Dexterity Qualification Dispute Also Settled
01/13/2016 – The APWU and USPS reached agreement on disputes involving scheme requirements and dexterity qualifications, Clerk Craft Director Clint Burelson has announced.
The disputes arose in February and March 2015, when management unilaterally eliminated scheme requirements and dexterity qualifications from all Clerk Craft duty assignments.
Management’s unilateral action violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the union asserted.
The settlement restores management’s contractual obligation to include scheme requirements on bid duty assignments in accordance with Chapter 3 of the Handbook M-5, Schemes: Construction, Assignment, Training, and Proficiency. Scheme training and dexterity training will be conducted manually until the Postal Service develops training methods, which the APWU will review. The APWU can challenge any changes.
“Many thanks and much appreciation goes to the many members, stewards, and officers who filed grievances and therefore assisted in providing the necessary leverage for Assistant Clerk Craft Director Lamont Brooks and the Clerk Craft to negotiate the favorable settlement,” Burelson said. “This demonstrates once again that what happens at the local level has a direct impact on what we can accomplish at the national level.”
The settlement did not address standard position descriptions that include a scheme requirement in the qualification standard, such as the Level 7 Parcel Post Distributor (Machine). This requirement will continue as before.
Local grievances that were held pending resolution of this dispute “will be resolved in accordance with this agreement and local fact circumstances,” the settlement says. “If the parties are unable to resolve the local cases based on the settlement because they contain issues not covered by the agreement, they may continue pursuing the cases through the grievance procedure.”
An other Opinion Ignored (love that handle) is correct. Its another decision made by management that delays mail by implementing the strategy that bypasses the contract in favor of saving a few bucks on training. It also bypasses and degrades standards for delivery which is just another small stroke hidden within a very large broad stroke to lessen standards overall. This is the same as closing down a Plant and rerouting mail and downgrading delivery standards just on a smaller scale. Every time there is a clerk throwing mail or parcels who does not know the scheme it slows down office time and miss sorts mail within the office. Since they did this ‘no scheme adjustment’ at our office we have a new hold out in front of the supervisors desk called ‘miss sorted packages’ and the hot case is stuffed with miss sorted mail from carriers walking it back to the manual cases, to the point there are extra tubs on the floor for the over flow. They need a clerk to sit and resort the miss sorted mail in the office which is a new handling of mail that was never there before. Clear the hot case before we leave for the street? That is a funny one liner around these parts!
Take the month of December in our office. We have 50+ routes and mgt. cuts clerks in the AM. Ok…well done if you are a manager and you say we saved 60 hours a week using a Part Timer. They all seem like little robots now picking up a parcel walking it over to the scanner and scanning it and then walking over to the correct hold out just like little lemmings. The rub is (and it’s not a small thing) you back up the carriers-as they either have to wait for the DPS to be staged or the parcels to be sorted AFTER we have pull our routes down. So simple math says 60 hours per WEEK is less requires at least 50 hours of time and a half per DAY on the delivery side? I guess Mgt does not know simple math and that 1 and 1/2 extra clerks will get all the mail sorted up before we hit the street at our regular times. The only question is why? Why delay? Just get the mail up and we will do the rest.
I’m a city letter carrier, and this whole business of hiring all this new help in all crafts without proper training for any of them is taking its toll. Not scheme training is a good example of how clueless or just plain indifferent management can be.
Yes, we have those machines that identify packages to their routes, but that machine doesn’t catch them all, including those that don’t have bar codes on them and if a new clerk gets it and nobody with seniority is around, they have to stop to look it up and never take the time to memorize anything. If I were in that situation, I’d look at the street addresses every time and not just put it under the scanner and throw it. What will happen if power fails, as it does sometimes, the program crashes, and only one or two clerks have any clue to the scheme? And if they’re not there, you will have chaos.
And with all the emphasis on parcel growth, at least in our office, could you clerks throwing parcels pick up your misthrows and bouncers? It results in delaying Priority and 1st Class mail because some people are too lazy to go get the parcel and put it in the right tub.
But can you blame them? Management has totally and wholeheartedly abandoned quality service for speed. They want to eliminate positions and make new carriers run and not spend a minute on forwarding or returning mail the right way. Just another day at the USPS.
Amen brothers and sisters! This push for speed only will eventually take it’s toll. Everything is on computer reports and is only about quantity NOT quality! So sad! As one of a small number of Civil-service employees left at my plant I see the writing on the wall unless the USPS does a 180 in how they manage. That is a pipedream, we have virtually no clerks willing to go into management whcich leaves us with mailhandlers, MHA’s or PSE’s they do NOT understand processing and so it goes……
So sad! The most trusted “government” entity is slowly losing the trust of the Americn public and it is happeneing from the inside!