Royal Mail Group Fined £1.6 Million For Health and Safety Offences – Employer Pays Their Largest Ever Safety Fine:

Dear Colleagues,

Royal Mail pleaded guilty to Health and Safety Offences at Isleworth Crown Court on 7 December 2017, in relation to an accident which occurred in the Jubilee Mail Centre yard on 12 December 2014 when a CWU member, employed as a Yard Marshal was struck by a departing 7.5 Tonne Vehicle and was knocked unconscious and received multiple serious injuries including a fractured jaw and several fractured ribs amongst other injuries.

Royal Mail was sentenced on 21 December 2017 at Isleworth Crown Court and was fined £1.6 Million Pounds – Royal Mail’s biggest ever fine for Health and Safety Offences. They also paid £21,785 Prosecution Costs.

The Prosecution was brought in relation to health and safety breaches which occurred at the Jubilee Royal Mail Centre, Hounslow, Middlesex.

The Health and Safety breaches were found to be a significant cause of a serious but thankfully non-fatal accident in which an employee was struck by a LGV lorry.

The Court heard from the Prosecution that Royal Mail’s safety failures consisted of failures to undertake suitable and sufficient risk assessments and monitoring, failure to provide adequate safety information, training, instruction, supervision and failure to maintain a safe workplace and transport arrangements including road markings and signage.

Royal Mail Previous Health and Safety Convictions:

In 2003 Royal Mail was fined £200,000 plus £3,500 costs after a pensioner, who was collecting a package, was run over and killed by a 7.5 Tonne Vehicle, in the Bridgend Delivery Office Yard.

In 2010 Royal Mail were fined £90,000 plus £42,000 costs after a CWU Member, HGV Driver, was crushed to death between a Motive Unit Truck and Trailer in the Heathrow (HWDC) yard in 2006.

In 2015 Royal Mail was fined £40,000 plus costs after a CWU Member Fleet Technician suffered chemical burns after being told to use faulty, dangerous cleaning equipment in Hemel Hampstead.

In 2016 Royal Mail was fined £250,000 plus £50,000 costs after a CWU Member, Romec Engineer, fell 9 metres to his death through the roof of the West London Mail Centre in 2013. Romec were additionally fined £100,000 plus £25,000 costs.

In 2016 Royal Mail was fined £50,000 plus £10,000 costs after a CWU Member had his foot run over and crushed by a Fork Lift Truck at the Rochester Walk Bundling Centre.

Conclusion:

This catalogue of deaths and serious injuries to Royal Mail workers and members‎ of the public doesn’t make good reading. Obviously we’re concerned about this situation and want Royal Mail to look at the causes.

We take safety very seriously and Union Safety Reps are critical of Royal Mail’s record because many of the accidents could have been‎ avoided.

Royal Mail’s yard safety record isn’t good and is a cause of concern and disquiet. The Health, Safety and Environment Department is very concerned about the accidents and‎ near misses in yards. The same types of accidents seem to crop up and they are easily avoidable if you learn from past mistakes. Safety‎ procedures are not being enforced in many cases.

Royal Mail needs to take action and work with CWU Safety Reps to improve and enforce safety standards and‎ ensure similar incidents are avoided in future and NOT to cut back safety resources or concentrate on ‘statistics’ instead of risks, hazards and accident root causes!

Yours sincerely

Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

18LTB177 Royal Mail Group Fined £1.6 Million For Health and Safety Offences – Employer Pays Their Largest Ever Safety Fine

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Important Information Regarding Changes to Access to SAGE Online – Branch Accounts 

The company we engage to host our Branch Accounts online access is undergoing major change to their IT server hosting facilities. As a result of these changes we will be moving to bringing the hosting and storing of this information in-house.

The decision made by the company means we have a very short window of opportunity to effect this change and to do so with the minimum of disruption as far as is reasonably possible.

This change will be implemented over the coming Easter Weekend and as a result Branches should be aware that SAGE will go offline at 5 p.m. on Wednesday the 28th of March 2018.

Branches will be able to access the new system from 9 a.m. on Tuesday the 3rd April 2018.

The new process will require a different log in system and for security reasons we will be sending individual letters to Branches with these log in details.

The short notice is necessary as a number of IT systems need to work together to facilitate this change and it is believed the long Easter Weekend allows the necessary time to complete this changeover.

Branch Secretaries should make all those who access the current system aware of the information contained in this LTB with immediate effect and should look out for a separate letter regarding the issue of security referred to above.

Any enquiries regarding this Letter to Branches should be addressed to the Senior Deputy General Secretary’s Department on telephone number 020 8971 7237, or email address sdgs@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Kearns

Senior Deputy General Secretary

18LTB178

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CWU Conference 2018 – Postal Conference Agenda Pad

Branches would wish to know that the 2018 Postal Conference Agenda Pad has now been published on the website and can be accessed using the following link:

http://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/POSTAL-AGENDA-2018.pdf

A pdf. copy has also been attached. Hard copies of the agenda are in the process of being printed and will be distributed to branches when completed.

Any enquiries to this Letter to Branches should be addressed to conferences@cwu.org or call 020 8971 7256.

Yours sincerely

A P Kearns

Senior Deputy General Secretary

18LTB176

POSTAL AGENDA 2018

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POSTPONEMENT OF CWU NATIONAL AWARDS EVENING

Branches will be aware from LTB109/18 that we intended to host a CWU National Awards evening on Monday 23rd April.

The purpose of this LTB is to advise branches that after giving this matter further consideration and in particular taking into account significant logistical difficulties, we have decided to postpone the event. The matter will be considered further as something that may be planned for our 2019 conference.

In the meantime, please accept our apologies to branches who had taken the time to correspond on this matter.

Yours sincerely

Dave Ward

General Secretary

18LTB175 POSTPONEMENT OF CWU NATIONAL AWARDS

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INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF UNIONLINE

The purpose of this LTB is to update Branches on the independent review of Unionline which was notified in LTB 468/17.

As previously explained, given the overall financial position of the union, the impact of the Lord Justice Jackson legal reforms and the reported accounts of Unionline to date, the NEC agreed it was appropriate to ensure the review was undertaken independently. Therefore, to carry out this important work we engaged a business model consultant who has previously undertaken excellent work for the union.

The Terms of Reference for the independent review were agreed by the NEC and shared with our sister union and Unionline partner, the GMB. The Terms of Reference were comprehensive and designed to examine all aspects of the performance of Unionline, the basis upon which it was set up and its prospects for the future.

The current position is that work is continuing and the aim is to conclude the review in the near future with a report being presented to the NEC and a subsequent report being published to Branches. If the review is not concluded by General conference 2018, we will ensure there is an opportunity to provide a comprehensive update on Unionline as part of the redesign session scheduled for Monday 23rd April.

In undertaking the review it was explained that we would also be seeking the views of Branches on the accessibility, quality and range of services provided by Unionline. Therefore, to facilitate this a short survey is attached. We would ask that Branches complete this and return it to the GS Department gsoffice@cwu.org no later than 17th April 2018.

We can also advise that in conjunction with the GMB, we will be working towards a suitable survey of individual members who have either contacted and / or used Unionline services.

Finally, Branches will be aware of a previous Unionline LTB 89/18 sent out recently by the Head of Legal Services in response to a Conference Motion. It is important that LTB 89/18 is now seen within the context of the wider Unionline review. When the independent review was agreed by the NEC it was explained that the work required to respond to the Conference Motion would still go ahead and that this would need to be carried out in a complementary way to the wider review.

However, given that LTB 89/18 was published separately, we would emphasise and ask Branches to note that the outcome of the independent review takes precedence in terms of its scope, content and its relevance to how we take Unionline forward in the future.

Further information will be sent out in due course.

Any enquiries on the content of this the General Secretary on gsoffice@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely

Dave Ward

General Secretary  

18LTB174 INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF UNIONLINE

CWU Branch Survey – Unionline

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ONLINE JOINING

Following the introduction of the Trade Union Act which included alterations to our Membership Application Forms, we have been reviewing the Online Joining section of the website.

It has come to our attention that we have had over 1,000 failed attempts in less than one month to access the old (and no longer working) Online Joining URL. This was the URL used before switching to the new website a few months ago.

Following investigation it has been found that many Branch Officers have “Join Online” / “Join Now” hyperlinks within their Email signatures, which is likely to be a cause in the traffic being directed to the old URL.

Branches are advised that the old (and no longer working) ULR is:

https://members.cwu.org/onlinejoining/registration.aspx

The new ULR which should be used in its place is: 

https://www.cwu.org/join-us/join-online/

Branches will need to update these Hyperlinks to ensure users are directed to the correct webpage so we do not lose any potential joiners.

Any enquires regarding this LTB should be addressed to the SGDS department for the attention of Martin Akerman makerman@cwu.org or Matt Edwards, System Administrator medwards@cwu.org

Yours sincerely,

Tony Kearns

Senior Deputy General Secretary

18LTB171

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Royal Mail Delivery Production Plan (DPP)

Dear Colleagues,

Over recent weeks, the Outdoor Department has received a number of enquiries regarding a Royal Mail process called Delivery Production Plan which gives a forecast of the workload requirement for the coming weeks.

The Department and Union nationally had not been informed or involved in any discussions regarding this process, which as a result meant the matter was raised at the highest level within the company regarding how this had been allowed to happen. As a result, urgent meetings were arranged with Royal Mail to establish the status of this management programme.

Royal Mail informed us that the Delivery Production Plan is not introducing anything new that they haven’t already been doing for the past couple of years or more. The main difference is that the Production Plan has pulled together many disparate pieces of information and systems that Delivery Office managers have formerly had to interact with. This information then produces a forecast workload based on WIPWH and WIPGH. The development of Production Plan pulled these data sources into one programme which is part of Royal Mail’s ongoing campaign to streamline and simplify the workload of Delivery Office Managers and assist the weekly resourcing meetings with the CWU. It is important to note that this programme was finalised and deployed before the Pay & Four Pillars National Agreement was concluded.

It is evident that DPP is a financial budget driven plan that establishes weighted items and workload figures that managers have to aim to achieve on a weekly basis.

Although the union made it clear to Royal Mail that we do not agree with this approach and that all National Agreements on Revision and Resourcing in Weekly Resource Meetings (WRMs) hold the field, we recognise Royal Mail continues to use weighted items as the business efficiency measure with the Regulator. This creates this parallel resourcing approach that our representatives continue to face problems with in WRM’s when managers use budget based WIPWH forecasts that are not consistent with our agreed processes.

This issue was the subject of much debate in recent Pay & Four Pillars negotiations which has resulted in the words contained within section 10.2 Efficiency & Productivity (see below):

We already have a number of agreed industrially engineered performance standards, but the business efficiency measure ‘Weighted Items Per Gross Hour’ (WIPGH) is unagreed yet a highly influential measure from both Royal Mail’s and the regulators’ perspective. Both parties agree that it is imperative that any efficiency measure is jointly agreed and understood.

To this end a joint working group will be established involving operational and work study expertise from both management and the CWU, involving all functions to fully review all the efficiency measures currently being used and produce recommendations over a three month period at the start of this agreement. These recommendations will be taken forward into further National joint discussions in order to jointly agree the efficiency and productivity measures. Acknowledging throughout these discussions that whilst the business will seek to influence the view of Ofcom on its measures of efficiency, it will need to use and follow the measures to ensure alignment with the Regulator, however current national agreements will hold the field for changing arrangements and resourcing between RMG and the CWU.

Subject to endorsement/ratification of the Agreement, the Department will be immediately looking to establish the joint working group to ensure the terms of the agreement are fulfilled.

In the interim, we have made it absolutely crystal clear to Royal Mail that all current National Agreements, Joint Statements etc on determining hours within revision activity and weekly forecasting hold the field and there is no agreement with the CWU on Delivery Production Plan.

Royal Mail accepts this and maintains that the DPP only aims to assist managers in weekly resourcing meetings. They have provided a statement to this affect which is contained within their user guide which representatives should refer managers to if local managers try to impose the outputs based on weighted items and the overall outputs that DPP produces.

Production Plan represents a simplification and integration of existing tools and systems which will free up time for the DOM to focus on other areas. Production Plan is a management driven process and does not change or alter any of the existing commitments we have to conduct an effective weekly resourcing meeting with the local CWU unit rep in line with current national agreements on revisions and resourcing.

Whilst Production Plan aims to give the unit manager a clearer understanding of what potential forecast workload can be considered in resource meetings, especially on the outdoor element where no current agreement exists with the CWU, this does not alter but is intended to support the commitment we have to fully engage and consult with the local CWU rep on resourcing decisions for the following weeks. The standard agreed weekly resourcing meeting agenda should still form the basis for the regular weekly meetings and Production Plan does not replace the Auto IWT in establishing forecast indoor workload.

Production Plan can only act as a guide to help the manager in weekly resourcing meetings towards securing an agreed outcome with their CWU Rep for the following week.

As per the current processes regarding Resource Meetings, where differences continue to exist in agreeing the outputs for the resourcing requirements for the following weeks, the IR Framework should be used. In addition we would ask Branches to provide reports to their Divisional Representatives as well as the Department when the above takes place. Further updates regarding the on going discussions in respect of the future Efficiency & Productivity will be reported as they develop.

Any queries to the content of the above please contact the Outdoor Department reference 230.03, email address: outdoorsecretary@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely,

Mick Kavanagh

CWU (Acting) Assistant Secretary

LTB 168.18 – Delivery Production Plan

GET OUT THE VOTE

It is hugely important that we get as many members as possible to vote on the Four Pillars and Pay Agreement.

In line with our ongoing commitment to engage and involve our members, we are urging every CWU Representative and Officer at every level to do all they can to encourage every individual member to exercise their democratic right, get out the vote and secure a high turnout that delivers the biggest possible YES vote in favour of the Agreement.

The bigger the YES vote the stronger the Union’s voice and influence in delivering our Agreement going forward and ultimately, securing members’ future employment, standard of living and retirement security.

The Department has been made aware that members in some locations have not received their ballot paper. If this is the case, branches are advised to request a ballot paper by contacting the Customer Service Helpline at the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) using the following email:- customerservices@electoralreform.co.uk

When making a request, branches need to ensure they provide ERS with details of the members:-

• Name
• CWU Membership Number
• Correct postal address
Branches are urged to do all you can to GET OUT THE VOTE.

Any further enquiries in relation to the content of this LTB should be directed to the DGS(P) Department.

I thank you for your excellent support throughout this campaign and this push to get a huge vote on the Agreement will be the perfect conclusion from inception to agreement.

Yours sincerely,

Terry Pullinger
Deputy General Secretary (Postal)

18LTB167 – GET OUT THE VOTE