Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
It's not spot on Casper.
I've worked in various jobs. There are always people who get away with doing the bare minimum, or even less, in all walks of life. RM is no different and, in my experience, no worse than anyone else. And it's not an age thing. I've worked with lazy, incompetant youngsters and energetic committed older people both in RM and elsewhere.
Good point Oli. I think in Holland they have Monday as their non-USO day.
Hasn't it been said we'll go for Saturdays? It'd be easier to implement with the staff it's what Ofcom considered and Mondays are so light now it'd boost that into a proper day, although door to doors may suffer as that's when a lot of us do ours at my DO.
Good. I've been saying get rid of Saturdays for years.
Having said that, is the company actively engaging with parliament on this matter? If not, they're wasting time as the process won't be quick.
I can remember two instances of RM engaging parliament. One was regarding dangerous dogs which saw a law change, the other was regarding building regulations and low letterboxes which has not happened. It's still a pain, literally, delivering to those boxes on the floor. Someone needs to sue the door manufacturers for there to be any change, but I digress.
Will our MPs agree to a cut in the USO? Is it something that's gonna depend on the party in power?
Talk2Much - "The company is very clearly pressing for a 5-day letters USO with 7-day parcel service. Removing Saturday letter deliveries would wipe out the losses pretty quick, and any indication that the Government are entertaining that idea could put a rocket under the shares."
Is the company "clearly" pressing for a five day letter USO. They had the chance at the back of 2020 after Ofcom had conducted a study and survey which included this issue. Did the company push the government to reduce the USO standards? I can't recall reading or hearing anything about it. Maybe they did have talks and parliament told them it wasn't going to happen but, if that were the case, surely we'd have heard something.
From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2020/delivering-postal-users-needs-in-a-digital-age
"Our research found that the current six-day-a-week letter delivery requirement meets the needs of 98% of residential users and 97% of small and medium businesses (SMEs) in the UK. Reducing this to five days a week, but leaving all other elements of the service unchanged, would still meet the needs of 97% of residential and SME users.
This suggests that reducing the letter deliveries requirement to five days a week would reflect postal users’ reasonable needs. It would potentially allow Royal Mail to make net cost savings of around £125-225m per year.
It would ultimately be for Parliament to decide whether this change is needed."
I can't see how it can be official at it directly contradicts the USO. Tracked are not a priority in the USO.
In our place, if there's only one person out of the pair that usually go out together, it's a case of asking a manager what they want us to do. Sometimes it's like that list, sometimes they'll say leave all the large items as they'll get done by agency staff later. (Whether they actually get done or not is another thing).
Hurtsparrow - "The way I see it the big ticket items Annualised hours,Sundays etc can't be bought in without contract change."
Sundays are already included in the contracts, at least they are in mine which is from January 2019. However, I was bought in as 'postperson with driving and callers office duties' so I don't know if that has a separate contract to just 'postperson with driving'. Having said that, if you look at the job vacancies online now you'll see 'postperson with driving' has Sundays mentioned in the blurb.
The actual wording in the contract is "attend at varying times on any day (including weekends, Bank and Public Holidays) as the needs of the service demand."
I know one of the managers at my place has been looking into who has a contract that includes Sundays and who doesn't.
Even though our Callers Office is now closed on Sundays I still do parcels and I was doing the test kit collections and deliveries during the pandemic so it's always been a standard working day for me.
Annualised hours will need a contract change though.
Not everything he gets involved in makes money but, just like anyone, if you have more successes than losses, you're doing alright.
A couple of weeks ago the UK Division of EPH posted their accounts to December 31st 2021. They don't make pretty reading. It's behind a pay wall but you get the gist from The Times - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/losses-mount-at-czech-sphinx-daniel-kretinskys-power-plants-6vzbc2ngg
You can see the full accounts via the Companies House website.
Of course, those figures are now a year out of date and the energy market has changed immensely but most companies are making handsome profits.
Don't go thinking everything he touches turns to gold.
I don't think there'll be a takeover, just an increase in their holding. There are all sorts of rules regarding these things. You need to know the Companies Act 2006 and the IDS (or RMG) Articles Of Association. I don't.
Don't quote me on this but I believe an entity has to have 90% of the shares before they can force you to sell.
I think us Posties have 5 to 6% of the company via the SIP. Ex-posties may have a few per cent as well, but then they may be willing to sell.
If only the union had encouraged their members to buy as many shares as they could rather than dismiss the whole thing. We'd have a sizeable holding now.
I'm doing my bit. DK is gonna have to fight me for my 0.0001% of the company!
Dunno how serious it is. At the moment the only info is that customers could see other customers' orders which, in the grand scale of data breeches, isn't too bad. All addresses are publicly available anyway, it's just the linking of names to those addresses that are a no no.
If the breech includes credit card data as well then RM could be in a bit of hot water.
I bet they didn't take him to any of the old Victorian sheds with leaky asbestos roofs that pass as Delivery Offices.
I don't care if Vesa own 25%, 49% or 90% of IDS - in fact it may be a good thing if they go above 50% as they may come up with the billions needed to get a lot of the Delivery Offices up to spec so we can work in an efficient manner....
...or maybe not
The wasted money is ludicrous Anger, and it's often out of even the Delivery Office managers' control.
A while ago I think I highlighted the stupid situation where we were told (not asked) to order everything in the new uniform range even if we were never going to use parts of it - hats, belts, waterproof leggings etc. Some people were even taken into the office to do the ordering if they didn't do it themselves by a certain date. I think I was the only person out of about 120 at our office who outright refused and I still just order what I need, when I need it. If that situation was the same country wide that's a few million wasted.
When we first got the agency staff in to cover strikes / Christmas we also got four Mercedes Sprinter style hire vans. Our managers didn't ask for them and we don't need them. Plus they're far too big for our needs. They just appeared in our car park one day. The agency staff don't start until 2pm which is when most posties get back to the office so they use our own branded vans. You might see one of the big vans used occasionally but it is rare. Most just sit there. We're not the only office this has happened to.
The overtime hours claimed for but not worked are mostly a thing of the past in the Delivery Offices I know about now. In the past you'd get a set amount for doing a half or a full round on overtime, on light days you could finish your own and the overtime walk in your standard hours. It was the way it was, with the manager's blessing. That's changed, mostly because the rounds take so long now people don't want to do another round after their own. Even when they do, they aren't gonna get finished at their standard time anymore, nor anywhere near it.
We're getting our scanning in & out machines fitted shortly so that'll cut back on these unworked hours even more, although I honestly don't think it's a massive issue at our office.
I also mentioned having to photograph r get a signature for every Tracked item on delivery now. Someone at head office thought this would be a good idea but it just takes time, meaning you can get less done and, looking at the figures, it's had no impact on the amount of Tracked items we deliver. That decision has cost the business money. As an aside, I'm finding more companies are sending stuff 'Tracked Signed For' these days so RM's plans of getting rid of signed for deliveries isn't gonna happen. Although I don't see the point of tracking AND a signature, at least we get paid more for the Signed Fors.
We're nearly on the same page - you agree with me that the BOD make stuff up to suit their agenda.
Quoting again from last year's results - "adjusted operating profit up 8.0% due to improved profitability in Royal Mail:
? Royal Mail revenue down 1.6% year-on-year reflecting changing consumer behaviour following removal of
lockdown restrictions and lower international volumes, partially offset by growth in test kits; adjusted operating
profit of £416 million, up 20.9%; adjusted operating margin up 90 basis points to 4.9%, due to benefits of
restructuring and non-people cost saving programmes."
There's something seriously amiss when a company's figures swing that much in just a few months. If it carries on like that there'll be nearly a £billion swing in just one year. You can't blame that on a few days of strikes, all of which were in Q2 so can't have an effect on Q1's figures. I honestly can't say if any companies have abandoned Royal Mail although we are seeing far fewer Amazon items at the moment. Is that due to them delivering more of their own stuff or passing it on to other carriers rather than RM? Suppose we'll have to look out for their figures when they're next announced.
I agree Adjusted Operating Profit isn't always the best measure yet that's what RM are using to announce their losses so far this year.
From the latest update - "Royal Mail H1 2022-23 adjusted operating loss of £219 million"
You're saying that figure is bull**** then?
The figure the CWU use is the same as RM use when it suits them. Adjusted Operating Profit. Of the £758 million announced for last year RM made £416 million of that, GLS £342 million.
https://www.internationaldistributionsservices.com/media/11687/royal-mail-plc-fy-2021-22-results-19-5-22.pdf
I don't now if it was mentioned on here but Royal Mail had to bail out the pension fund a couple of weeks ago by paying the latest monthly contribution early thanks to the turmoil in the markets. I have to be honest and don't know which fund though. I'm in three different pension funds with Royal Mail and I believe another new pension scheme is coming soon.