NATIONAL DISCIPLINE COMMITTEE: PROPOSED REVISED BYELAWS
Over the past 18 months the National Discipline Committee has dealt with a number of cases which have highlighted the room for some improvement in the NDC byelaws.
These cases typically involve allegations of bullying and harassment and have multi-member parties and multiple witnesses.
The current NDC byelaws require all parties, representatives and witnesses to be in the same place at the same time. They also require both parties and their representatives (and on occasion, a witness) to be in the same room at the same time.
This arrangement has caused a variety of challenges for the committee – it only takes one party/representative/witness to be unavailable for a proposed hearing to be postponed and the tension that is created by having both parties in the same room at the same time sometimes can be problematic and could even conceivably be prejudicial to a fair hearing.
When cases are postponed there is a financial consequence in terms of costs that cannot be recovered, and the delay in resolving cases also causes stress for the parties.
The proposed revised byelaws are intended to deal with these problems in the following way:
A. It modifies the procedure so that the NDC is able to interview the parties and witnesses all separately from each other.
B. Notes of the discussions with witnesses become part of the agreed bundle and are therefore open to scrutiny and challenge by the parties and their representatives.
C. The revised byelaws include timescales to ensure, as far as possible, that there is no unreasonable delay in the process from start to finish.
The NDC believe that the revised byelaws will make the NDC process more cost effective and less stressful. It also believes that there is an arguable duty of care upon the union to ensure that in bullying and harassment cases in particular, the complainant is not compelled to be in an uncomfortable or even intimidating situation during the course of the case.
As colleagues will be aware, NDC byelaws need to be agreed by the NEC and then presented to the next available General Conference for ratification. The attached byelaws were endorsed by the NEC on 28 January and a motion endorsing the terms of this LTB will be submitted to General Conference. If approved, the new byelaws would become operative for all cases lodged under Rule 14 following the close of General Conference.
The Committee would welcome any observations or questions for clarification. These should be addressed to my office at CWU HQ.
Yours Sincerely,
Simon Sapper
Assistant Secretary
Email Attachments – Click to download
LTB 60/2016 – NATIONAL DISCIPLINE COMMITTEE : PROPOSED REVISED BYELAWS

Unagreed Introduction of Delivery Duty Sets Tool (DDS)
Towards the end of last year Royal Mail informed the union that they were replacing the Mini Duty Builder (MDB) with a new tool called Delivery Duty Sets (DDS).
The reason for this was that their managers were finding it difficult to use the MDB when amending / changing hours from the last revision and did not have the level of skill to reflect these changes by revising their current Duty Builder. (Their words not ours)
This was despite the CWU nationally being given an earlier assurance that the new Revision Managers on request from the DOM would be available to update the current Duty Builder with hours and duty schedules that had been agreed locally as part of any PIR or future revision activity.
Having being taken through the DDS it was clear to the CWU that it was more than a simple hours recording aide, and our view was that it should be a part of the agreed revision toolset as it imported the last Model Week to provide a reference point for calculating future indoor hours and generated a new TM1.
It was also evident that although the DDS records any agreed changes in hours against the appropriate RCS codes, unlike the Duty Builder there is no provision to turn these changes into duty schedules (Delivery Details) or as they are generally known – P318’s.
In essence what this means is that unless you are undertaking a full structural revision assisted by a RM Revision Manager who would produce a new Duty Builder incorporating the daily duty schedules, any other type of revision activity (unit led or local changes agreed in WRM’s) using DDS will not be able to schedule the work to individual duties, only the total amount of hours for each task.
For example, if you start at 06.00 and finish at 14.00 you may undertake IPS, Portering, Prep, Double Prep, Delivery, etc, but without a duty schedule you will not know the times worked on each task or in what order you should undertake them.
Reps and DOM’s will have no base information in RTW / Forecasting meetings to determine whether to flex their IPS / Prep resource up or down as necessary if they do not know how many people are on each task and at what time within the agreed duty structure.
This position is not acceptable to the CWU as in the absence of updated duty schedules members will not know the amount of time they should take on each task or when they should be performing that task, and reserves will have no reference point when covering duties, resulting in chaos management and a probable negative impact on the units efficiency.

We believe this is the start of a process to remove duty schedules in delivery offices and leave the daily alignment of hours to workload down to the DOM on the basis of a daily forecast from Pipeline Production Control (PPC).
The CWU has made further representation to Royal Mail on the basis of introducing a facility/process to schedule any changes of hours as a result of PIR’s or further revision activity into new duty schedules/patterns or alternatively agree a parallel process that will enable this to be done locally in line with DDS.
Royal Mail has refused this offer from the CWU as they do not see this as a problem going forward as they are already using the DDS to record changes in hours and have not received any disagreements on this issue.
As a consequence of this intransigence on the part of Royal Mail we are asking all reps that are currently involved in revision activity where DDS is to be used to record the agreed hours, to abstain from agreeing any hours/revisions or a revision implementation date until this issue is brought to a satisfactorily conclusion, using the IR Framework where necessary.
Branches will be provided with updates in due course.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 230.03

Email address: outdoorsecretary@cwu.org

Email Attachments – Click to download
LTB 061/16 Unagreed Introduction of Delivery Duty Sets Tools (DDS)