01/13/2015 – USPS Service Cuts Disrupt Postal Workers’ Lives
When postal officials lowered “service standards” on Jan. 5, they didn’t just slow down America’s mail: They set in motion a process that is causing serious disruption in the lives of thousands of hard-working postal employees. As management reconfigures mail processing, they are also causing massive reassignments and shift changes for workers.
“It’s an outrage,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “Postal bureaucrats are virtually eliminating overnight delivery of first-class mail and periodicals, slowing down all mail delivery across the country, and jeopardizing the future of our great national treasure. At the same time, they’re causing major upheaval in the lives of workers.
“In implementing the changes, they ignored the pleas of 51 senators and 178 members of the House, who asked for a one-year moratorium on the reduction in service standard and the closure and consolidation of mail processing facilities,” Dimondstein said. “They disregarded the warnings of the USPS Office of Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Postal Regulatory Commission, which raised serious concerns about delayed mail. Management even overlooked the concerns of some mailing industry trade associations.
“They also ignored the demands of postal unions and the hundreds of thousands of workers we represent,” Dimondstein added.
“Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is ending his reign the way he began – undermining, degrading, and weakening the public Postal Service he was supposed to lead, and spitting in the eyes of tens of thousands of proud postal employees.
Responsibility for the upheaval in the lives of postal workers rests squarely on his shoulders,” the union president said.
“The APWU has fought long and hard to stop the destructive changes from taking effect, and we intend to keep up the fight. Our rallying cry, ‘Standing Up and Fighting Back,’ doesn’t mean we will win every battle. But if we don’t wage the struggle, we are guaranteed to lose,” he noted.
“The struggle must continue on many fronts,” Dimondstein said. “The APWU – from the national officers to members on the work floor – must renew our efforts to win support for postal legislation that restores the previous service standards. We must fight for better service and better jobs when contract negotiations get underway in February, and we must act in concert with our many allies who are demanding a vibrant public postal service for generations to come.”
END GAME GETS NEARER!!!
Oh know, please stop disrupting all of the APWU workforce lives!!! This guy is a Nut Job Extraordinaire! Management is bringing back Tour 2 Schedules here…Thank god I can finally have a normal schedule that coincides with the rest of my family.
Does anyone know how I can get OUT of the union? This article proves what i’ve always felt….they do NOT have me in mind.
Just go to work at Walmart. I am sure they will have your best interest in mind!!!
What is up with this 4am thing. We are having to carrier route containers of mail because of the no DPSing after 4am. This is costing the USPS tons of money in overtime because of some monkeys rear end that knows nothing about the mail is making decisions.
Place is so bad ~~~~ in 38 years I only knew of 2 out of several thousand that left voluntarily and one begged to come back 18 months later. The unions lie and the employees know they are lied to but want to believe so they repeat the BS. Sheep. The unions do not care about the employees or the PO, only about the preservation of their cushy lifestyle. just keep the dues money coming, fewer employees is not a problem, just raise dues!
The union and management never work e d together to make usps a 1st class company in all the years that I worked there. I blame both party’s for where the usps is now.
Different agendas…..USPS runs a business regardless of what certain people will tell you….the APWU needs to maintain their coffers full with dues money in an era where the labor force is reducing. The APWU has no answer for the loss of business other than to say it doesn’t exist. They have no answer for anything for that matter however, they need to do something otherwise they won’t be able to draw a retirement from their Union Officer Only Retirement Fund which are paid for courtesy of dues money. But you can’t retire and draw from that well buddy…..you only fund it so they can double and triple dip. Life is indeed well for them on your dime of course. Every dog has its day!
Until now I refrained from on line bill paying and paperless billing.
Unfortunately now, the post office is forcing my hand to start paying on line to insure my payments are made on time. The post office is no longer the dependable service we relied on.
Its a TRAIN WRECK IN TRAVERSE CITY MI!!! If their intention
was to delay the mail they have exceeded all expectations!
Someone should be fired for this!! OOOPS I mean promoted!
Don’t believe the propaganda about Privatization of USPS, that’s just a union tactic to protect revenue from members’ dues. USPS has reduced employee numbers by hundreds of thousands over the past several years and this has caused the unions to lose thousands of dues paying members. When in doubt, follow the money. The unions are using scare tactics to try to protect their revenue from member dues and could give a rat’s hinny about the actual members. It’s all about the money, folks.
Fact: Mail is still being processed and delivered same as it always has with a whole lot fewer postal employees making it happen. No more bloated union postal workforce. Other Federal government agencies should take heed from the successful downsizing of USPS and follow suit. Think of the savings in taxes if every bloated federal agency downsized to the same degree as USPS. There would be hundreds of billions of dollars in savings that Congress and the President could squander on pork.
If you were truly innocent you wouldn’t have lost your 2 years of back pay. (sounds interesting, tell us how that came about) And besides that, the union has to represent everyone, if you think you’ve been wrongly treated, seek a lawyer and sue your local for mis-representation!
The Trenton Metro Area is corrupt. I was misrepresented by a union business agent. I am loosing my home. I was innocent. I look forward to going to calling every representative in the Oversight Committee until I get answers to why the union took away my 2 years back pay. I am a Woman and Black. This union local is racist. I will continue to speak out and will get other victims to speak also.
Message to all postal workers: If this doesn’t ring a bell in your heads that you all need to start looking for other opportunities I don’t know what will. #imjustsaying
everyone wants to condemn the PO when they try to do things to save $, but yet no one ever has a better idea. the union brass all squeal when something will affect their number of members, but the only answers they give are to “grow the business”….. like allowing the PO to handling banking- really? why would anyone want to entrust their $ to an organization like this? the nalc is delivering groceries and bottles of water now- what?? so we can take the jobs of bottled water companies delivery people, yet when the PO tried to have Staples offer a few basic services the clerk union went nuts…. I work in a town when we have grocery stores and a few select department stores handle those basic services, and our local revenue is up because of it…… the PO needs to be streamlined from the top on down through the clerks and carriers, and if the unions would actually work with management a little bit it could all done and no one would have to lose their jobs- their are a LOT of employees right now looking for a buyout….. people will adjust to having to mail their bills a day earlier…. people will adjust to not getting mail on Saturday….. people will adjust to having a curbside box or cluster box…… if the unions are worried about others having access to mail boxes on Saturdays, then make sure a postal reform bill contains language that prohibits that….. last I checked no one puts mail in boxes on Sundays either
THE KIDS TODAY DO NOT CARE ABOUT US MAIL ON LINE EVERYTHING !!!!!!!!!
Yes, this may be completely true, but business is business. Life is tough for millions of Americans.
Dean This is not about Business. The Postal SERVICE is NOT a business but a service to provide mail delivery to millions of Americans who dont need the Postal Service to make life tougher for them or disrupt USPS workers lives.
The USPS is faced with an impossible task of breaking even in an age of declining 1st class volume. Long term survival, absolutely depends on cutting costs, there is no way around that fact. The finances of a service business matter just as much as a product based business.
Do you think that the Postal Service cares that employees lives are disrupted? Not at all, it is evident in the way they treat the employees, and the public, every day! The Postal Service just wishes they could pay the employees the same that they did in the 50’s. My dad was an RPO clerk. He made.86 cents per hour.
A full blown independent investigation into this whole mess is long overdue. It’s as if the highest levels are convinced they can overturn the Constitution and continue their kamikazi plunder with no fear of retribution. I hope Congress finally gets pissed off enough to force legislation on the service because they will not do the right thing unless it’s forced on them. Donahoe especially should be facing federal scrutiny and charges of deliberate malfeasance for his horrible reign as the worst PMG in history. Those expecting better times with Brennan are going to be very disappointed.
Our standard mail gets out everyday. and the 1st class sits over to the side.
Received 2 Medicare Quarterly Reports yesterday that took 8 overnights to deliver. Disruptions would be less painful IF accomplishing anything !
the mail coming from our plant is so bad that we end up having to case most of it. The best thing that could happen is to have this plant close. Lazy workers who don’t know what they are doing. Really worth saving? Don’t think so. If it wasn’t for carriers this place would have already gone out of business.
This has been a long time coming and as I have said before,”You don’t know what you miss til you have lost it!” I am a 31+ year Civil Service Postal employee and have seen this coming for years! There has been a faction in management that thinks that privatizing the processing plants and just keeping the “face” of the service, i.e., mail carriers and window clerks will bring them BIG $$$$ They will not listen to ANYONE! Not the OIG or the Congress ! They have their agenda and that is that!
Any postal employee worth their salt sees how we should be running things but management will not listen! Our facility has been turned upsidedown and we hear that this is just the beginning! Lord help us and the American people!
It is just like politics and taxes. Tax the he-l out of the State of the Union instead of fixing the issue with the banks. Of course we have been mandated to pay a $5 billion bill that no other agency has to and why is that anyway? We make money and are a Gov. entity so tax the he-l out of it!
In the case of the Postal Service you will see process management in full frontal assault demolishing everything in sight. You see it with example numero uno…wreck the service standards! The entire core of our business is speed. So ruin this first because management seems to think the American Public will just sit back and say: “Oh yes Mr. Postmaster General that’s fine…I do not care if my bill gets there a few days late”. Herein lies the PROBLEM! This kind of thinking. Instead of examining ways to SPEED IT UP and MAKE IT MORE EFFICIENT our Mgt. thinks the opposite. Tear it apart at the seems and make it slow down.
Management will not right itself of the bloated ranks. Instead of doing away with layers of useless management everything else will be tossed overboard. You will never see Mgt fix itself and the first thing I would do as PMG? I would immediately require everyone in Mgt. to take a pay cut of at least ten percent. Instead of making the workforce feel like it needs to pay I would share the pain with Mgt. That is what leaders do! Make it’s own feel like they need to pay up with some sweat equity of their own. That would go miles and miles to start to assuage the feeling we are all getting that management is pillaging this fine institution. What are we supposed to do to stop this anarchy-because the people speak…half of Congress and the Senate speak…and we get the feeling that this this could all be shuttered by the narcissistic attitude of one man and his army of managers? Oh and “by the way”…if management is going to make some silly argument that these managers will go elsewhere because their pay is cut…we have news for you. LET THEM GO ELSEWHERE!
They should take the word “Service” out out USPS and change it to “business” USPB!!!
It’s not a service anymore! Business where management gets more bonuses!!
PDC still keep some clerks at tour 1 operation.
Hard to believe this once craft employee ”Donohoe” could turn out to be the craft employee’s of today worst enemy.
As a current Postal employee for the last 20 + years; I am embarrassed & ashamed of the route the Postal Service has taken to “supposedly” save money and lower the service standards! In the past, each day myself and fellow coworkers took pride and strived to get every piece of mail processed! Now its an absolute shame that Postal mismanagement has decided to ripoff and deceive our customers!! They’re certainly not getting what they’re paying for anymore!
I can relate to this article in regard to lives being disrupted. In my plant, our maintenance manager abolished 55 Tour Two ET, MPE and MM positions and re-posted them on Tour One with a start time of 02:00 till 10:30. This massive restructuring took place on January 10. It certainly has caused many to retire early and has caused nothing but problems in regard to the care and maintenance of the machines. The plan is not working, I care about my job as an MPE and I care about the machines that I maintain, however, with this new plan and being short staffed, the machines will no doubt head right into the toilet. Management in my plant are wanting to run the DBCS and DIOSS machines for 15 or more hours and eliminate 23 of our 990 machines. If management is looking for a way to destroy the USPS, they are certainly starting to do a good job of it.
HO HO HO! My final act! Happy New Year!
As soon as you see this “hard-working postal employees”. You know the article is 100% B.S.