Wednesday 4th July 2018
CWU/RM – Joint Statement Collections – Shorter Working Week Introduction October 2018
Dear Colleagues,
Branches and Representatives will be aware that contained within various sections of the 2018 Guiding Principles Agreement is reference to the reduction of the working week by one hour from October 2018, which for Collection Hubs/Units was contained within section 16.2.3.
RM & CWU have been in discussion to agree how this reduction will be introduced in relation to Collections; taking into account the level of complexity created due to the fact that Collections is no longer a specific function within RMG, with employees aligned to various operational functions. Therefore both parties accept the vast majority of employees will receive the relevant reduction in the working week due to the processes that have been agreed for Delivery, Mail Centres/Processing and/or Area Distribution through being tagged to a parent office in those functions.
As a result of analysis of data that is held from previous reductions in the working week, Royal Mail believes there are 104 Designated Collection Hubs/Units (Annex A) that are required to undertake a review of current arrangements to enhance efficient resourcing to workload, which will cover all current resourcing solutions and comply with existing agreements across the relevant functions. Both parties have accepted that the total figure and the offices listed in Annex A could change as a result of local knowledge.
As such we have agreed the attached National Joint Statement which will allow for local discussions to commence immediately with a target completion date of the 27th July 2018 to produce a jointly agreed outcome.
The Collections Manager and CWU Representative at each site will document and sign off the agreed arrangements for the deployment of the 1st hour reduction in the working time and the jointly agreed approach is as follows:
- All current revision activity planned within PBS2 Phase 1 units will have the 1 hour reduction included within those revision proposals.
- In addition to the above all units not in Phase 1, will complete a review of workload via existing P107 line charts and establish how and where the one hour reduction can be made against all full time duties. Both parties have agreed it should not be necessary for full scale revisions to ensure the reduction of the hour and that adjustments can be made based on local knowledge and through local variations to the working days across the week.
- It is anticipated that in most cases the reduction in working time will be applied to the start of duty time, however adjustments may be made to the end of duty times where this is considered to be mutually beneficial and is agreed locally. Where consideration is given to the reduction in working time being applied to the end of the duty, both parties have agreed where this could impact on individual allowances then other solutions should be found to ensure this isn’t the case.
Where either party is unable to agree, the matter will be progressed and resolved by means of the IR Framework as a matter of urgency and any issues with the interpretation, application and deployment of this Joint Statement will be raised with the signatories for resolution.
Any queries to the content of the above, please contact the Outdoor Department, reference: 532, email address: outdoorsecretary@cwu.org.
Or:
Davie Robertson, Assistant Secretary, reference: 722.01, email: dwyatt@cwu.org or shayman@cwu.org.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Baulch – Assistant Secretary
Davie Robertson – Assistant Secretary
