LTB 244/25 - Royal Mail Property & Facilities Solutions Limited and CWU Agreement on Progression within the Technical Pay Structure
- Angela Wright CWU Branch Communications Officer
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
No. 244/25
Dear Colleague
Royal Mail Property & Facilities Solutions Limited and CWU Agreement on Progression within the Technical Pay Structure
As part of the 2024/25 Pay Agreement PFSL and the CWU committed to review the Technical Pay Structure in the Engineering function. The aim was to conclude this by the pay review date of April 2025.
Despite our best efforts and for one reason or another this deadline was not met and therefore a further commitment was given in this year’s pay agreement to finalise a next steps/progression agreement by 31st October 2025.
A draft agreement was reached with the business on 29th October 2025; we then met with the National and Regional PFSL Engineering representatives on 30th October 2025 where we gave an overview of the draft agreement, followed by a Postal Executive meeting on 4th November 2025, where the agreement was unanimously endorsed. The agreement is attached to this LTB.
There is also a structure and skills matrix document which requires the technical knowledge of our National and Regional Representatives to input into and change where necessary. This document has been shared with them.
The issue of progression has been floating around not just for the last two pay deals but going back a number of years and the Union at the same time had an objective to try and harmonise and assimilate our Building Fabric Maintenance Engineers onto the main Technical Grading Structure. Our BFM Engineers are multi-skilled engineers who carry out such tasks ranging from toilet blockages to maintaining roller shutter doors etc. Our other engineers carry out more specialist tasks such as gas, electrics and air conditioning maintenance etc.
BFM Engineers are multi-disciplined and multi-skilled but they are also on the grading structure in their own right, but are generally paid less than the specialist individually skilled technicians. The nature of the multi-skilled, multi-disciplined grade means that there is a disparity between the unskilled/low-skill work and higher skilled work performed by the individuals within this grade. It is fair to say that this disparity leads to some difficulties for not only the individual but the Business in not being able to self-deliver maintenance tasks without the need to sub-contact. Harmonisation is therefore a priority objective for us and colleagues will see from the attached agreement we have agreed a quite modest number of hybrid roles with this role being assimilated onto the Tech 2 Entry pay point.
The hybrid role will in the first instance be trialled but will also be used alongside the overall Progression Agreement which will hopefully begin the process of full assimilation into the Tech Structure for any individual who wishes to progress.
Our other objective over a number of years was the ability for those on the technical grade to progress. Our engineers do pick up qualifications and upskill themselves but then are unable to progress onto higher pay rates because of the lack of a progression agreement.
We now believe that we have provided our Reps with the agreement to enable them to identify the gaps in resource and workload allocation, through a proper strategic involvement process and proper local resourcing plan which will allow our engineers to progress if needed.
Finally, the Business has a problem in recruiting gas engineers, and in particular specialist gas engineers which means a lot of these tasks and work is sub-contracted and outsourced. We believe that the introduction of the new Tech 1 grade and upgrading for some Tech 2 to Tech 1 grades will go a long way to solving this problem.
In conclusion, we believe we have achieved our objective of reaching an agreement which provides a clear progression route, assimilation and harmonisation for our BFM Grades, solves the problem of a lack of skilled gas engineers, and provides the framework for our local reps to be fully involved in the strategic planning going forward.
Any queries in relation to this LTB should be directed to Heidi Maughan at hmaughan@cwu.org
Yours sincerely
Bobby Weatherall
A/Assistant Secretary
Comments