“I am informed that President Guffey alleges that I was provided the opportunity to defeat the PAEA when adopted in 2006. This is blatantly untrue but is irrelevant to voluntarily negotiating the worst contract in the history of bargaining. The PAEA did not force the officers to engage in aggressive bargaining over a 6 month period that will forever change postal employment. The Letter Carriers were an active participant in passing the PAEA but resisted the drastic changes in bargaining and even with the APWU contract as precedent did not change full time to 30 hours, permit supervisors to perform bu work, increase non career to 20% or cap wages at Step J.It is time to stop blaming the PAEA for aggressive voluntary actions. The Postal Service has not paid the health care payment for 3 years and current legislation will be far more damaging if passed. You take events as you find them and move forward unless you need a scapegoat. What happened with the PAEA is looking for scapegoats.
This contract was negotiated with 40 years of history as background and the results were disastrous. Filbey had 200 years of Post Office history, Andrews had the Filbey prior agreements, Biller had the capped COLA agreement and off budget agreement and Burrus had 8 years of failed effort at postal reform. Every negotiations brings the baggage of history and it can never be used as an excuse. You negotiate a contract and stand by the results. It would be nice if contracts were written with no history but that is not real life. Every act that we take is a continuation of all that has gone before us.”
To emphasize how stupid it is to allege that my refusal to stop the PAEA is somehow responsible for the horrible contract, the consolidations and other results of the 2010 national agreement is to suggest that the upgrades and pay increases that I achieved did not make it possible to reduce wages for new employees and agree to the smallest increases in APWU history for others. Assuming that the wages were as agreed to in negotiations when bargaining began, the negotiations would have started at $14.60 per hour and the 25% cut would have been from that point. Cliff cannot use prior agreements as a platform while blaming his predecessors. The past cuts both ways.”
via Bill Burrus’ Facebook Page – July 5, 2013
I just do no understand how the president (Guffey) who negotiated this last contract could still be in office. Where is the outrage?
Gave away a 1st year cola of 1,000.00 (no on talks about?)
Is giving away 40 hour jobs for 30 hour jobs.
PSE’s have flooded the place taking jobs and overtime and no one seems to know their cap # in any(% of window or distribution clerks).
The only thing that does make sense to me as to why the APWU would sign and encourage the membership to vote yes to this contract. IS that the APWU wins big( not you and me of the membership)but the officers in Washington. Its the healthcare stupid! The postal service does not offer health insurance to PSE’s But after one year of employment they can get into the apwu health plan. This has to be worth millions, and with a aging/retiring membership it doesn’t matter if reglar clerks get excessed or abolished or forced to retire because they are nolonger mentally tough enough in some cases to keep battling.
No problem hire another pse works for the postal service works for the union. I just wish they (apwu) had the balls to own it.
Burrus and Guffy did not run on the same ticket. Guffey was on the ticket with Persails, who ran against Burrus.
As I remember Burrus and Guffey ran on team ticket. Giving each other accolades for past performance, Sucking each others you know what, they worked so great together. They both suck! That’s just the way it is in APWU Tune Town, Man thay are singing a different tune now, aye..
What joke a couple guys who got rich at Union members expense. AS a Union person It disgusts me, as it should all Union people..
Contrary to what Sucka says the APWU was the only union fighting against the 2005 Transformation Plan which much of the 2006 PAEA. It’s just like the article 32 issue of subcontracting was not an issue until the NALC found out about subcontracted routes after the fact. We can all be in solidarity but we cannot create our own facts to justify our opinions.
Well said…and true!
Contrary to what the Unions say, they were all for the 2006 PAEA. In fact, G.W. Bush proposed earmarking 100% of the CSRS pension surplus to pay for future retiree’s healthcare and military pension fund earned prior to being hired by the post office. Here’s the story as quoted on the NALC website. http://www.nalc.org/postal/reform/paea_2006.html
“The Bush administration had different ideas. It sought to complete the heist of the $27 billion and it tried to inflexibly earmark 100 percent of escrow savings for retiree health benefits. In both cases, we prevailed over the White House. The new law sets out a 10-year schedule for using the escrow and military pension savings to dramatically reduce the Postal Service’s massive unfunded liability for retiree health insurance, while also providing some flexibility for other uses. In so doing, we secured more than $100 billion for the Postal Service in the decades to come and protected the interests of our current and future retirees, whose health benefits will be fully funded”.