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Postal Workers Face Pressure to Complete Unrealistic Delivery Routes

Postal workers are facing pressure to complete unrealistic delivery routes because of misuse of software system Pegasus, says CWU.

The CWU today (Thursday) accuses Royal Mail of putting delivery workers under pressure to complete delivery rounds that are too long to complete within normal hours.

Bob Gibson, CWU national official, said: "Royal Mail is using this system to meet financial savings without considering the physical realities of delivery rounds. This is putting pressure on delivery workers and leading to bullying and harassment.

"CWU has an agreement with Royal Mail to jointly review all aspects of Pegasus, but the business has reneged on this and is pushing ahead with damaging changes without input from the union. This is having disastrous consequences on services in some parts of the country.

"We're receiving high volumes of complaints and seeing a deterioration in both industrial relations and service standards. We need Royal Mail to see sense and review this system with the CWU."

Notes on Pegasus

· Pegasus is a software system that originated in Canada. It's now used by many countries including the UK and Belgium. Royal Mail uses the Pegasus Geo Route to plan delivery walks.

· The idea is that by using Pegasus deliveries will be more efficient. However, it is not agreed by the CWU and there are a number of specific issues which are leading to problems in various parts of the country.

· Pegasus has been around in trials for a while but has only been rolled out on a big scale this year.

· A key input which is disputed is the walk speed. Royal Mail uses a general walk speed of 4mph. In Belgium, a much flatter country than the UK, the walk speed used is 2.4mph. The CWU believe this to be unsustainable over the whole delivery which leads to unrealistic delivery rounds. Another key input is the attendance call rate which is too low take account of time needed for signed items.

· In some areas jobs are being lost or changed to part-time as the Pegasus system finds efficiency savings. In other areas overtime is taken away.

· We are now seeing failures across the country because of Pegasus/Georoute. More and more managers are going out and delivering mail, which is not in their job description and they should not be doing. Mail backlogs or consistent returned mail (because an over-estimated workload) have been reported this year in Watford, Enfield, Kiln Farm, Oxford, Coventry, Belfast, Cambridge and Evesham (Worcester) amongst others.