Hell offices now.

[reddevils]

I understand the logic and I feel most posties would like to work under this system. The problem is you would need mass revisions across the country which Royal Mail seem very reluctant to do. The other problem is how many duties would have to be put back in and how much would this increase Royal Mail costs which is what DM26 is meant to decrease. Vehicles would have also have to be purchased for the new duties.

Some depots are lucky to have yard space but there are lots of depots which have no yard space atall. There are some depots where the vehicles have to be parked on high streets, in public car parks etc so logistically it could be difficult.

I can see this idea working for some depots if they are small, need little investment in new vehicles, have yard space, and have a generally easy process in creating a low number of duties. For others, particularly large ones, I do not see this happening.

[Perseus]

What Dm26 will show very quickly is what works and what doesn't.
The 50/50 singletons will work easily.
Unless they were too big to begin with and as long as the extra 1/3 part is close by, single HCT's have got a good chance of working.
Same goes for the single person in the POD, doing 2/3 of duty A then 2/3 of duty B on heavy/light rotation.
Shared vans part of the POD have little to no chance of working with all the permutations of what can go wrong.

I think people would rightly bite your hand off to go back to the much simpler ODM.

[postslippete]

I understand the logic and I feel most posties would like to work under this system. The problem is you would need mass revisions across the country which Royal Mail seem very reluctant to do. The other problem is how many duties would have to be put back in and how much would this increase Royal Mail costs which is what DM26 is meant to decrease. Vehicles would have also have to be purchased for the new duties.

Some depots are lucky to have yard space but there are lots of depots which have no yard space atall. There are some depots where the vehicles have to be parked on high streets, in public car parks etc so logistically it could be difficult.

I can see this idea working for some depots if they are small, need little investment in new vehicles, have yard space, and have a generally easy process in creating a low number of duties. For others, particularly large ones, I do not see this happening.

Fair point, but putting more duties back in doesn't necessarily mean additional staff back in if 2 posties with 2 vans are responsible for 4 smaller duties as theoretically that would mean more duties but fewer staff.

But you're absolutely right about extra vans being the harder part to work with, especially in offices which don't have yard space.

As for costs, there is something that the business might be overlooking here:

If staff are on say a basic wage of £500 per week and RM employ 5 extra staff, then as a baseline wage, thats £2,500 a week or £130k a year on wages alone before NI contributions, pensions etc.

Compare that with the purchase of a new van at perhaps £30k. 5 extra vans would cost the business £150k in capital expenditure and obviously there are then running costs, maintenance and insurance costs. But the £130k labour costs are recurring every year. Over 5 years thats £650k in basic wages alone!! The £150k vehicle purchase is an upfront capital cost plus ongoing fleet cost. Has RM actually looked at the economics rather than simply assuming that reducing vehicles through van sharing must be automatically cheaper?

RM's labour costs are running at around £5-6 billion every year which is their biggest expense and they want a new delivery model which will reduce their costs. If letter volumes continue to fall and parcel volumes increase, is 2 people in a van delivering parcels really the best, most efficient and cost effective model when our competitors are still going out delivering parcels in 1 van?

Perhaps we are not at that point right now but it is certainly something that the business should be looking at in the future.

[Whippy]

I'm interested to know what HTC walking rounds will involve. You can only take what you can fit inside an HTC and that can typically easily be done within our current shorter working hours, but when DM26 comes in the working day will be 30 to 60 minutes longer.

I asked my DOM this exact question and was told they would come back and do indoor work…D2D prep was the main thing.

[ted_e_bear]

It still doesn't make a lot of sense. It needs to be explained more clearly.

You start off with all items from duty 1, tracked and 1st class duty 2.

What happens to duty 3 on this day?

If ALL the duties were smaller and more manageable, then 2 posties each with their OWN van could theoretically cover 4 duties during the week

Monday
Postie A takes everything on Duty 1 and Tracked and 1c on Duty 2
Postie B takes everything on Duty 3 and Tracked and 1c on Duty 4

And then rotate, so on Tuesday
Postie A takes everything on Duty 2 and Tracked and 1c on Duty 1
Postie B takes everything on Duty 4 and Tracked and 1c on Duty 3

And on Saturday, the earlier finish day
Postie A takes all Tracked and 1c on Duty 1 and 2
Postie B takes all Tracked and 1c on Duty 3 and 4


Monday and Tuesdays will be busier mail wise with 3 days of 2nd class

Seems a much more straightforward and efficient way of working than shared vans or pods and allows for most of the mail to be delivered on alternate days. But it will require that duties need to be put in rather than more vans.

Didn't you say that each postie would be expected to do 4 loops heavy/4 loops light under DM26? Well, this model does that, gives each postie their own van/set walks and makes them responsible for their own workloads. And the best thing about this model is that it is much fairer and prevents the singletons from delivering nearly everything on their walk everyday (which they are currently doing) because they will also be expected to alternate their duties.

You've just described what myself and some others suggested a while ago, basically make the duties bigger so they're accommodated by a singleton 50:50 much simpler they get the savings through less staff required just like DM26 but without pissing as many people off with complicated scenarios

[claretandblue]

Just make each duty 8 loops, it's not rocket science.

[Acca Dacca]

Just make each duty 8 loops, it's not rocket science.

It’s not as simple as you put it

8 loops of 120 calls or 8 loops of 40?

Not every street has the same type of house or terrain or volume of items

It’s why the walks need to be thought of as thirds and halves

Whatever takes up a third of the time delivering the whole walk whether that be 2 loops or 100 loops is what the van share takes from the singleton

[claretandblue]

Just make each duty 8 loops, it's not rocket science.

It’s not as simple as you put it

8 loops of 120 calls or 8 loops of 40?

Not every street has the same type of house or terrain or volume of items

It’s why the walks need to be thought of as thirds and halves

Whatever takes up a third of the time delivering the whole walk whether that be 2 loops or 100 loops is what the van share takes from the singleton

It really is that simple, everyone is doing 8 loops.

[Emohawk]

All items from duty 1, tracked and 1st class duty 2, same for 2 and 3, same for 3 and 1. Basically, you get one day in three were you don't get mail. I suppose, if you made the duties smaller, you could do all items on two duties and first class on the other, but you will never get the duties made smaller.

Considering we aren't supposed to prioritise mail or parcels, I assume you can just ignore offcom rules and then lie to parliament about it. I mean, I had customers not receiving mail for over a week on my shared duty because I was on my own for eight days out of ten, and the managers didn't see it as a problem.

It still doesn't make a lot of sense. It needs to be explained more clearly.

You start off with all items from duty 1, tracked and 1st class duty 2.

What happens to duty 3 on this day?

'Basically you get one day in three where you don't get mail' You need to explain this further.

Either doesn't get delivered or, if duties are reduced, you do specials, 1st class and tracked. Missing one duty every third day seems a better service then we are giving currently.

[Acca Dacca]

Just make each duty 8 loops, it's not rocket science.

It’s not as simple as you put it

8 loops of 120 calls or 8 loops of 40?

Not every street has the same type of house or terrain or volume of items

It’s why the walks need to be thought of as thirds and halves

Whatever takes up a third of the time delivering the whole walk whether that be 2 loops or 100 loops is what the van share takes from the singleton

It really is that simple, everyone is doing 8 loops.

Is every loop of equal size and takes the same length of time to deliver at your place?

[ted_e_bear]

Just make each duty 8 loops, it's not rocket science.

It’s not as simple as you put it

8 loops of 120 calls or 8 loops of 40?

Not every street has the same type of house or terrain or volume of items

It’s why the walks need to be thought of as thirds and halves

Whatever takes up a third of the time delivering the whole walk whether that be 2 loops or 100 loops is what the van share takes from the singleton

It really is that simple, everyone is doing 8 loops.

Is every loop of equal size and takes the same length of time to deliver at your place?

It won't be, no chance, unless you do a full office revision to try and and reach that scenario that's why it's more practical to quote a third and two thirds based on the overall time taken for the full duty.

[Surreypostie]

What attendance times are people working? How I see it, if you pick the 5 day week option and forget about having extra saturdays, you will only have to work a 37 hour week, 7 hours and 24 minutes a day, they can wiggle it a bit but still only 37 hours a week, they can give you as much work as they like but you take 40 minutes of paid break out of that 7 hours and 24 minutes and you won't be doing one delivery very likely.

[A2B]

What attendance times are people working? How I see it, if you pick the 5 day week option and forget about having extra saturdays

That is not an option in my office and I guess many others

[Perseus]

I didn't think keeping a permanent 5 day week plus no extra Saturdays was one of the options.
That said, I'd be wary of it in case in a year or so time your Saturday finish time get pushed back.

[guardianangel]

Pre silly Dm 26 , our office is an awful place to be in. Arguements everywhere, back stabbing , gossiping , stress , also theres no structure or plan to the silly pods etc . Duties are too big , too many pkts , nobody can agree on nothing. Is this being brought in just to fail and cause a mass exodus ? Cannot believe any union would agree to this clusterf,,

Looks like they are signing it off all over the country,i just sit back and laugh at the chaos,and watching the linos stressed and at breaking point is even better ,in my office we are all laughing at them,what they gonna do sack us no one cares anymore the company goes one way the workers the other,lets be honest with the wages they pay posties we will always find similar paid jobs linos on the other hand will never find jobs with the pay they are on now glorified admin workers.