Member Info for OliGarch

riiger, you might be knackered but for £150 a day I would make hay while the sun shines......and it looks like it's gonna shine all next week too :-)

JB, there are a few of contributing factors for the low manual parcel sorting rate.
1; Due to low letter volumes, the machine operators are asked to move over to parcels. The machine operators hate this and will do anything to get out of it- long toilet breaks/cigarette breaks, taking extra time to do machine TPM cleaning etc...
2; The drivers are even worse as per the above (although I do have some sympathy here as they signed up for driving duties so that they didn't have to sort or deliver mail).
3; The managers spend so much time moving furniture around and sorting parcels themselves that they aren't keeping an eye on their workforce.
4; Social distancing. There's only so many manual bullrings that you can fit into a given space and it's one per bullring now.
As for not handling parcels if they're not making money, that's not going to happen because we are Royal Mail. We can't just dump the surplus over to Amazon.

Mike, the next financial update will make interesting reading. I would obviously expect DSA and letter box collection mail volumes and therefore revenue to be much lower plus don't forget the lack of Door 2 Door which is also a great revenue stream.
Parcels are different though. Sure, I would expect the offices with parcels automation to be making but in the offices where there is no automation it's a loss maker. Each parcel is manually sorted through several breakdowns and the hourly sorting rate isn't monitored so not particularly high.

CrystalBall, the problem with the unions is that they get in the way of unscrupulous employers who, given half a chance, would flaunt the employment laws and only get into trouble after an accident that involved the H&S executive, which is also a thorn in the side of businesses. Come to think about it, so are HMRC.
Therefore, if we could abolish the unions, H&S executive, HMRC and the Government, UK businesses would flourish.
Job done!

CrystalBall, it's not just the CWU. The standard working week for France has been 35 hours since 2000. This was a move by their socialist party to cut the unemployment rate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek
It should also encourage a better work/life balance and having worked 60+ hour weeks for long periods in my 20s, 30s and 40s when I had a mortgage and young children I can applaud. I would have liked to have spent more time with my kids when they were small but needed the money.

Mike, he could always use the "Maxwell method"...lol

Wolves, I seem to remember from the dim and distant past (well about 2010) when RM were introducing sequencing machines that there was a heavy suggestion that the days of the postie were numbered and that the sequenced mail would be delivered to housewives or mothers who had dropped their kids to school and wanted some part time work. These housewives would have rounds of about four hours duration and for weekdays only. Of course it never came to fruition because the CWU had the idea squashed on several grounds but mainly on the issue of security.
As we move forward into parcel delivery, I forsee the role of the postie not only being full time but also more than RM currently employ with perhaps an increase from 90,000 to 100,000 to deal with demand especially if RM get to grips with parcels automation.

GZK, it's going to be an interesting year although it has to be noted that severe asset stripping is one of the arguments that the CWU used against privatisation.
The pension fund is one of the things that RM staff hold dear and any attempt to make a grab for it will almost certainly upset the CWU which Kretinsky will almost certainly be aware of.
GLS is not held in such high esteem even though it is the RM cash cow so it's possible that would be his end game.
Perhaps it's also Rico's end game which is why he left?
It's anybody's guess at the moment and all open to interpretation (interpretation...see Dominic Cummings..lol).

...... sharing a (virtual) evening line up with Huey Lewis and The News, Elvis Costello and The Attractions, Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Honkettes and ending the evening with Frank Zappa and The Mother's.
Actually if they were all alive I would pay good money to see that line up :-)

Bank Holiday lockdown boredom.
Is Kretinsky going to buy half a billion plus one shares in Royal Mail? Will he sell off GLS as a separate entity to Rico, skim off the post 2008 pension fund (Robert Maxwell style), sell off all the property that RM own then having made his money trash the business?
It's a great conspiracy theory but never gonna happen.
There's more chance of Lord Lucan riding Red Rum around Parliament Square on Bank Holiday Monday.... IMHO of course...lol...DYOR... etc

Good lad Norman. Will you be refusing your payment or donating it to the Rowland Hill Fund?

I'm fairly certain that non union members are included in this payment.

Just to clarify a point, "CWU represented colleagues" are those grades that can be represented by the CWU so this means OPGs, drivers, etc. What it means is that CMA grades will not get the £200 so the CMA will need to negotiate their own deal.
This payment is for staff who have attended work during lockdown so it would be unfair to pay a member of staff that had been in isolation for 12 weeks or on long term sick as they have not been in attendance.

JB, Wolverton Mill and Coton House (plus there was a place in Cardiff) are now housing estates.
I'm not sure how training is delivered these days (probably online through PSP) but it doesn't appear to be working?

Arsenal, you are spot on with "There are managers here who are ex posties with no real management experience or skills in man management and don’t make the grade".
I don't know of another business that promotes workers into managers because "they have done X number of years in the business". I find it a bit bizarre that there appears to be no training given with regard to the soft skills or indeed budgetary control. Our "Plant Improvement Manager" is a JV1 and is only there because his best friend when they started out as telegram boys (on mopeds) in the early 1980s is the Mail Centre Manager despite the fact that he is pretty inept.
We have taken on several graduates over the last couple of years and it is quite something to watch them go from "keen" to "institutionalised" in such a short time. We did have a very good one but she has just left....to go to Amazon EU....!

Arsenal, the problem lies within management at office level (JV and ML grades). It's up to them to challenge those who they think are swinging the lead....only they won't because they are scared that they will then have to deal with a grievance case so it's better to turn the other cheek.
Why? Because it's less grief and after all it's not their money. As long as they can justify the spend on overtime or agency staff then all is good.
The whole politics of sick absence in RM is a minefield but I doubt that it will change any time soon.

Scamp, Arsenal, PP, you have all hit the nail on the head.
When I joined the Post Office in the late 70s the first question that I was asked was "who are you related to?" and the second was "have you booked your sick leave - you get 14 days?". I rather naively replied that I would go sick when I was sick and it was about 8 years later that I picked up a nasty bug and took my first period of sick. My next period of sick leave was for an operation in 2003.
Even 40+ years later there are still a small minority of "lead swingers" in the business and a good percentage are managers!

GZK, I cannot foresee a buyout at any price. This business has so many caveats attached that even if 100% of the shares were purchased it would still have to abide by the current legislation much of which is legally binding.
As an example, would you buy (or even lease) a car if one of the conditions was that you couldn't use it on a Sunday or had to fill it up at a certain chain or fuel outlets that were more expensive than the supermarket fuel stations?

200iq, we missed a trick here. What we should have done years ago is offered our customers pre paid boxes and packaging in uniform sizes through Post Office Counters (or on the internet) at a discounted price to normal to encourage the public. This would have given us a better platform for parcels automation just like Amazon.
It's still not too late to do this as we still have a good Post Office Counters network which is well used by the UK.

Arsenal, I think that there are around 27 out of the 39 mail centres that are waiting for parcels automation. These tend to be the small to medium sized offices. I would envisaged that the majority of the displaced staff would be offered jobs in deliveries or offered VR packages in line with current RM policy.