I am told by a newsagent that today’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper weighs 900 grams. The July 2006 Nery report, an OH&S report commissioned by the ANF in 2006 and provided to News Limited that same year, recommends a newspaper weight of no greater than 600 grams. On the basis of the recommendations in this report, News Limited would know that today’s newspaper would be considered by the report’s well qualified author to be unsafe to deliver.
The Sunday Telegraph bulks delivered to newsagencies weighed 16.2 kilograms. This is 1.2 kilograms above the recommended safe weight of packages.
Newsagents have an obligation to provide a safe and healthy environment for employees. The only safe way to deal with today’s Sunday Telegraph would be to deliver in two bundles. Such a move is impractical and uneconomic. So, newsagents and employees deliver the overweight newspaper.
This problem needs to be addressed by publishers since they control the weight of newspapers. Indeed, it should have been addressed in 2006 when the report was first presented.
This issue needs to be aired and debated and a solution found for the health of newsagents and their employees. Unfortunately, you will not read about this in newspapers.
The Saturday SMH is always much worse. As you say it is neither practical or economical to wrap it in 2 halves. What is the answer? who knows.
now and then out of interest we have put the bulks of the Sunday telegraphs on the scales at its worst one reading was 21.9 kg however its not uncommon for the bulks to range from 16kg upto 20kg. We have several times mentioned this to our news limited rep to which he indicated it was a common concern with newsagents. However nothing seems to have changed.
However heavy bulks are just limited to newspapers at times we have recieved heavy bulked wraps of magazines.
Sadly it is a wider industry problem and dispite informing companies time and time again nothing happens.
I am not sure what you mean as a problem. Is it the bulk that is heavy? or the individual paper. Which means that there are too many per bulk?
The papers are too heavy if they are above 600 grams. Bulks are too heavy if they are above 15 kgs.
This is an OH&S minefield, some agent somewhere is going to get sued by a driver with a sore arm and it will be an argument from then on as to whether the agent is liable. The newspapers need to have limits set by national OH&S regulations and stick to them.
Larger bulks also have transporting issues in terms of how coming loose if they are too big. Yesterdays bulks with their plastic covering over them rubbing against plastic ties can sometimes slip off with the resultant mess of papers everywhere. Murphys Law dictates that this will occur at the most inconvenient time and place creating even extra work to pick them up.
We have juniors in both our newsagencies on weekends and some of them can barely lift them. I do the lifting on weekends to avoid any problems but I think it should be addressed as it is only a matter of time before someone somewhere in the delivery chain will claim an injury.
I hate it when they’re too heavy. It makes it too easy to fall off my bike.
training wheels will fix that problem or a wheelie bar
On a related topic, it’s also heavy due to the increase in amount of inserts to the basic paper.
When papers are late, reasons have been cited that there were problems with the insertions, of their machinery not coping well.
Indeed with the Weekend Australian in metro Sydney, that is so much of a recurring problem in the last 7mths with the missing magazine.
It’s also a “pot luck” situation when there are magazines, ie only perhaps a few within the bundle has the magazine insert.
We had to cope abuse from annoyed customers week on week. (what do they think, that we love to go through each paper to take out the beloved mag!!!!)
When we ring at 6am to ask for replacement magazines only to hand out, News Ltd is not able to comply at all.
Hope someone at News Ltd out there is reading this and act on it.
So far all our feedback to rep/circulation are falling on deaf ears.
Yep, we are also telling customers that we’re tired of doing QNP’s / News’s QA for them, but every week, we have to.
Rep doesn’t give a toss.
And training wheels would be good, but they’d get jarred off with the steepness of driveways/footpaths to the road. Lost a headlamp this morning due to this. Still beats using the vehicle every day.
While we’re on about chucking heavy papers, we received a diagram of a delivery customer’s yard this morning, depicting ‘perfect’ landing places, and places to avoid. A third party dropped this in. We asked him to pass on that we will continue to do our best to throw where she wants, but will not be getting off the bike, in case there is a vehicle where she wants it thrown, and that we are unable to see through high brick walls. The 9.6 cents just will not stretch to the purchase of xray glasses or compensate for any resulting loss of momentum. Sorry.
More front than Myer.
The problem is not just NSW and Qld; Victoria’s Sunday Herald Sun was 800gms on the weekend……my drivers pointed it out to me.
Newsagents need address this issue with their relevent association or No pressure will come to bare on the publishers. This has been an ongoing battle for 7+ years with no results.
We raise it, it gets swept under the carpet and filed in the too hard basket!
Vaughan, as a responsible employer you cannot permit something this heavy to be thrown.
Reps and publishers ‘not giving a toss’ is the direct result of no national representation. ANF where are you?
So do we not do any home deliveries when the papers are too heavy? Then refer all the complaints to to News & Fairfax? Watch them have us up for breach of contract in no time!
Or you split to an extra delivery. The problem with that is that you are not paid for an extra delivery.
The problem with an extra delivery is that drivers have to throw more and this brings on more OH&S difficulties.
It’s a messy situation. The ANF has been aware of this since 2006.
Shayne,
Interesting scenario this one. If it is outside of OH&S to throw it, the publishers (or you) cannot force it to be thrown, contract or no contract, that would be against the law. Your agency agreement would also ask you to make sure that your procedures are ‘safe’.
Our agency agreements do indeed state that. I’m also guessing that should push come to shove, OHS laws would prevail.
Y&G, absolutely! OH&S laws and regulations will take precedence over any contract. As employers, our obligation to the health and safety of our employees is more important than any supplier contract.
We seem to have this issue with Courier Mail weekend papers all the time. The drivers have weighed some papers at almost a kilo.
On a complete left tangent:
I think a little credit needs to be given to our poor delivery drivers. They are forever being blamed by customers about late papers, missed papers, the paper being in the tree, or next door or that the paper hit poor old Pebbles who is 110 (years old) in the shade and was sleeping quietly on the verandah till that “nasty ” delivery driver threw the paper – Gee while throwing a kilo paper one handed out of a car window, I honestly don’t know why his/her aim isn’t better.
Our delivery drivers wrap their own papers and if the papers arrive late from the distributor they work their little butts off to try to still get it out on time (or at least before 6am).
So well done to the delivery drivers /paper boys-girls of our nation – your doing a good job!!
It’s like most things B, you never hear from the happy customers only the whingers.
But who’s going to be brave enough to make a real-time (4am!) decision not to deliver when overly large papers arrive on our doorsteps? Then pay the drivers /deliverers for turning up? Then contend with customers who just want their paper? Then explain to their rep why he’s copping calls about it? Then wait yonks for the court (not to mention paying for court!) to say you’re in the right?
It’s not enough to fantasise about this if you’ve already sent someone out – or have set out yourself – with them.
Maybe new contracts should include provision for extra payments for double-handling in such instances, including wage time. If there was representative backing of agents, it could be possible. Why hasn’t the ANF acted more swiftly on this, given it’s a wellbeing, hence livelihood issue?
What would you do? Too late once someone’s hurt themselves, yet it’s too costly, and risky for throwers to make each paper deliverable if they do need to be split.
Maybe it’s a question we each need to collar our reps on. Something like ‘If your paper is over so many grams, and OH&S says it’s too heavy, what will you do if we refuse to deliver it?’ And keep at them until they give us an answer. They need to be made to give a toss.
I was asked by the ANF in 2006 what I would do.
My answer then was that I would immediately seek a vaariation to the current contract to deal with the weight issue.
At the time of proposing this, I would provide approproate state and federal government departments with visibility of the issue.
I would also invesitgate the process for serving notice on a supplier which may cause me to breach OH&S rules.
Finally, I would start an education campaign across the counter about fat newspapers. I suspected that consumers would be as unhappy about these as the OH&S ‘police’.
My complaint with Sunday Tele is less on the weight but more on the actual time they arrive: 5:30am. We have to sit and wait for the paper to show up. Numerous threats to the area manager with no results…..sigh
Mark your response on how the the ANF should have handled this is spot on. This is what newsagents should expect of their leaders. The ANF clearly disagreed. We should ask them how their approach has worked over the last three years.
todays sunday telegraph in NSW is gigantic, i have not yet put one on scales (i will when the deli next door opens and update).
there is 17 in each bulk, and with the amount of inserts, they are falling appart all over the place.
there is a free (over the counter) gardening magazine with todays tele also, im not sure why they want us newsagents to distribute this, as one more insert would not have made much difference.
Yesterday’s courier Mail (insert only) was 16 to a bundle.
Must get some scales one of these days..
sunday telegraph – sunday 25 oct just weighed in at 910 grams
Did anyone else count how many were in each bulk of Sunday Telegraph ?
I had one bulk with 17. The rest had 16.
910 grams is unsafe. News Limited knows this.
Bulks were well over 15kg also.
heavy papers late delverys whats new
I find it funny that they don’t mind delivering us heavy bundles but if my returns are “too heavy” or the bundles “too big” they cut the string and leave them for the wind and crows to distribute all over the car park.