Member Info for OliGarch

Aaaand then there's Sid.....the person that you avoid making eye contact with at social functions....lol

Don't worry Sid, it's gone 10pm so the night shift has not long started. I'm sure that the nurse will be round with your evening medication presently.

It looks as though there are around 3,000 less members than last time as 111,670 ballot papers were distributed. This may be due to the last VR exercise and/or potentially some members leaving the union.
That said, a 77.3% turnout and 82,792 yes votes should let the BoD know that it's time to get around the table again?

bigpercy, what was your source of information regarding the CWU possibly manipulating the ballot?

In October/Nov the business asked for around 6,000 voluntary redundancies and were flooded with applications which was strange as the natural attrition rate must be around that figure?
Since the turn of the year, mail centres have been streamlining their operations with some posts disappearing and others being reduced from full time to part time however I don't have a figure to equate the reduction of hours into full time posts. I guess that some staff members will take the buy down and if they aren't earning enough on part time will simply migrate to another low skilled minimum wage job whereas others may realise that the lower wage allows them to access benefits such as universal credit and free child care meaning more leisure time for less work and a broadly equivalent lifestyle?
I can't see too much staff reduction in deliveries unless the USO is altered as simple logistics tells us that it requires a minimum number of staff to fulfill the requirement on the proviso that the job is being carried out and staffed correctly.
I have a really "different" idea for the CEO bonus next year.
What about linking it to delivery targets?
Told you it was "different".....lol

Darbo, just to correct you on your earlier point.
The UK Government gave Royal Mail it's commercial freedom in October 2013 however it is OFCOM that monitors the USO and holds Royal Mail to account.
As it stands, Royal Mail must deliver and collect letters six days a week, and parcels five days a week, at an affordable and uniform price throughout the UK.
A visit to ofcom.org.uk is worth the read.

https://www.ft.com/content/1ffe23b3-e0a3-4545-80d7-0c4ed28a0895

I don't think that anyone is in doubt as to whether VESA are supplying "advice" to the IDS board although I'm also not sure how much influence the Select Committee would have beyond the USO viability?
Kretinsky is quite busy at the moment. I would imagine that he/VESA are also preparing to get their bid together to supply gas to the National Grid in 2026?
With regards to the London Stadium, I think that it's quite bizarre that yet another publicly funded location is up for sale. You can guarantee that it will be sold at a vast loss and the proceeds will not be going back to the public purse. More likely Khan will use the cash to widen his ever expanding (ULEZ) empire to the edge of the M25.....lol

Derek, I was just trying to put some gloss back onto Boris' Brexit Bus in case the shine had worn off for some of the 17,410,742 leave voters.
The amount of extra paperwork involved in sending items to the EU (and even Northern Ireland for that matter) must be reassuring for at least 37.4% of the population?

Derek, I'm just glad we left the EU before the pandemic and before Russia invaded the Ukraine. Heaven only knows how much worse it would have been for us if we had stayed in the Customs Union?
I'm hearing rumours that some UK fishermen are now diversifying into sightseeing tours from the end of December 2023. Apparently the sunlit uplands are best viewed from around thirteen miles off the coast of the UK whilst looking backwards? I can't wait.....

If a business can be rebuilt by shouting at the staff like a Regimental Sergeant Major then Grant McPherson is definitely the man for the job.....lol

JB, "He/ST is the person that breaks things up and they will bring someone else to start the rebuilding process".
I'm not sure what his remit at Honda, Apple, Morrisons etc was plus you have to factor Williams into the mix as he has his fingers in a few pies at the moment including chairman of Halfords plus also independent chair of the Government-supported Rail Review and we are all aware as to how the latter is going.

Scampthedog, an extract from the letter sent by Simon Thompson to Darren Jones on the 26th of January 2023.

External advisers advising the company on the transformation of Royal Mail (Questions 33-35)

You asked which external consultancies are advising on the transformation of Royal Mail. Royal Mail has
worked with a range of advisers to inform its approach to managing the significant decline in letters and
ensure we can grow our parcels business in an intensely competitive market.
In the current financial year, we worked with Korn Ferry on the reorganisation of the operational
management structure, and Boston Consulting Group supported us with our strategy around growth and the
network. At the 2022-23 half year results, we set out a five-point plan to restore cash generation and
operating profitability for Royal Mail. While the work on the plan was led by Royal Mail, the team worked
with advisers at Alvarez & Marsal and Deloitte on our operational transformation and to stress test the
business plan.

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1005444/royal-mail-threatened-with-data-leak-by-hacking-group-1005444.html?rel=scroll

Thanks JB, I work in a mail centre so I don't really have much knowledge of PDAs on deliveries but I can say that during the strikes parcels were prioritised over letters purely for logistical purposes. Storing 100,000 items of letter box collection mail on twills takes up a little bit of space but storing 100,000 parcels is a different thing altogether especially in the smaller buildings.
Regarding sick leave, I believe that the plan is to reduce the current system to full pay for the first absence of the year followed by statutory sick pay for the first three days of each subsequent sick period within 12 months with warnings issued after 13 days or 3 absences. This looks like payback for the amount of sick leave taken during the pandemic which seems a bit rich given the the UK Government made it mandatory to stay at home.

I have done a little investigating and it seems that five large sites were affected.
Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre (HWDC)
London Air Mail Unit (LAMU)
International Logistics Centre (ILC)
Jubilee Mail Centre
Northern Ireland Mail Centre.
It looks as thought the business is replacing every piece of IT equipment as they can't be certain of where the ransom ware is lodged in the system. It could be on hard drives, graphics cards, motherboards, servers. Even the air conditioning, heating systems and standby power systems are connected to the network.
I would have hoped that the business would have this covered on a disaster plan but perhaps that was also compromised?
The figure of £100m does look excessive at first and given that it's been almost a month of disruption then perhaps this will encompass everything?
I have no hard evidence of password sharing personally but I have seen instances where staff have plugged their phones into USB sockets on business computers so I suspect that these will be disabled in future and all IT account holders will have to complete more mandatory training which will be completely pointless if password sharing continues.

AngerSharkz, "Royal Mail have a duty to disclose significant changes to their financial position to the markets."
Indeed and I am surprised that an RNS hasn't been released given the impact on international items being sent abroad. The loss of finance is one thing but the loss of faith from business and the public is another? If the RM system is seen to be less than secure then this could see businesses looking elsewhere?
I have also heard a rumour that Tesco Clubcard have pulled out of their contract although this needs confirmation.

AngerSharkz, I'm not sure that the new system is fully up and running and when it is going to be paid for? It also happened fairly close to the release of the Q3 release when the business was still trying to get to the bottom of the issue so I wouldn't expect it to show up until at least Q4 and probably as a "system upgrade", either way it's still a lot of money for a business that's already stating that they are in trouble?

I attended a safety meeting this morning and our engineering rep was present. After the meeting, I asked him if he had any information on the cyber attack. He told me that he had been in contact with a colleague at Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre who informed him that the ransom ware had been sitting dormant and undetected on the system for potentially a couple of years because the firewall and security software was fairly basic plus it is unclear as to how it got there.
In order to solve the issue, every piece of hardware including hundreds of computers and hard drives has been removed and scrapped and a new computer system, software and enhanced firewall plus security is being installed by contractors.
Meanwhile, the internal team of Royal Mail engineers (starting salary £50k to over £70k+ on max with scheduled overtime) have apparently been tasked with sorting parcels by hand at the request of the Chief Operating Officer, presumably as some form of punishment.
I asked about the costs involved and was told "north of £100m" which will put another large dent in the already stretched finances of IDS. Ouch!

Didn't Adam and the Ants have a number 1 hit about this in 1981?

Just a thought, but does anyone have a vague idea as to how much business has been lost and how much it's going to cost IDS to sort out the recent cyber attack?
Also, does anyone know who has claimed responsibility and how much they were asking?