05/10/22 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 5 October... most of it about the strikes (including the ballot of RM-PFS!). Comments welcomed!

WELCOMED...
The union has announced 19 more days of strike action,
which include what they call "functional strikes", so that
it'll mean each one of us will in fact be on strike 9 days.
Yes, management is digging their heels in, so we
welcome more strike days. And of course, we should
definitely be out during Black Friday week, which will hit
RM where it hurts!

...BUT WE NEED OUR SAY!
But once again, these strikes were decided well above
our heads, without any discussion whatsoever. The next
strike will be Thursday 13 October, almost 2 weeks after
our last strike day. In fact, all these strikes are all spread
out over 2-3 months - which makes no sense to us. We
have nothing to gain with this fight dragging on
indefinitely!

ALL OUT UNTIL THE BOSSES BACK DOWN!
The only thing we've got from the union officials is a
letter to branches (circulated among some of us on
WhatsApp), with 5 bullet points explaining why they've
decided to escalate the dispute... including the attacks on
our sick pay, allowances, and the lot. We knew this
already! Our real problem, however, is not being able to
choose when and how we strike. For instance, why do
we go back in between strike days to help clear the mess
for them?
PS: One of the bullet points raised by the union is
apparently about the bosses threatening to de-recognise
the union... Really? Who can believe that sort of stupid
bluff?

MORE COLLECTIVE STRIKES NEEDED
It was a new experience for most of us to be on strike at
the same time as the railway workers last Saturday! And
it was good to join with other pickets of the RMT, ASLEF,
TSSA and CWU at the rally – it left us wanting much
more joint strikes with our class brothers and sisters.

WE’RE NOT FOR TURNING!
Baby boss came to the shop floor to share with us his
"helpful" calculations… He reckons all our strikes will
cost us 5% of our wages. As if we didn't know what
going on strike costs us! Did he hope his figures would
make us "reconsider"?

WHY SHOULD THEY GAIN FROM OUR STRIKE?
If they're now saving 5% of all of our wages, what's that
times 130,000? Quite a lot of extra cash the bosses are
getting, we reckon! But why should they gain anything
from our strike?! They should pay us back our wages
that they “saved”, on top of the pay rise, before we agree
to go back to work.

GET ON WITH IT!
The result of the RM-PFS ballot is out, and as we
expected, it's an overwhelming vote for strike – 93.5%!
But we hear union officials are more interested in having
a meeting with bosses "before the need for strike action"!
Are we meant to wait for union officials to tell us when
our strike days are? We've made our opinions known,
we don't want to wait!

ALL OUT TOGETHER, ALL IN TOGETHER
So when postal workers are next on strike, we want to be
there with them! 1,385 of us are stronger together with
the 130,000 postal workers. And if we all say we're not
going back to work before ALL our pay demands are met,
bosses will have to make ALL of us happy at the same
time!

LET’S WORK TO RULE
It was obviously pretty busy on Monday, after we've
come back from our strike. And there is no reason why
we should help management clearing the workload!
Some of us on Deliveries had the idea of taking our
breaks for as long as possible, so that we can meet in the
canteen and discuss what we want to do next...

WE NEED TO STOP THEM!
Yes, we have lots to discuss, like the rumour that
management is busy going through our PDA logs on W1
and planning to cut 30 to 40 duties?! The next re-sign
could be as soon as January, so we need to prepare to
fight any cuts they may come up with as well!

MAKE OVERTIME OBSOLETE!
We hear that some offices are not working overtime.
Yes, overtime should be thrown out of the window by
everybody, and all the more so when we’re in dispute! If
there were enough hands, and we were paid enough, the
bosses would never get away with imposing it.

SLOW DOWN!
It was also very busy on Nights on large parcels... Some
of us scanned well over 1,000 tracked parcels in one
night, on top of all the ordinary large parcels we also
process! This is just too much, we need to slow down!
So let's discuss what's a reasonable pace and keep to it!

EXTRA BREAKS
Oh dear, four engineers came last week to try and tweak
the PSM... It worked for a little while, but on Nights the
inductor belts kept stopping. So the machine was having
a little snooze time, and it gave us the opportunity to
have ours...

WE NEED SEATS!
And yes, we remember that video of the PSM shown to
us during Work Time Sleeping... which showed workers
sitting on chairs. So where are our chairs? Our legs
need a rest.

IT’S A B-MOVIE
We heard that acting managers were given a £150
voucher as a bonus to come in during our strike... Did
RM buy those vouchers from Amazon?

[SpacePhoenix]

WE NEED TO STOP THEM!
Yes, we have lots to discuss, like the rumour that
management is busy going through our PDA logs on W1
and planning to cut 30 to 40 duties?! The next re-sign
could be as soon as January, so we need to prepare to
fight any cuts they may come up with as well!

Bound to have happened. They must have seen too many people finishing before their official finish time on the actuals data, so it makes it look like there's scope for savings