17/09/25 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, find below the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 17 September. We welcome your comments.

A 66% NO CONFIDENCE VOTE
The results of the so-called "ballot" on part 1 and 2 of
RM's latest proposed deal on pay and conditions (a
never-ending series of "parts"!) came out late August.
It was presented by the union as a vote just on the
pay offer, though - a 4.2% rise when RPI is 4.8%!
Less than half of us bothered to vote: the turnout
was 43.5% and out of that 79.5% voted to accept and
20.5% voted to reject. An endorsement by only a
third of the membership is hardly the "overwhelming
acceptance" - which CWU leaders claim and which
they dare to call our "support for them".

WHY WE VOTED NO
In fact, the online ballot procedure was so
complicated (we're not all tech-savvy, so QR-codes
aren't our thing!) - that those of us who went to the
trouble of voting NO did so to send a message to the
union: we do not agree with multi-year pay deals, we
do not agree with linking pay increases to the lower
CPI inflation rate and we do not agree with real pay
cuts!

WE WANT THE INTEREST TOO!
But of course, if many workmates voted yes, it's also
because the bosses and the union have been
dragging out negotiations for far too long - we were
meant to have our pay increase in April and bills can't
wait! That being said, these negotiations are always
"late" - for the bosses, the longer the money we're
owed sits in the bank, the more interest they get!

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE
And what about us cleaners?! The bosses and the
union tell us that they're in talks, but we've been
waiting for our pay increase even longer! And we're
the part of the workforce on the lowest wages, so we
need it the most!

THEY HAVE TO PAY
As for the "increase" in the Voluntary Redundancy
offer by just 3 months... this is too little, too late! It
used to be 2-years. Plus, management has already
got rid of so many of us, they are not offering VRs
anyway.

PERMANENT CONTRACTS FOR ALL
And given all the job cuts, the promise to end the use
and abuse of casual workers has also been broken.
For the foreseeable future, they'll still have to cover
for the lack of hands.

NOPE, WE'RE NOT HAVING IT
Regarding the "new" Processing duties on Saturdays
to come in the next resign: what is this except the
imposition of weekend work? And where is the extra pay
for working unsocial hours? It's about time the
change to flat-rate for weekends was reversed!

LOUD AND CLEAR
Managers in Processing say that if we don't take S/A
on Saturday afternoons, we'll lose jobs to workers
from other offices... In fact these duties have been
covered by casuals up to now. Anyway, it seems
management (and union officials, apparently) need
us to spell out to them again that processing workers
do not want to work an entire Saturday!

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS?
It's incredible that almost two years after the big resign,
there are still 10 of us who management (yes,
the new management!) considers "supernumeraries".
And the "Excess Profit" Group is looking for a
"solution" for the 10 of us? But we found it already:
we choose duties left vacant by our recently retired
workmates, who've never been replaced!

OUR TIME IS NOT THEIRS
During the London Underground strikes last week,
management told us we should "make arrangements
to arrive on time". They didn't even bother to make
any changes to our scanning in and out times, even
though it was obvious that buses would be much
busier. They expected us to leave home an hour (or
more) earlier, and to carry on as if there was no
disruption at all...

OF COURSE WE WON'T!
And now they tell us that we have to pay back every
minute we were late last week by staying past our
finish time? Not on their Nelly!

NEXT TIME WE JOIN THE STRIKES!
Distribution managers apparently didn't know strikes
were happening, since no changes were made to our
runs. But of course, we arrived late thanks to the
chaos on the roads, which meant more to process on
the Late and Night shifts and more chaos in here in
turn!

WHATEVER NEXT?
We're astounded by the kinds of "parcels" we see
coming through the Mount. We've seen car tyres,
doors, and plenty of heavy boxes which we never
used to deal with. When management merged
Parcelforce back into RM, did they make any changes,
or hire new staff to deal with the greater volume of
oversized parcels? Did they, hell!

[CornishCracker]

Mount Pleasant, the only part of Royal Mail stuck in the 90's.