It has been clear for some time that Rico Back the Head Of Royal Mail wants to systematically break our national agreements and create a cheaper and more flexible employment model.
This has been demonstrated by his decision to not only not adhere to the commitments made within the Four Pillars Agreement but by the fact that Royal Mail want to review and remove the legal guarantees we got when we were privatised but also by their refusal to commit to protecting the universal service obligation which Of Com intend to review next year.
Rico Back has shown his open contempt to the CWU within negotiations by suggesting that he as the Chief Executive should be able to do what he wants rather than having to negotiate with the CWU.
Royal Mail’s decision to break the Agenda for Growth by deciding to set up a separate profit and loss company for parcelforce from October and TUPE parcelforce members into this company is just the start of his strategy to shrink the company.
What starts with parcelforce might be followed by Logistics LTD , Delivery LTD , Collections LTD , Processing LTD , International LTD as they all become their own profit and loss standalone companies.
Royal Mail’s decision to bring forward the review into the legal guarantees is significant. These legal guarantees stopped Royal Mail from breaking up the company , creating a two tier workforce , stopping them from outsourcing or franchising and stopping them from recruiting zero hour contracts.
Royal Mail believe this these are the barrier to a more profitable company. We need to defend those legal guarantees by all means possible.
In addition Royal Mail want to introduce the following:
1. Introduce their separation of larger parcels from mail centres , RDCs and circa 1000 delivery offices which will lead to thousands of jobs losses.
2. In addition in the circa 300 LAT units they want to collapse one walk in every six to become a late driver delivering larger parcels and their walk will be absorbed by the remaining five duties.
3. Royal Mail want to use PDA’s outdoor to rescouce and perform revisions.
4. Royal Mail want to roll out further Automated Hours Data Capture ( automating signing in and out )and to reduce overtime and they have suggested linking it to pay roll.
4. Royal Mail want to roll out Resource Scheduler which creates different duty sets and tasks for each office as it is linked to traffic , PSP and PDA’s actuals. At the moment Royal Mail and the company who supply the software still have not managed to get the system to work. However if they do it is a game changer and designed to remove the CWU from involvement in resourcing or revisions.
5. They want 20 thousand jobs losses with London and other cities with mostly full time jobs under the most attack.
6. They want each office to improve their efficiency by around 5 percent in order for them to agree the next hour off the shorter working week.
7. They want 30 minute flexibility on every duty 6 days per week.
8. Royal Mail’s obsession of reducing costs is seeing more offices being attacked and causing walks outs. We are seeing a rise in conduct cases and medical retirements and cases against CWUs reps. Royal Mail seem to not want to improve the culture in the workplace.
Royal Mail and CWU are due to go to external mediation in line with what the High Court Judge ruled during the Four Pillars Dispute and that the CWU had to do prior to balloting for industrial action.
There is little optimism that external mediation will resolve the significant differences between Royal Mail and the CWU.
It is therefore our opinion that we are heading for a significant and defining industrial dispute with Royal Mail.
This will be a dispute which will shape whether Royal Mail will get their way of becoming a cheaper and move flexible employer.
This is a time when all members needs to support the CWU and make sure we send a clear message to Rico Back and the other senior Directors that we are not going to stand by and let him wreck the business and our members terms and conditions in their desire to reward themselves with more shares and bonuses.
It is time for action! it is time for CWU Members to stand up and say enough is enough
We must protect our jobs and our futures.
A statement by the London Divisional Committee
Share this with your friends
CWU Eastern No5 Branch 