Pathway to Change: Royal Mail Fleet and Royal Mail Engineering
Royal Mail Group (EMP) January 18 2021
Monday 18th January 2021
Special Facebook Live session at 6pm this evening
Hi, I’m Carl Maden, CWU acting assistant secretary, and I hope you’ll take some time out to join us this evening and hear about the new Pathway to Change national agreement, how it will affect you, the opportunities it presents and why the union is asking you to vote YES to the agreement in the forthcoming ballot.
It’s been said many times, the past 10 months have been extraordinary times, however, what hasn’t been said enough, is how extraordinary you, Royal Mail Fleet and Royal Mail Engineering workers have been throughout this period.
During the pandemic you have continually kept machines and site equipment in full working order and kept thousands of vehicles on the road during an unprecedented time, when volumes have – in some units, quite literally – gone through the roof!
You will recall this time last year, we were preparing for a national strike ballot against company plans to slash thousands of jobs, tear up existing national agreements, split up this company and dictate rather than negotiate on future change.
Proposals to drastically reduce the company’s operations left Engineering and Fleet members deeply worried about their futures and facing the prospect of either losing their jobs or being forced into unreasonable relocations.
The plan to hive-off and separate Parcelforce sparked real worries where other, smaller parts of Royal Mail Group including Engineering and Fleet, could face a similar threat in the future, whilst senior management’s refusal to guarantee long-established job security and the Managing the Surplus Framework agreement (MTSF) caused many to fear their rights could be under attack.
Thanks to your determined stand in last year’s national ballot, the company realised it could not move forward without the agreement of the CWU.
Your magnificent efforts during this national public health crisis proved once again the sheer value of what we do across the UK and the vital importance of the service you provide to this country.
So, after a change of leadership at the top of the company and following lengthy negotiations between the CWU and Royal Mail Group at the highest level, we now have the framework of a new national agreement – Pathway to Change.
Across the Group, we have achieved an excellent pay rise and a re-affirmed commitment to job security, MTSF and the shorter working week (SWW), as well as ensuring Parcelforce stays as part of Royal Mail Group. All change will be negotiated and there are no mail centre or RDC closures planned.
For our Engineering members, the changed parcel strategy will now mean every mail centre – where practicable – will have a parcel sorting machine, which removes the threat of unreasonable relocations.
A new Engineering Resourcing Tool (ERT) has been agreed and is being jointly introduced, which will mean improvements for you in terms of capturing workload and is a far more robust approach to determining staffing levels.
We also have a Machine Moves (MMA) agreement, which ensures full CWU involvement and is essential in an environment where management seek to remove or move equipment. Clearly, we need to ensure the machinery is available for our engineering members to maintain in line with the ERT.
In Fleet, we were presented with a unilateral announcement of a 45 headcount reduction and we challenged this vigorously and robustly. We exposed the lack of science and the lack of any business rationale behind those numbers and we’re glad to say Fleet management have thought again and agreed to meaningful negotiations with us on this, where we are confident we will complete an agreement of growth, not reduction.
Our case has stressed the unreasonable levels of outsourcing of work. We have robustly investigated the reasons for this and we have insisted on the return of work in-house where possible – as well as calling for appropriate training and upskilling where necessary.
Training and upskilling will be as important as we go forward with the ‘green agenda’, which will involve a gradual and phased transition away from petrol and diesel and towards electric, bio-fuels and compressed gas.
These same essential principles will guide our agenda within Royal Mail Engineering too – maximising in-house work and putting together appropriate training packages for necessary upskilling as we grow the business.
These are key challenges for us and it is my view our agreement gives us the best possible basis on which to build this positive future.
I hope you will join me this evening at 6pm to hear more details and hopefully take the opportunity to contribute your views and get your questions answered.
I hope to see you later.
Royal Mail Group Agreement Q&A Sessions: Week 2
Monday 18th January, 6pm-7pm
Carl Maden takes your questions on Fleet and Engineering.
Wednesday 20th January, 7pm-8pm
Andy Furey takes your questions on Admin, MDEC and Customer Experience.