A joint statement has been reached with Royal Mail on network changes and will be released at 5:30pm.
Some tremendous work has taken place across the union and it will continue as we seek further mitigation and improvements.
Please make sure this communication is shared in every workplace in the UK.
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NETWORK CHANGES – LATER START AND FINISH TIMES IN DELIVERY OFFICES
One of the most emotive issues in the recent dispute with Royal Mail Group was undoubtedly later start and finish times in delivery offices.
Royal Mail were always going to serve notice on flights due to cost, quality and the green agenda. This union or no union could have stopped that.
Through the outstanding support of the membership, we moved Royal Mail Group from their original preferred position of 3 hours later for everyone (including Delivery being 9am-5pm) to an agreed ambition of an hour maximum with a fall back of 90 minutes where this was not achievable.
We are pleased to confirm that we have today agreed with Royal Mail a mitigation that no unit will have to finish over 75 minutes – and we are putting forward further mitigation on this.
Across the UK, we have always had a wide range of start and finish times. The challenge for us has been and is obvious – some units are further away from their serving Mail Centres than others and some locations in the UK take longer to get to than others. Nothing has changed there.
With the removal of flights due to environmental and economic reasons this has only intensified the challenge we have been faced with.
That said, we have significantly improved the overall picture through joint working and intensive negotiations. These negotiations are ongoing.
This means the latest position is as follows:
- 1000 Delivery Units under 60 minutes
- 368 Delivery Units with less than 15 minutes impact
- 618 Delivery Units less than 30 minutes.
- 84% of Delivery units to be finished before 15:30
- 96% of Delivery Units finished before 16:00
- 240 units over 60 minutes with now a mitigation which caps this at a maximum of 75 minutes.
During negotiations we have agreed that no unit will have to move start times by 90 minutes. Those units identified for a 61 minute and above change will have the opportunity to move 15 minutes of their meal relief earlier in the day (between waves 1 and 2). This mitigates the change by a further 15 minutes. We are also working with the company to improve the flow of work into the inward mail centres Scotland to seek further mitigation to the changes.
This is biggest change to the Network in a generation and there will be an opportunity to review the outputs after a number of weeks and potentially to reduce the impact on start times further. We believe Royal Mail have been over cautious in their planning and this may help in the review to find further mitigation to start times.
We are also in negotiations with the company to use the seasonal variations whilst in the review period to ensure that until the review has been concluded that no unit will have to finish more than 60 minutes later.
We are determined that with a continued range of interventions and once the new network is operational we can make the move to a maximum of 60 minutes permanent, thus meaning no member has to move more than an hour.
From Monday, members will have new start times displayed in their offices alongside the suggested date for these to commence.
When viewing this information members need to take the details above into account. So if your office says 90 minutes then that will not be the actual case. The recent negotiations hold the field.
Overall, we are confident in the coming weeks that we can continue to improve the picture across the UK. Understandably the employer is nervous about giving further concessions at this juncture but with the support and knowledge of our representatives and members we can make further progress.
Given the crossover between this update and the information Royal Mail will share with you early next week, the CWU will:
⁃ call an all reps briefing online on Monday.
⁃ Produce our own online spreadsheet where members can see details of the proposed changes for their offices.
⁃ Hold multiple live events for with the members next week.
⁃ Produce a range of other communications.
I will finish this communication where it started – this is a very difficult and challenging issue. What is absolutely clear is the interventions of the union and the support of you as members continue to put pressure on the company to put further mitigation on the table.
I am confident that we can get everyone in the UK to a maximum of an hours change – but we can only do that if we stick together.
Yours sincerely
Martin Walsh
CWU Eastern No5 Branch 
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