Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Newd, he's know TheMoneyShark.
Deleted all his posts in a fit of pique,bar one and came back under a new name.
Still waiting on him telling us how he managed to delete his posts except the last one. As far as I'm aware you need to be an admin of the LSE site to do that,unless someone knows any different???
"I’m less interested about where the share price will be at 16.30 on Friday afternoon and more interested about where it will be in 2024-2025. The end of all this nonsense is a good moment for the company. The real focus can actually be placed on addressing the issues within Royal Mail and returning it to profitability in 2024."
All dependent on the macro economic outlook.
Until interest rates come down and wages rise the outlook is pretty poor for the UK. Can't see many people having a lot of discretionary spending this Xmas. And it's this peak period that RM makes it money. The trading update post Xmas will be interesting!
Tate, this is the best turnout that the CWU have had for any previous agreement, going back decades. Yes I agree, why not use your vote? But the reality is people don't. I think on 4 Pillars it was around 40% who didn't vote. I wouldn't read too much into it though, look at local and GE turnouts, and those are ostensibly more important.
Tate, they'll be plenty to do and as I've just been voted in as our sections H&S rep, and as I'm now stuck indoors for the foreseeable due to an AOD,I'm sure that I'll find plenty of things to keep me and my section manager busy. After all this agreement gives us a voice in negotiating how these changes are implemented. Otherwise we've been told by both local CWU and senior RM managers to put all and any disagreements through the IR Framework.
Tate, I'm pretty confident that the membership numbers will hold up. Union membership is on the rise nationally especially as now there are pressures on employees take home pay and t&C's.
Also I've seen discussions where the CWU and RMT are looking into the possibility of a merger! I'm not sure that is something that the employer would like to see.
I wish I shared your confidence that strikes are behind us as i think the large no vote may morph into a grass routes campaign to vote out Dave Ward and replace him with someone much more hawkish. It doesn't take a huge number of members organized enough to swing the vote and get people into positions of influence as historically the voting numbers are very low. Turn out in some PEC votes have been as low as 20%. So easy to manipulate if you're organized.
Hopefully not!
Mike, managers however can't help themselves.
At the moment our Sunday parcel guy,an agency worker, regularly gets asked to take mail out.
If a manager knows on a Saturday and a duty has failed he'll leave instructions to clear that mail on the Sunday as he knows that come Monday he's got another failed walk on his hands.
I can't see that changing.
Newd, that argument just backs up what I've said.
Managers need to be more proactive regarding H&S. One of the biggest causes of sick absences is musculoskeletal injuries. And the biggest causes are through lack of use of PPE and ignoring SSOW.
Surely you want to see sickness levels reduced as it's costing the company a fortune???
Again I ask what should we do away with? Examples please.
Newd, Red, which SSOW and H&S regulation do you think is unnecessary?
In the last few days, I've seen colleagues ignore both and are knowingly encouraged by their manager to ignore them. It's been an underlying issue ever since the job and finish was introduced.
I've seen managers allow the use of an unfit vehicle, with non working wipers. The manager told the agency guy it was ok to use because the weather forecast was saying it was going to stay dry!!! And the foolish driver took it!!!
I've seen parcel drivers load up parcels,loose on the front seat and dashboard,manager says nothing!
I've seen duties that should be using trollies loading overweight bags into their vehicles and the trollies left under the frame. Again unchallenged by managers. I've seen folk not taking their breaks and adding the full 40 minutes at the end of their duty as OT or going home if finished, which is against the law. Again with full knowledge due to SISO. All in the last few days!!
It's become endemic now and things only get challenged if something goes wrong. Unfortunately by then it's difficult to mitigate disciplinary outcomes as both sides know that what they're doing is wrong but no one from RM management wants to admit to it!
Tom's error was reinforced by his manager,who knew Tom was cutting corners but turned a blind eye to save money.
I have been witness to many managers colluding with employees to ignore SSOW.
Everything is fine until something goes wrong and there's an accident. Guess who then becomes culpable and it's not the manager. And yes it's got worse since Covid under ST's watch.
Dek, the problem being that RM don't make any money on Sunday deliveries. Even with what has been proposed in the new agreement, Sunday deliveries will barely be worth it outside of urban areas. In my area we don't get any Amazon Mon-Sat, but on Sundays we get them. Last weekend our agency parcel guy had 35 Amazon Prime parcels and 10 others. He books 6hrs but worked 3hrs and was told to go home when finished. This happens most Sundays but usually he's told to make up his hours making up D2D's and or washing vans.
Hardly the most productive use of his time when he's on around £15/hr
Tim2kill
The comments were specifically aimed at non urban deliveries. It's costing RM a fortune to deliver single parcels to rural addresses, and then redelivering if not in.
It used to be the mantra, "once down the garden path", now it could be 2 or 3 times and with the added bonus of delivering letters by another individual at a completely different time.
And here's me thinking that all these revisions were meant to improve our productivity lol!
I was at a H&S briefing which was attended by our ROD. Chatting after the meeting about general stuff, he was of the opinion that RM Sunday deliveries were only cost effective to deliveries in urban areas. He also said that RM undertook a survey and whilst most people think that deliveries on a Sunday was a good idea, they would also put off ordering something if it was going to be delivered on a Sunday. That's the conundrum that all delivery companies face. Folk want free or below cost delivery on the off chance that they maybe in on the Sunday. I'm not sure if this, long term, is something that shareholders of all delivery companies, not just RM, are willing to subsidise???
Where did you here that GLS are racking it in, can you post the link please.
Good to here that GLS are making money and the cross subsidy means the USO is safe for the foreseeable and all us postie shareholders are going to pick up a nice divi. Win, win I'd say.
Red, RM spend millions in setting performance standards, who am I to contradict what they want me to do. And who says I don't give 100% and no more. What you're alluding to is that I should ignore those performance standards, ignore SSOW, bend and break H&S to give 110%!
Why would I do that? And lose my job if there's an AOD and I'm found to be cutting corners!
Red, good luck with introducing performance standards. No outdoor duty across the UK is the same. No person is the same. No delivery point is the same, no duty is the same distance. Someone 6'6" walks quicker naturally than someone who's 5'2". It's all could've of, should've, would've, way too many variables. I've never in all my years seen or heard anyone who's been sacked over performance issues. Good luck with that at a tribunal, RM would be just as well burning £50 notes.
Red, the tools are there to help managers support those that don't perform to standard. If the manager doesn't use those tools it's hardly the fault of the workforce. Managers tend to take the least line of resistance and rather deal with issues in my experience. And I've worked under dozens of managers.
You find folk who don't perform to standard in every business not just RM. On the whole I've found most RM employees in the past have gone over and above to get the job done. After all, anyone who's actually worked in the business knows that goodwill and going the extra mile was relied on!. Why was it, up until recently, you never saw failed mail and parcels. If anything failed it was like the Spanish Inquisition. Now if mail and parcels fail, and you ask why, you get a shrug of the shoulders by managers.
I do the job to the standards RM want me to adhere to. I can't complete my duty, even on a Tuesday. Am I a workshy con artist?
Yesterday, a Tuesday, quietest day of the week and 6 duties failed to go out? Is that due to workshy con artists?
Today we had know one to cover the callers office as it's the duty holders day off. Is that down to him being a workshy con artist who won't work his day off?
Sorry Red, if you're looking for workshy con artists then you need to look no further than the BOD and ask what have they been doing, that has led the share price to where it is now!