National Agreement covering the Delivery of Election Material
National Agreement covering the Delivery of Election Material
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.
ATTACHMENT