Campaign Reaches Crunch Point

Pete Keenlyside Postal Executive member gives his February 2009 Executive Council report:

Keep the Post Public Campaign

The issue of Royal Mail privatisation certainly hit the headlines this week with Mandelson moving the first reading of the Bill in the House of Lords and our mass rally at Westminster. At least there can’t be any complaints now that no-one knows what’s going on.

The fact that the Government are trying to sneak the Bill through the Lords first is a disgrace in itself. Using an unelected Lord in an unelected body to break a pledge given in their manifesto is a low point even for New Labour. Just as disgraceful is the fact that he is trying to use the deficit in our pension fund to blackmail us into accepting his proposals. The arguments used by Mandelson for trying to force it through are extremely weak. He says that he needs to bring in private capital to offset the money the Government will have to put in to sort out our pension scheme and to provide Royal Mail with money to modernise. But information we’ve been given is that whoever comes in would only be expected to stump up about £700 million for their share of the company. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed. And if the Government do take over the liability for the pensions deficit, that will give RM all the money they need for their plans. They won’t need outside finance.

Mandelson also argues that Royal Mail need a dose of outside management to sharpen up their ideas. No-one in the CWU will disagree with the argument that many RM managers are simply not up to it. But to think that there are all these other people out there who know exactly what should be done to run the business in a better way and how to do it is laughable. If they are there, then why haven’t they been brought in before? The Government appointed Leighton and Crozier. Are they now saying they got that wrong? They’ve just appointed an investment banker as the new Chairman. How’s that going to help? Bringing in a private company and putting their managers in charge would be a huge gamble. Presumably, their first task would be to protect their own company’s interest and how much would they really care about the service, never mind the terms and conditions of the workforce?

The rally in Westminster showed how much support we’ve got. The leaders of all the major unions and a whole host of MP’s were queuing up to speak. Opinion polls recently carried out on behalf of the Union showed that the overwhelming majority of the public were against any form of privatisation.  But now we’ve got to go beyond fine words. If we’re to defeat the Government on this, our campaign has to go beyond Westminster and into every town and village. MP’s of all political persuasions need to see that the price for not backing us won’t be our jobs, it’ll be their’s at the next election. The first goal has to be to get a really massive turnout of our own members at our demonstration in Wolverhampton on 14 March. Let’s hope that all the General Secretaries who were on our platform last Tuesday bring their members along as well.

Pay & Modernisation

The two day meeting between the National Officers and Royal Mail to discuss how to move all the issues dividing us, including what is meant by “modernisation”, that was meant to happen in February was cancelled at the last moment by RM. Apparently, they took the hump at all the negative publicity they were getting in the press. Real school playground stuff! The meeting has now been re-arranged for the beginning of March and the outcome will be reported next month. The Postal Executive had a discussion at our last meeting as to what we want to get out of it. As a minimum, we will be looking for agreement on a generic framework for dealing with trials and deployment of new technology and automation, agreement on how to deal with all the problems in delivery and to begin discussions on this year’s pay deal.

Walk Sequencing

A meeting has now taken place with management over the latest developments in the walk sequencing programme. They informed us that they now wanted to go ahead with trials in the Gatwick and Bristol areas, where they have installed new machines over the past few months. The purpose of the trials is to understand the impact of a whole area going over to walk sequencing on finances, the workforce and the customers. They’ve told us that they’re not planning to change the last letter times in the areas, which are 14.00 at Gatwick and 15.00 in Bristol and although they’ve got some ideas on duty structures, these will be decided locally. Putting a whole area over to walk sequencing will also have an effect on the mail centres, as management will want to go to single pass sorting. This will almost certainly result in duty changes there.

It was something of a surprise that they’ve come back to us in the first place. Our assumption was that they were just ploughing ahead. They obviously realise that there are problems that they can’t sort out on their own. We’ve asked for another urgent meeting to find out exactly what they’re looking for and for further details of the proposed trials. Until the business agree a generic framework document on trials and a specific joint position on walk sequencing, however, our current position on non-cooperation still applies.

Mail Centre Rationalisation

Following a number of meetings between National Officer Martin Collins and RM Head of Processing Steve Cameron, we received a letter from him containing a number of commitments aimed at resolving the dispute around mail centre rationalisation. These included no compulsory redundancies or forced reduction in hours, aiming to meet staff’s first preference for alternative jobs, no movement of mail unless quality can be maintained, mitigating job losses in losing units by phasing of work and introducing new work, provision of crew buses if there’s no public transport and commitment to a new national framework to standardise CWU involvement in future reviews.

The Postal Executive met recently to discuss this and whilst we were not ecstatic about the letter in that it was scarcely an agreement, we accepted that it formed the basis for moving the existing issues forward. The branches involved in the current review took a broadly similar position. It now remains to be seen if management in the areas affected are prepared to play ball. What we still have to establish, however, is our right to have a say in what a final mail centre network will look like. Unless we get this, we will always be arguing on a case- by-case basis and this just weakens us.

Romec Cleaners’ Bonus Scheme

At our last meeting, the Postal Executive were presented with a document outlining a new bonus scheme for Romec cleaners. The problem with the current one is that although it has the potential to pay out up to £230 a quarter, only 6% of cleaners get this and only 18% get anything at all. This is due to problems with the current scheme, including the size of the bonus unit

The new scheme, which involves a revision in every unit, will be based on the performance of the unit itself and involve target hours, level of cleanliness and customer satisfaction and regular attendance. The maximum payout will be £120 a quarter but it is estimated that at least 80% will be able to achieve this. We will also be looking for compensation for those currently earning a higher bonus. Cleaners who work in units where, for whatever reason, it is not possible to reduce the amount of hours they work or provide them with additional work, will be given a bonus target above the hours otherwise justified. The new scheme will now go out to a ballot our cleaner members.

World Class Mail

We attended a meeting with management recently to discuss the trials they are carrying out in four places, Gatwick, Cardiff and Northern Ireland Mail Centres and SWRDC on a project called World Class Mail. We asked for the meeting as we weren’t really sure what it was all about. It turned out that neither were they! It’s obviously of some importance as it’s backed by Steve Cameron, the Processing Director and it seems to involve an extension to the current TPM agreement. Potentially it could involve significant changes to work practices and to savings levels but management say it’s just about a different philosophy. We’ve asked for another meeting with people who do know what they’re talking about on this. Until we get that meeting and a clearer idea of where this is going, Branches should stick to the current agreements and not go beyond them.

DMS Deployment in Network

National Officer Terry Pullinger reported to the Postal Executive that he was now having the same problem getting agreements and joint positions from management in Network as in the rest of Royal Mail. A draft of joint understanding of the development of Isotrack (DMS), in line with the Professional Drivers Agreement, was sent to management but they declined to sign it. The Postal Executive agreed that any attempt to introduce DMS changes without a national agreement would result in a ballot of LGV members.

CWU Finances

The last meeting of the National Executive discussed a document from SDGS Tony Kearns on the state of the Union’s finances. Over the past few years these have been comparatively healthy due to measures taken in 2003. Looking to the future and the plans of all the major employers where we have members, this is not likely to continue and we need to act now to avoid major problems later. The NEC agreed to call a one day briefing prior to Annual Conference to discuss the situation and the measures we will need to take with branches. An obvious one is to start getting serious about recruiting outside of our traditional areas. There are millions of workers out there who would join a union if they could and we need to get at them.

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