06/16/2017 – Throughout the country, the Postal Service has launched an all-out assault on our jobs and is blatantly violating the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in their staffing of post offices. The USPS is reducing service to the community and disrupting the lives of postal workers by reducing duty assignments (reversions and abolishments) and issuing excessing notices potentially affecting hundreds of post offices and thousands of employees.
Postal Service is Blatantly Violating the Contract
The APWU and the USPS agreed in Article 37.3.A.1 of the CBA that, “Every effort will be made to create desirable duty assignments from all available work hours for career employees to bid.” This includes hours worked by PSEs. This provision was part of an overall agreement for more APWU jobs.
However, the Postal Service is now ignoring that part of the agreement and instead of utilizing “all available work hours” to create duty assignments, the USPS is now attempting to utilize what they call “earned hours” and “earned duty assignments” to determine the number of duty assignments. “Earned duty assignments” is what the USPS would prefer the number of duty assignments to be and has no basis in the contract.
“We are gearing up for a large fight,” said President Dimondstein. “I know that if we stick together and stay united, then – just like the Stop Staples and contract campaigns – we will be victorious.”
USPS Actions are an Attack on Service
The Postal Service is reducing duty assignments and issuing excessing notices despite the fact that Postal Service is already understaffed as evidenced by the following issues, taking place in many offices around the country:
- Long lines for postal customers at the window
- Delayed mail
- Thousands of Postal Support Employees averaging over 30 hours a week
- High amounts of overtime
- One worker instead of the agreed upon two or three workers staffing DBCS machines
As postal workers and postal customers know from experience, in most offices, the Postal Service is seriously understaffed and causing poor service to the community. Some installation heads are acting with integrity and resisting the unreasonable reductions in duty assignments and service, but many are going along despite the harm to postal workers and the community.
APWU is Fighting Back
The APWU has been implementing a plan to fight back that includes meetings with management at every level, informational pickets to inform the community, and utilization of the grievance procedure.
“I salute the National Clerk Craft Officers for taking the lead on this, with assistance from the Regional Coordinators and the National Business Agents,” said President Dimondstein
Meetings at the national level, including meetings with Postmaster General Megan Brennan, have emphasized the blatant reduction of duty assignments across the country when the duty assignments are clearly needed and also the unprecedented nature of the amount of excessing notices at one time.
Locals are already getting into the fight on the streets. The Baltimore APWU Local held an informational picket at the Main Post Office in Baltimore on June 10 that was attended by postal workers and community members. Other Locals are also preparing for similar actions. Locals wishing to conduct informational pickets should contact the Clerk Craft Division to receive assistance.
The APWU has been conducting Max Duty Assignment Tool (MDAT) training across the country on how to demonstrate new duty assignments whenever management tries to eliminate duty assignments or excess employees. We have designated National Business Agents (NBAs) in each area that are working under the direction of the National Clerk Craft Officers to work with Local and State organizations to develop strong grievances, coordinate our actions, and put our best foot forward in addressing these issues.
A Call to Action
As postal workers we must fight together against the Postal Services ongoing willingness to blatantly violate the contractual agreements they made with us. It is important that postal workers attend their local union meetings where we can learn from each other and work on strategies to slow or stop management’s plans to reduce service to the community and disrupt the workforce. If we come together in an organized manner, we can win a better Postal Service and a better workplace.
For More Information
If you would like to receive information directly from the APWU by text or email, please sign-up at http://www.apwu.org/stay-connected. Check back on apwu.org for more details about this ongoing fight.
“Geared Up”? APWU’s gears were stripped years ago and towed to a junk yard. looked the other way as we were treated no better than one of Uncle Joe Stalin’s Gulag inmates……..then they rub salt into the wound by saying a 1% yearly raise is the best they can do, while po mismanagement gets up to a 10% PFP yearly bonus. APWU SUX…..we have been had. Biller, Burass, Guffy, Diamondstein can all pound salt……..time for a new transmission made by the Teamsters!
I would like to let the workers know that the APWU is not there for you workers. They are there to line their pockets, go on vacations in the name of Union business. They will give you the appearance of working in your behalf, they must because they need your money, in the form of the dues you pay. But do not think they work against the Postal Service in achieving it’s agenda, how could they, it would mean their very jobs. They work along with the Postal Service…proof of my statement can be found in their approval of the house bill 756. So, they will follow the same pattern of lies until, the next generation of paying members are hired…at $8.00 per hour.
A-PEE-U…….want to make yourself useful………..get me a buyout…….so they can hire one of Cliff Guffy/Mike Morris’s 10 dollar wonders. sorry A-PEE-U, this is what you get by trying to get along, to go along. should have been more militant, more confrontational……………you reap what you sow my friends. want to get IOD Megan’s attention……..send a Teamster for a visit with a lead pipe and baseball bat………for a little afternoon tea! remember A-PEE-U Sheeple Strong!
got my 30 in and got my job abolished. use work with one hand , the other one is holding there phone.retiring end of august while i can still walk out without help
got my 30 in . for my service got my job abloshied. pse work with one hand because the other is holding there phone.glad i am leaving soon. retirement while i still can walk out on my own 2 feet.
For all of you complainers and whiners, did you EVER get involved in your local union? Have you EVER filed a grievance or gone to a meeting? Without APWU you would make $8 an hour if you’re lucky with NO benefits! Stop complaining and GET INVOLVED!
anybody but Hilderbeast…..Lock Her Up! dont blame Trump……blame you useless, sissymary union and their crummy 1% yearly raise.I know sheep that have more balls.
How many Postal employees voted for Donald Dump and his Ratpublican cave men? Do you know that you voted to screw yourselves? Do you care ? Your pal just said “He wants rich people to make economic decisions, not poor people” You lack self respect, you know your place! Fight the bastards. The meek will inherit nothing!
to our nalc brothers and sisters be strong be smart vote NO!
It’s too late. You haven’t done nothing about loss of DBCS clerks
Or loss of Thousands of Maint Jobs , What’s next ? APWU is Worthless ,
This has been going on for over 15 years. About time the Union gets “geared up”. I have zero faith that the Union will get anything accomplished here.
Times have changed and a battle that can not be won, but to change with the Times! HINT all on Packages and online shopping.
lock them up
This can’t be the same APWU that is in bed with the Postal Service on postal reform. You know the reform that mandates all postal retiree’s into medicare A & B in order for us to keep our FEHB. OMG, it is the same union. They need our help. Count me out!!
Yes! It is the same union I have paid dues to for 42 years and now treats us old timers like we are insignificant. The same union who is solely focused on new employees and there rights, wages , work hours , and benefits. It is the same union that has the nerve to sell us down the river once again, and agree to force us into paying for health care that will in effect reduce our annuities in retirement. We are already doomed to living below the poverty level as we end our careers, and our union leaders are asking us to happily accept another drastic cut to our benefits . What about our huge contributions and lifetime of dedication to this organization? We are being devasted finacially by the union and management and our union is asking us to be happy about their disgusting remedy to this falsified state of hardship.
The only thing the apwu is geared for is to bend over and take what ever management gives them. Can we get a real union?
I think it would be best for the right outcome,would be getting all the postal unions together to fight this. Nrlca is have a lot of these problems to. It’s time to gang up on PO.
I was one of d employees witch was layed off be cuz lack of wrk.
Uve wrk there 4 1/2yrs.
Never had dis issue.
Here in Jacksonville Fl.
1100 Kings Rd
Nothin happen there never brought to light.
Too much is being ignored.
Can someone just look in 2 wats goin on.
Its bout time someone notice d wrong doin to d Casuals there.
What a shame uneducated personnel who dont know what the hell is going on. Hey mgmt. come out to the streets and see reality.
B.S. If it were t for the APWU, the postal service wouldn’t be going so broke and having to cut corners, hours, duty assignments, etc. PSE’s are PEOPLE too and need hours in order to live and support themselves. And, of course, the postal service prefers them over careers because they’re much cheaper and more flexible. Why pay someone $100 to cut your lawn and when you can pay someone else $20? It’s smart money management and better overall for everyone. Additionally, career employees, especially those in the union, have gotten so lazy. Careers employees are impossible to discipline because of the union, hence call-ins and slow work are the norm. So why $100 for someone to cut your yard in 5 hours at their set time if they even show up at all when you can pay someone $20 to do it in 2 hours at any time? It’s stupid how the union has over complicated the system and destroyed the post office.
’cause the APWU ALWAYS goes to the mat for their membership.
Being a Postal employee I find it ironic and hypocritical that the APWU on one side of their faces cares so much for their mail handlers and clerks while on the other side of their face couldnt care less about maintenance and how Postal Management is continuously allowed to mismanagement and hamper Postal operations across this country. Building Equipment Mechanics across this country especially at Bulk mail facilities are cronically understaffed. Forced to repair facilities with substandard parts if there are any in stock. Provide no training on any chiller or boiler systems. Unrealistic deadlines and constant reversion of jobs. Several years ago Postal Management informed maintenance employees that the Postal Service as a whole would be going to a Run to Fail way of maintenance in all of its facilities. That means run it into the ground and we will fix it when it breaks. Well now that mentality has come to bite the Postal Service in their cans. Perfect example is the main Post Office in downtown Chicago that lost its HVAC system and forced its employees to keep working causing over 30 people to have to be transported to area hospitals for heat related illnesses. Finally it has been rumored inbthe maintenance field that Postal Management and the APWU are in bed together to eliminate BEM s across the country and contract out our jobs to the private sector. So to say its funny that the APWU worries so much about Postal employees jobs is an understatement.
Before other crafts dismiss this as just an APWU problem, we need to be united, especially the NALC with the efforts of Dimondstein to stop management from their outright blatant violation of their contract with the clerks’ union, not to mention every other craft they routinely ignore and cut off at the knees.
Postal management personnel at the levels where these decisions that negatively effect performance, and worst, customer service are horrendously dishonest and have no intention of ever holding up any agreement unless they are absolutely forced too, which usually means repeated lawsuits, OSHA complaints, who knows how many NLRB complaints filed across the country, and customer problems, relayed through media and their Representatives or Senators.
Congress, who is always looking for excuses to attack the USPS doesn’t let this kind of bullshit go unnoticed. Republicans eager to dismantle the USPS and its unions use this gross mismanagement to claim incompetence and dishonesty amongst the highest ranking postal officials, and they are not incorrect. Fortunately many Democrats and some Republicans want to preserve the Service and hold management much more accountable, which is good. As it stands, there are no checks in place to hold anybody from PMG Brennan on down accountable for anything.
The NALC, my union, should be supportive and visible in this latest slap to the face of credibility and competency, as it represents the last line of the service on the street. Carriers often have to try to explain why the service is bad, mail people are depending on that is delayed, or some neighborhoods in some cities going multiple days with no delivery or collections at all!
This is all because management is fudging the budget and stuffing their pockets with money literally stolen from budgets that should be hiring many more people and improving service. Since keeping up accurately with the size of a budget the USPS has is impossible, embezzling at the expense of the long term viability of the Postal Service is easy and it’s rampant. Postal reform should have a truly independent body of enforcement that does more than pathetic “recommendations” from a truly limp branch like the OIG. Only a full time unconnected truly honest committee and/or agency that is focused on postal abuses from money “misallocations”, aka embezzlement to physical and mental abuse of employees and a constant refusal to adhere to labor contracts will ever stop the piss poor way the USPS is operating. However, not being the world’s most gullible person, I expect us to make official contact with space aliens before that ever happens, so I have my tin foil hat ready.
It’s too bad the APWU doesn’t fight this hard against the “reduction” to our Healthcare benefits which “blatantly violates” the promise made to all “Postal” AKA Federal Retirees!!
I never believed the promises made to us when we began our careers would be threatened. But, here we are…… Looks like we are not safe and our retirement is threatened after a lifetime of commitment!!!!!
Happy now, you jackasses who put Trump and the republicans in office to screw the American people. Cut the people ‘s programs and benefits so they can transfer the money to their already rich friends. When will the people of this country learn that theses filty republicans are the enemy of the people?37% of the people in Wisconsin were union workers who voted for republican Walker who turned around to destroy collective bargaining. Unbelievable. NEVER vote republican .NEVER believe their lies,just look at their history ,that says it all. The fools suffer from BUSH AMNESIA!!