A Small Step Forward

Pete Keenlyside Postal Executive Member - June 2009 Executive Council Report

Keep the Post Public Campaign

That Peter Mandelson has been forced to beat a retreat on his threat to privatise Royal Mail is good news for all our members. It shows that when we get together and organise around our agreed policies we can change things. That he now seems to want to walk away from the whole thing is not. The Postal Executive discussed this at our last meeting and our conclusion is that kicking the whole thing into the long grass until after the next election represents one of the worst options. It will do nothing to deal with pensions, the unfair competition rules or Royal Mail management’s refusal to negotiate change with the CWU. On the contrary, it will encourage management to attack us even harder. It will also mean that Labour is saying to the Tories, “We’ve tried and failed – you have a go now”.

The Postal Executive agreed that we need to keep up our campaign for a modern Royal Mail with decent terms and conditions and acceptable industrial relations. This will be more difficult than just arguing against privatisation but we’ve got to convince the public and the politicians that the job has been by no means been done and the issues that concern us haven’t gone away.

Relations with Royal Mail

Relations with the business continue to be fraught. The London Division have already taken one day of strike action and a rolling three-day programme from July 8-10 has been announced. Meanwhile, requests for ballots have been flooding in from Units and branches throughout the country as management continue to press ahead with their arbitrary and nonsensical cuts by executive action. These measures have nothing to do with modernisation but are instead panic measures that threaten the service. Rumours have been emerging that some managers in Scotland have been fiddling the figures to cover up the fall in quality and to make sure the targets were hit. This has also had the effect of making sure they all got their bonus payments at a time when our members are getting nothing at all. Makes you wonder how we can trust any figures from the business at all.

As part of the Emergency Motion carried at Annual Conference, we have offered management a 3-month moratorium on industrial action provided they agree to hold off on executive action at the same time. During this period we would expect discussions to take place not just on agreements for dealing with the future but on the issues that are causing such problems in units at the moment. So far, they have refused to take up our offer. Dale Haddon, HR Director of RM, has written to Dave Ward offering to conclude frameworks for changes to Network and Processing and to hold further talks on moving Phase 4 forward which, incidentally, included improving our pay. Whilst this could be seen as positive and it’s worth pushing them to spell out what they mean by this, as long as they keep attacking us locally on a day-by-day basis it’s pretty meaningless.

Given management’s failure to take up our offer of the moratorium, the Postal Executive felt we had little option than to intensify the pressure on them. We decided to call for a national day of action on July 17 during which all units that have balloted and received yes votes for industrial action would be asked to take action and other units and branches would be asked to carry out other activities. Publicity material for this has already been sent to branches and further details will be sent shortly.

World Class Mail

A meeting was held recently at CWU HQ with the branches involved with World Class Mail. This started at the Belfast, Gatwick and Cardiff Mail Centres and the SWRDC but is now management are threatening to introduce it in other units. Although WCM is painted as merely an extension of TPM aimed at improving machine operation and health & safety, in reality it’s far more than that. Based on the team-working concept, part of the aim is to reduce the staffing on machines, particularly engineers, much of whose work would be done by either OPG’s or managers. It also aims to remove the Union from much of the day-to-day decision-making by holding continual problem solving meetings between managers and the staff involved. In this way, there is a real possibility that each Mail Centre could end up with its own separate terms and conditions.

When we first became aware of this, we presented the manager in charge of the project, Steve Cameron, with a form of words to provide terms of reference for the trials at the four sites. He rejected this on the grounds that he believed he could get all the cooperation he needed at local level. As a result, we have asked all branches to withdraw from any activity involving WCM until such a terms of reference are agreed.

Walk Sequencing

We had a further meeting with management in June to get an update on developments with the iLSM’s. The site acceptance test at Jubilee Mail Centre has ended and the machine has been signed off. Live operational trials are due to take place from 13 July to 4 September and volunteers have been selected to operate this.  Edinburgh and Peterborough have now had their machines delivered as well. The training and trials on the machines are due to start in August. The new Northampton Mail Centre is due to get 6 machines in September and Warrington 5 in January, subject, of course, to the building being available. An issue did arise during the meeting over management’s intentions on staffing the machines. They wanted a completely new process for deciding who would work on them based on interviews and with no reference to seniority. We left them in no doubt that we would oppose any attempt to move away from the staffing process contained in the TPM Agreement as we could see no difference in the skills required. If management thought additional skills were needed, we wanted to know how much they were prepared to pay for it.

Meanwhile, the walk sequencing trials in the Gatwick and Bristol areas are continuing. As yet no hard data has emerged as to the effect it has on the operation as a whole as not all the offices are fully involved. A question has to be asked, though, as to how much co-operation should be given to this, seeing how management are still not prepared to talk to us about the delivery blueprint?

Quadrant Pay Claim

National Officer Terry Pullinger reported to the last Postal Executive meeting that a settlement had been reached over this year’s Quadrant pay claim. This involved a 2% increase in basic pay from April 1st, allowances paid for the first month on sick leave, maternity leave on full pay increased from 39 to 40 weeks and a move to monthly pay with an interest free loan of up to 3 weeks pay for those who want it. Given the pay freeze in RM, the current level of RPI and the lack of resistance among the members to monthly pay, the PE agreed to endorse it. The agreement will now go out to the members involved in an individual ballot.

Capita Pay Claim

National Officer Andy Furey reported that an agreement had been reached with Capita on their annual pay claim. This involves a 1.3% increase from 1 October 2009 for all TUPE contract members and between 2.25% and 0.5% increase for all non-TUPE members depending on their performance level. These members come under Capita’s performance management system. On the same basis as with the Quadrant pay claim, the PE agreed to endorse this and put it out to a ballot of the members concerned.

National Executive

The National Executive meeting in June discussed the CWU motions to the TUC Conference. General Secretary Billy Hayes proposed we send two motions, one on expanding the use of broadband and on Digital Britain and the other calling for a Citizens Convention to deal with reforming the electoral system and the House of Lords, a written constitution and a bill of rights, freedom of information and a new ethical code for politicians.

I objected to this on the grounds that much of this had not been discussed before and was not necessarily CWU policy and it scarcely reflected the priorities of our members. I moved an amendment to submit in its place a motion recognising that many of our members no longer felt they were represented at political level and calling on the TUC to organise a conference of Unions to consider how to achieve effective political representation. Despite attempts to rule the amendment out of order it was carried on a majority vote.

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