SOUTH WEST WALES AMALGAMATED BRANCH

1)         Introduction  

This agreement between Royal Mail and the CWU is in line with the commitment made in the Pay and Major Change Agreement dated 19 December 2003. It introduces a new national standard payment and procedure for the delivery of election material as required by that agreement (see Appendix B section 4 sub Para d).  

2)         Scope of this Agreement  

This agreement covers all addressed and un-addressed free election communications marked “ELECTION COMMUNICATION” and Poll Cards (excluding Proxy Poll Cards). It replaces all previous national and / or local agreements covering the delivery of election materials and poll cards from the date of this agreement.  

3)         Delivery Specification  

Addressed items: delivery to take place within 3 working days from receipt (including Saturdays). (Except certain elections relating to Europe where it may be extended to 7 days from receipt.)  

Un-addressed items: delivery to take place within 7 working days from receipt (including Saturdays).  

The impact of delivering this letter traffic will be excluded from normal workload calculations.  

All other operational issues will be dealt with at local level in line with the IR Framework.  

4)         Payments  

All existing local payments covering the delivery of election material as stated in paragraph 2 above will remain in place, and in accordance with this agreement, with the following exceptions.

1. The minimum payment for delivering election material will be 3p per item.

2. The maximum payment for delivering election material will be 6.6p per item.

3. All hours based schemes will be converted to pence per item schemes and then the criteria in 1 and 2 above will be applied. Where delivery offices have introduced a SDD revision since the last delivery of election material then the following formula will be applied prior to the criteria in 1 and 2 above being applied.  

 4. In those Units where there are two payments e.g. 4.5p for the first three parties and 1.67p for additional parties the minimum payment will become 3p with any payments over this amount being retained.

5. In those Units where there is a mixture of hours and pence per item based payments the process in 4) 3. above will be followed for the hours based element, with the process in 4) 4. above then being applied.  

Where election material items exceed 20g in weight a further 0.5p will be payable.  

These revised payments apply from the date of this agreement and cover all election material as identified above. They are payable on an individual basis, and are not affected by any collective criteria/responsibility.  

5)         Quality Commitment  

The payments are based on the requirement that all election material will be delivered in accordance with the delivery specification set out in paragraph 3. Where the specification is not achieved for any party/candidate then the payment for that party/candidates material will not be due.

6)         Special Circumstances  

It is jointly recognised that Royal Mail has a legal obligation to secure the delivery of election material for all nominated candidates and parties.  

Whilst it is expected that delivery will be made by the individual due to undertake the particular delivery, local management will deal sensitively and sympathetically with genuine requests to deviate from this arrangement.  

Such cases may arise as a result of personal circumstances or beliefs or where an individual believes that delivery of a particular item may incur personal risk.   

If such instances arise alternative measures will be used to secure delivery.  These may include the use of volunteers from within the office or neighbouring offices to cover more than one delivery or, as a last resort, the use of supplementary resource.  

Both parties undertake to co-operate fully in the application of these principles and in resolving any difficulties that may arise surrounding the delivery of election material.  

Signed …………………………    Signed………………………………

On behalf of Royal Mail                 On behalf of Communication Workers Union  

Signed…………………………..     Signed………………………………

On behalf of Royal Mail                   On behalf of Communication Workers Union  

Date …………………………       Date………………………….

Copyright © CWU South West Wales Branch 2008