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[Perseus]

The ODM had 35 pilot offices
DM26 has 240 advanced units.
That tells a story of how it’s coming in.
Has anyone in these 240 units got examples of how Saturdays are going? I think it is lost on some people just how much work is needing to get done on that day in particular with a much reduced head count.

Saturday - half the staff are in and drivers do just 1st class letters and 24hr tracked/1st class parcels
Non drivers prep mech trays/d2ds

Are you in one of the advanced 240 doing that on a Saturday already?

[SpacePhoenix]

The ODM had 35 pilot offices
DM26 has 240 advanced units.
That tells a story of how it’s coming in.
Has anyone in these 240 units got examples of how Saturdays are going? I think it is lost on some people just how much work is needing to get done on that day in particular with a much reduced head count.

Saturday - half the staff are in and drivers do just 1st class letters and 24hr tracked/1st class parcels
Non drivers prep mech trays/d2ds

There'll hardly be any mech, probably at most a dozen letters per walk. The 2C gets deferred by the DTS on a Friday night, then Sunday just about all of it will be released as just about all of it will have hit the time limit for the product used.

[yellowbelly]

The ODM had 35 pilot offices
DM26 has 240 advanced units.
That tells a story of how it’s coming in.
Has anyone in these 240 units got examples of how Saturdays are going? I think it is lost on some people just how much work is needing to get done on that day in particular with a much reduced head count.

Saturday - half the staff are in and drivers do just 1st class letters and 24hr tracked/1st class parcels
Non drivers prep mech trays/d2ds

What mech trays? I'm sure Martin said that no work will be going out to offices that isn't due for delivery that day and that it will be stored at the MC's.

What if there's no D2D's to prep?

[A2B]

What mech trays? I'm sure Martin said that no work will be going out to offices that isn't due for delivery that day and that it will be stored at the MC's.

What if there's no D2D's to prep?

Yes exactly my thoughts

[Perseus]

The ODM had 35 pilot offices
DM26 has 240 advanced units.
That tells a story of how it’s coming in.
Has anyone in these 240 units got examples of how Saturdays are going? I think it is lost on some people just how much work is needing to get done on that day in particular with a much reduced head count.

Saturday - half the staff are in and drivers do just 1st class letters and 24hr tracked/1st class parcels
Non drivers prep mech trays/d2ds

What mech trays? I'm sure Martin said that no work will be going out to offices that isn't due for delivery that day and that it will be stored at the MC's.

What if there's no D2D's to prep?

I've raised these kind of points both on here and at local level and get looked at like i'm talking a foreign language.

When people say it's ONLY/JUST 1C letters and all tracked/parcels with 50% staffing, I don't think they realise just how much work that is with so few staff.
As things stand in ours, only about 50% of our shared vans have a reasonable chance of doing both sides of a shared van duty with 1C and tracked - believe me, we've been doing it on and off for 6 years and it 'works' when it's fairly quiet. Some have to leave the 1C when doing 2 sides of tracked (roughly 150-200 items), others have to leave 1C and about 50 tracked (they will get done on overtime by someone else) to get the 2 sides covered.
They are basically wanting 1 person on a Saturday to do the job that 2 people do Mon-Fri minus the 2C/junk mail, hence the staffing levels.
Many in ours (and I bet nationally) have never done anything like that due to being a rural/firms/HCT/non driving passenger. The upskilling involved in this is massive and in some cases not possible anyways. Put 2 people out in a van doing 4 runs then? Impossible. 1 person covering 2 rural duties that take 4 hours each with 1C and tracked only? Impossible. Staff that are used to doing 40-50 tracked a day thrown out onto a double duty with 200 tracked and 50 1C on a Saturday? Impossible. Later finishes are coming on a Saturday for many so no chance anyone will want to do overtime.

It's as if the whole idea for the Saturdays has been designed around a model office with 20 singleton driving duties all next to each other and they can simply switch to 10 single driving duties each doing tracked and 1C over 2 duties with half the staff on a Saturday. How many offices are like that?

[TopperGas]

The other issue is the Saturday IPS as if only 50% of the staff are working then there's no guarantee the majority of the IPS docket kings/speed merchants are in on any given Saturday. If the tracked & Ic aren't both sorted promptly so that the staff can start their double duties on time then whole system falls down, they can't work late to make up time as they need to be back for collections wagon.

I've always suggested RM should have got the Saturday Tracked/1c deliveries functioning correctly before dropping Mon to Fri daily 2c deliveries.

[Perseus]

Looking to pass the excess work onto someone else (even on overtime) will hit the buffers very quickly on a Saturday once people realise the size of the task in hand.
It’s a problem throughout the company that mail centres send things out to offices in the wrong format etc but they don’t care as it’s not their problem anymore. Same within offices when staff either can’t or are doing as little as possible need to leave tracked etc and someone will do it on overtime - Saturdays are going to be the busiest day of the week considering the staffing levels.
There’s literally not going to be anyone to pass the excess work onto.

[SpacePhoenix]

Looking to pass the excess work onto someone else (even on overtime) will hit the buffers very quickly on a Saturday once people realise the size of the task in hand.
It’s a problem throughout the company that mail centres send things out to offices in the wrong format etc but they don’t care as it’s not their problem anymore. Same within offices when staff either can’t or are doing as little as possible need to leave tracked etc and someone will do it on overtime - Saturdays are going to be the busiest day of the week considering the staffing levels.
There’s literally not going to be anyone to pass the excess work onto.

MCs with flat sorting machines run whatever they can through them. A good few packets are technically large letters. Apart from large packets in the small and smalls in the large an item has to stay in whatever stream it has arrived at the inward MC in. At one time we were allowed to extract from the manual letters and the flats any normal letters which could be machine sorted and run them on a separate stream on the machines, we're not any more. Sometimes when sorting manual letters I'd get a massive chunk of mail in a tray that I was sending over to the machine.

If a packet york/sleeve has a header card that's purple and white, the contents have been sorted at one of the superhubs. Any direct sleeves/yorks aren't touched by processing, they just get wheeled off the lorry and straight over to whichever bay the lorry goes from doing the run to that DO.

[Perseus]

The general point still stands, once it’s out the door it’s someone else’s problem.
Same as when duties can’t complete and have to leave parcels etc, someone else will do it.
Who?

[SpacePhoenix]

The general point still stands, once it’s out the door it’s someone else’s problem.
Same as when duties can’t complete and have to leave parcels etc, someone else will do it.
Who?

Some of it will be down to budgets, in a MC budgets are king. One manager will put some hours in to get something done, and then another manager will immediately remove them same hours. Some will be down to the final lorry which is way busier than it should be. The final lorry was meant to be around 20 yorks max, often in practice they're just about full. Once autumn pressure kicks in, the final lorry will probably need a relief run.

[Perseus]

The whole point of ODM/DM26 is to save money and the first thing to go, particularly in delivery will be overtime.

[Mr Rush]

The general point still stands, once it’s out the door it’s someone else’s problem.
Same as when duties can’t complete and have to leave parcels etc, someone else will do it.
Who?

Agency. I suspect however much they're blowing away on having agency present all year round is at least in part mitigated by the ability to tell them not to turn up on any sufficiently quiet days (specifically, the six weeks after Christmas).

It wouldn't be too large a step to bring them in-house and also have them turn up with their own van. Owner-drivers (outside Parcelforce) is a red line for the union, but it may well be the price to pay for ever restoring letter QoS. We should not be delivering f***ing kitchen sinks.

[SpacePhoenix]

The general point still stands, once it’s out the door it’s someone else’s problem.
Same as when duties can’t complete and have to leave parcels etc, someone else will do it.
Who?

Agency. I suspect however much they're blowing away on having agency present all year round is at least in part mitigated by the ability to tell them not to turn up on any sufficiently quiet days (specifically, the six weeks after Christmas).

It wouldn't be too large a step to bring them in-house and also have them turn up with their own van. Owner-drivers (outside Parcelforce) is a red line for the union, but it may well be the price to pay for ever restoring letter QoS. We should not be delivering f***ing kitchen sinks.

In MCs agency probably just about outnumber RM staff every shift now

[Sean06]

The general point still stands, once it’s out the door it’s someone else’s problem.
Same as when duties can’t complete and have to leave parcels etc, someone else will do it.
Who?

Agency. I suspect however much they're blowing away on having agency present all year round is at least in part mitigated by the ability to tell them not to turn up on any sufficiently quiet days (specifically, the six weeks after Christmas).

It wouldn't be too large a step to bring them in-house and also have them turn up with their own van. Owner-drivers (outside Parcelforce) is a red line for the union, but it may well be the price to pay for ever restoring letter QoS. We should not be delivering f***ing kitchen sinks.

In MCs agency probably just about outnumber RM staff every shift now

Very few agency/casuals in ours now most have been signed up on p/t contracts.those that have'nt hardly get a shift apart from a saturday afternoon or a sunday.

[Chitchat]

I only really see this working is if 1st class mail is dropped as a service royalmail offers. Then royalmail offer an every other day service for mail Monday- Friday that way at least the service can move back to a reliable service that it once was. And Saturday just tracked and Saturday guaranteed specials. also stop customer collections on Saturdays and postboxes.