It is the democratic right of Branches to make appropriate recommendations to you the membership when any National agreement is being proposed by our National Headquarters. Our Branch has always participated in democracy and in particular making recommendations on any agreement which affects our local membership.
It is the unanimous view of your elected Branch Representatives that the Royal Mail Pay & Modernisation agreement should be rejected and that you should vote no when you receive your ballot paper.
We do not intend to bad mouth our National union, however we believe that in this instance the agreement is just not good enough and the Postal Executive have got it wrong. The following bullet points are reasons why we should reject the deal:
- An average of 2.7% pay rise over 2 Years [well below inflation]
- 1.5% in April [not guaranteed] in return for full flexibility and only paid on an office by office basis when you have met Royal Mails requirements for flexibility.
- No mention of maintaining full time employment [The Unions continual reference to 40000 job losses]
- “Longs and shorts,” management have the opportunity to vary the hours you work to satisfy the traffic profile. “For example individuals could be scheduled to work 7 hours on a Tuesday and 9 hours on a Friday.” Whilst contractual hours will not change you are at the whim of management as to how your working life will impact upon your social-domestic life.
- Too much of the agreement is unresolved deferring to local negotiations and working groups. It is not acceptable to operate like this as the national agreement should have had clear defined boundaries.
- “Use of new technology” is an enormous subject with vast implications for all of us. The PEC gives it six lines imploring us to give it “Full co-operation and support for trial and subsequent deployment”. This is extremely vague on such an important subject that has the potential to wipe out thousands of jobs.
- “Efficiency” will mean the same amount of work being done by fewer people and gives Royal Mail huge savings potential whilst this again has the potential to shed jobs. This notwithstanding the cessation of the ESOS [Employees Share Of Savings] and using £175:00 to fund backpay from April-October 2007 which is our money anyway.
- Still no agreement on door to door which should have been dealt with in these talks
- “Flexible Summer staffing” will mean that Royal Mail will allow more people to take leave but their duties will be absorbed at no cost into existing workload [At no cost to the business]
- Whilst Headquarters tell us that pensions have been separated from the pay agreement we believe they are still linked. Our National Union have AGREED a joint statement that we believe will create an inferior pension scheme in which existing and future members of this Union will be considerably worse off.
- The working groups and enablers have to much emphasis with not enough substance and clearly concede to some very important principles in extremely short and desperate timescales [Jan/April 2008] for implementation including:
- Varying your hours by 30minutes
- Doing other peoples work in your own duty time
- Deployment of new technology [with no reward]
- Working in nearby offices
- Monthly pay [with no reward]
- Annualised hours [Total flexibility with no reward]
- M.T.S.F to be renegotiated [Royal mail want to pay you less to leave the industry]
- “Relationships” will review this Unions whole approach with the employer on such things as negotiation, Consultation and decision making. [Royal Mails continual attack on our union]
The agreement has not achieved:
- The protection of our final salary Pension scheme
- A shorter working Week
- An inflation pay rise
- Control over flexibility
- Protection of the maximum 3 & half hour delivery span
- The closure of nights in delivery offices
- The protection of Sunday collections
The agreement lacks substance, leaves far too much at local level with no guiding principles, and concedes to a point of giving the employer TOTAL flexibility.
Please use your vote to reject the agreement, we know this is a difficult decision but we cannot allow an agreement to come in because “We have no other option”, we have. We are at the most important juncture in the history of this Business and in our union….REJECT THE DEAL AND VOTE NO.
