More jobs and shorter week in RM Customer Experience

Postal September 19 2018

Around 1,000 Royal Mail Customer Experience (CE) workers will benefit from the first hour off the working week from the start of next month, after implementation and deployment was agreed between the company and the CWU.

And there is further good news for agency and temporary staff, many of whom will now be employed permanently by Royal Mail after persistent lobbying by the union for these jobs to be converted and brought fully in-house.

Assistant secretary Andy Furey, who leads for the union in CE, reports that the talks with management were initially difficult due to them presenting what he describes as a “unrealistic wish list” of demands.

“Thankfully, we’ve managed to eventually agree a sensible way forward – but initially, progress was slow,” he says, explaining that the company’s opening proposals had included putting weekend working into standard duties and increasing later-working flexibility for example.

In response, the CWU reminded CE bosses that the working week reduction had already been agreed in principle within the Four Pillars and was not dependent on such extreme changes.

“We also expressed our profound concerns over management’s exploitative use of agency workers and pointed out to them that this needed to be urgently addressed in order to comply with the Four Pillars resourcing principles,” Andy continues.

Despite the difficult start, once management got down to serious negotiating, real progress was made both on the working week and on the issue of agency workers and yesterday’s Postal Executive heard the details of the full enabling agreement and gave it their formal approval.

“Our members will benefit with the hour reduction, taken by starting work 15 minutes later at the commencement of four duties each week,” Andy explains,

Joint talks have already commenced under the auspices of ‘Being there when our customers need us’, with the aim of agreeing shift pattern changes for the New Year, with options such as a four-day week or nine-day fortnight having been tabled by the CWU team.

Across the four CE sites – Dearne in Yorkshire, Doxford in Sunderland, Plymouth and Stoke – a total of 75 workers who have either been agency employed or on fixed-term contracts (FTCs) have now been given permanent and direct employment, while a further 36 agency workers have been offered fixed-term contracts directly employed by Royal Mail.

“By combining the conversion of permanent and FTCs, this has the overall effect of raising the directly employed workforce by 14 per cent,” Andy points out, “and we’re anticipating further progress in this area in the near future with around 25 more FTCs being offered at Dearne and Doxford.”

Summing up, he concludes: “We’re pleased to have successfully moved management away from their initial position and secure the implementation of the first hour off the working week in a mutually agreed and fair way.

“And, crucially, we have made considerable progress in getting Customer Experience to be resourced on a much better model.

“Hopefully we will continue to build upon this progress in sibsequent negotiations.”