined walks work? Because one of the reasons why we've got to find a solution for it is on a Saturday, there is purely just drivers required. And ultimately, we don't want to create a two-tier workforce between drivers and non-drivers on a Saturday, where it's just drivers that have come to work.
Q:And also in that document, it kept referencing how workplaces were voting for two out of five Saturdays off.
It says, what were the other alternatives? Because obviously people want as many Saturdays off as possible. So what were people voting for when they chose to have two out of five off?
Yeah, so in terms of, you're right, the number of people. So I think we've got a breakdown that we're due to get from the company today on the outputs of the 37.
So I think out of the 37, 28 have picked their duties already and their rotations. There's another nine that are still to be done. We're trying to land on a revised set of words that says, because we originally designed seven options.
So that was a two in six Saturdays off, two in five Saturdays off, a nine-day fortnight, a four-day week, a Wellington system, which is basically work however number of weeks and then get a week off. And then there were two adaptions for all drivers, which were 13 over 17 days and 17 over 24. Now, we've already learned from some of the pilot offices that they are, based on their own local circumstances, that they can make the same rotations and the same design work, but with some nuances that benefit them locally.
So again, we're not 100% there yet, but we're trying to land on some words with the company jointly that we can then make some adaptions to the seven, based on some of the feedback from some of the pilot offices. So again, it shows that the pilot offices are working because when our members and Royal Mail’s employees, local reps, managers have said, we can do a two and five, but it's not the same as the two and five that you've published. We can change it to suit our own office.
And that's exactly what we want the pilots to test.
Q:And what are you hearing in terms of people's morale sort of going into these trials? Are people feeling like they're being asked to do something very different to what they're used to or are sort of people kind of, I suppose, embracing the change? What can you tell me?
Yeah, so I think for lots of offices, change is always difficult, isn't it? For some people, they've been delivering the same way for the last 20 years. So the change for them is significant.
We're trying to manage that. I think one of the things that I think both Royal Mail and the CWU would jointly land on is that we've got to probably do some communications better for some of the workplaces.
So again, you know, not trying to point a finger, but we've got X amount of CWU reps in some of these offices.
We've got X amount of managers. I think we've all seen different experiences. If a manager is producing a brief for some of the offices or communicating it, it probably lands differently to if it's someone from the CWU doing it because I think some of our reps have got more knowledge around the subject than some of their managers.
So I think we're trying to address on that and improve on that, particularly going forwards. But literally, you know, the feedback has been positive from the offices. We're trying to learn from some of the colleagues' feedback.
And one of the key parts is, and I think the document you referenced, was the challenge around fatigue. And we've jointly launched a fatigue study that, as I say, is in Cumbernauld this week, gone live, and it'll go live in another seven offices because it's important that we get that. We address our members' issues, but conversely, we put the solutions in place.
Q:I suppose the concern for members might be that sort of, you know, you get to the end of these trials. The CWU's position is that this is causing fatigue to certain workers on sort of certain routines. And the Royal Mail say, well, you know, that's life, that's the new job.
How confident are you that you can sort of avoid that outcome?
Yeah, very confident because there's a couple of things. So we've got some offices now that have already introduced a rotation between driving and walking. So they've mixed that up in the week.
Obviously, we've got a factor in the non-driver issue that you referenced earlier on. So those parts are more alive to that. But it may well be that a recommendation that comes out that says both parties have agreed that no one walks for more than three days in a week.
So, for example, before the change, if I was on a five-day walk, I might have walked 60,000 steps across the five-day period. It may be under the change, I might end up going from a daily average of 10 to a daily average of 15. But if I'm capped that I do no more than three days walking, then in a working week, I won't go more than 45,000 steps in that scenario.
So actually, whilst the day you do walking is longer in terms of steps, actually, over a working week, it would be less because we would cap the number of days that people would do call delivery. Now, the challenge is how do we deal with the non-drivers that can't do driving duties in that scenario, which is, again, which we're working on. There are some ideas that both parties have got about how we can, and it's been trialled in Newton Mearns a little bit, where they've gone, someone does 50% of a court walk and then does 50% of a driving duty.
And where the non-drivers can't do that, you could put two people together and change the percentage. So, again, it's live trials as part of the pilot activity.
Q:And I know when we have these conversations on the live show, we always get lots of questions about late starts.
Is there anything you can tell us about what feedback you're getting from people involved in these trial offices on what time they start, what time they've been finishing, etc.?
Yeah. So, I mean, pretty much all of the six pilots that have gone live now, people are working, so they're starting and finishing time as part of the pilots. So, again, that's a positive.
But one of the things we're trying to work through is, can we get some earlier starts in offices? So, for argument's sake, if an office has increased its length of day, because they've gone from a 7-hour, 24-day now with an attendance pattern, and they've gone to a 7-hour, 48 attendance pattern, then obviously their finish time is slightly later. But they've got a better attendance pattern in terms of the two in five. One of the challenges is, if workloads get into that office earlier, can we, jointly, try to get to an earlier start time in some of these offices? Because we want to see some of the greater benefits to our members.
More than just Saturdays off, we want to see whether there's other things we can do. So, we're going to try and put forward a test in Scotland on that, and we're going to try and land on that with the company in the coming weeks.
Q: And before I let you go, you got any final message to members when it comes to these USO trials?
So, I think that there's a lot more stuff that's going to be coming out in the next week or so. So, we're due to, we're trying to land on a couple of documents or clarification out there. One of that will then go to the postal executive if we land on that early next week, and that'll get released next week.
And again, obviously, because now we've got six offices live, one of the things we're looking about is how can we actually give some live feedback from some of the members in the 37 offices. But more importantly, the seven that are by next week, the seven that are live, how can we get some examples from our members that we can feedback through the show. We'll get some of our reps on, some of our members on, some of the area safety reps on.
But we can do that in written communications as well to follow on the back of the LTB that went out last week.
