The Meadow

4 day week boys

Its a coming

comment by Blarmy (U14547)
posted 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
4 day week boys

Its a coming
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It should be, but I don't think it is, the government quickly needs to get its head around how we use automation to reduce the burden of work, whilst ensuring that wages remain high enough that people can contribute to the economy by buying, cars, houses, food, white goods, TVs, Mobiles, Netflix etc.

Currently it's still just automation = Job losses, which might be fine with a much better progressive tax system and a UBI. But the current system won't be fit for purpose.

Smarter people than me need to figure out a way to make it work!

I think theres a chance we have to reassess what retirement entails at some point too

The idea of set national retirement age has an interesting history

comment by Blarmy (U14547)
posted 20 hours, 36 minutes ago
I think theres a chance we have to reassess what retirement entails at some point too

The idea of set national retirement age has an interesting history
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Is it fair to expect people who labours physically to retire at the same age as someone who works in an office?

I saw the pay demands from the Doctors union today.

That's pretty staggering, do all sectors now go after the lost payrises Vs inflation since 2008?

You are involved in energy journalism aren't you NPE?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/28/fracking-firms-could-be-eligible-for-uk-tax-breaks-worth-billions

That's pretty staggering, especially the discrepancy between ONS subsidies and Renewables.

Sorry - just read the above. The British Geological Survey on fracking was due two weeks back but then the Tories putsched Boris so here we are still in limbo land.

I am not surprised as you are by this. The Government is desperate to incentivise investment into the domestic energy sector and ramp up supplies over the next 1-2 years. Prices are global, but supplies are not, and shoring up energy reserves is seen as key - even if it means offering quite a slimy and unfair deal to fracking, the logic is the costs involved in an energy crunch are much much worse.

NB - I personally don't think fracking is especially viable, and would prioritise burning planning impediments to onshore wind instead.

Royal Mail postal workers to go on strike for four days over pay, union announces

^ Insert on the picket line?

comment by NPE - Turgid Tuchelball (U22712)
posted 4 minutes ago
Royal Mail postal workers to go on strike for four days over pay, union announces

^ Insert on the picket line?
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I will be, on half the days at least 👍 with sporadic breaks at the pub opposite 🤣

Nice.

My colleague is interviewing some posties tomorrow about it.

Is it the pay or the terms for the pay that are most objectionable?

5.5 per cent rise in bare terms is not the worst offer made by a cynical company in recent months, but I recognise they likely attached a lot of 'modernisation' strings to it.

comment by NPE - Turgid Tuchelball (U22712)
posted 1 day, 2 hours ago
Nice.

My colleague is interviewing some posties tomorrow about it.

Is it the pay or the terms for the pay that are most objectionable?

5.5 per cent rise in bare terms is not the worst offer made by a cynical company in recent months, but I recognise they likely attached a lot of 'modernisation' strings to it.
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Sorry to be late back on this.

We actually have two ballots live, the CWU believes they should be dealt with separately, last year the CWU and Royal Mail agreed a comprehensive multi year year modernisation plan, the implementation of year 1 is still causing a logistical nightmare and when OFCOM finally investigate this calendar year, it's going to be a massive fine for royal mail, they increased duty sizes by 20% and frankly, most offices are failing 10-15% of their workload.

With that in mind, and the fact they had a flight path for modernisation the CWU sees it as two issues:

1. Pay shouldn't be linked to already agreed changes, it should be no strings to reflect posties delivering their two most profitable years on record, and reflect the fact they have pushed their dividend yield to double the UK average, paying out £550m in the last year. (Bear in mind we got a 1% wage rise and a £100 bonus for delivering double the workload over the pandemic, as a comparison supermarkets saw 11% wage rises and over £1000 bonuses)

2. They already have an agreement for modernisation, but these strings go above and beyond that, and actually skip performance targets to year 3, even though we aren't hitting year 1. We have a separate ballot on this issue, the results will be announced In two weeks time I think.


But to also address the 5.5% payrise, the Royal mail statements include a lot of Gaslighting... We have had 2% forced on us, there's a further 1.5% if we agree to a raft of changes* with the remaining 2% being made up of a "bonus scheme" that they haven't really given us, or the CWU any agreement on, in fact they couldn't detail the proposals, and how they would work/when it would be paid. The loose outline is that we would be paid 2% of our wage as a bonus if we hit the office targets (as I said earlier, year 3 on the flight plan they agreed just 12 months ago and are now setting fire to)

If you also see in the news that we are "Losing £1m a day" that's misinformation too, we are still making circa £400m profit a year, it's just around £350m less than we made during the pandemic (largely because the government are no longer sending out lateral flows, partially because of the fact people aren't buying stuff)


* Changes include:

2 hour later start times, which means working till 5pm, posing a problem in summer: working in greater heat + winter: working in the dark

A loss of our sick pay entitlement, we walk a half marathon 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, it's an immensely physical job and the sick rate has increased around 30% everytime they increase our delivery span by an hour.. they want to increase it by another 1.5 with these changes increasing round sizes 20-25%

No more overtime pay, any overtime done will be put in an "overtime bank" which you can claim back as holiday (but only if there's space in the office, and you can only carry a week forward)

A requirement that you complete the assigned workload on any given day regardless of the amount (consider this in the context of the last point - no overtime pay) this is also an issue when you have large imbalances in the office between rounds, which you can never get right, sometimes rounds just get more parcels than others, or mailings, or water bills, council housing newsletters, monthly army letters (we have a barracks here) to every address etc etc.

They also want to enforce on us "annualised hours" whereby we would be working 2 hours less a week during the summer months, and 2 hours more a week during the winter months, but have our pay averaged out over the year.

They want to gut the ill health retirement scheme, which is primarily used by workplace injuries, it's costing them too much because their continual increase in our workload is knackering people's bodies

They want to bring in "postal cadets" an apprenticeship scheme to reduce the cost of reserve staff, it's basically 0 hours for young folk.

They want to exclude all new entrants from the "drive to 35" scheme, meaning they will work 40 hours for the same pay as we receive.

They want to force us to work Sundays, and also take away the Sunday premium rate they currently pay volunteers.

It's not even an exhaustive list, but apologies for the lengthy post 👍