The following article from the National Association of Letter Carriers President Fred V. Rolando, appeared in the March 2015 The Postal Record:
You can’t judge a new CEO on the basis of only one week on the job. That would be like judging a book based on its opening chapter or the color of its cover. But I was encouraged by the performance of Megan Brennan during her first week on the job as the 74th postmaster general of the United States—at least in comparison with her predecessor. Three things stand out.
First, she posted a letter to all postal employees on the USPS website that set a very positive tone—focusing on themes that will unite us: innovation, growth and working together to overcome the challenges we face.
Second, she immediately met with each of the presidents of the Postal Service’s four employee unions. Doing so shows respect for the craft employees who make the Postal Service what it is every day, an amazing public service and an invaluable part of the nation’s economic infrastructure. My first conversation with her was very constructive and useful; I look forward to many more like it.
And third, she shifted—in a subtle but significant way—the manner in which the Postal Service communicates with the media and the public about our financial performance, again accentuating the positive. I want to focus on this last step the most because I think it is essential for achieving the kind of postal reform legislation that will strengthen the Postal Service, not dismantle it.
A year ago in this space (the March 2014 issue of The Postal Record), I called the way the Postal Service was communicating its quarterly reports “financial malpractice.” That’s because its press releases routinely highlighted the negative and buried the good news. The opening lines of its press release for the first fiscal quarter of last year was typical: “The U.S. Postal Service ended the first quarter of its 2014 fiscal year with a net loss of $354 million. This marks the 19th of the last 21 quarters that it has sustained a loss.”
Never mentioned in that release was the cost of the Postal Service’s grossly unfair mandate to pre-fund future retiree health benefits, which was responsible for the entire loss. Also not mentioned was the Postal Service’s operating profit (“controllable profit/loss”) of $754 million.
The press briefing that followed the release was even worse. The first slide featured a grossly misleading portrayal of the Postal Service’s balance sheet—highlighting an allegedly huge gap between the agency’s assets and liabilities. (See page 12 of this issue to read about a new report on the Postal Service’s assets and liabilities, by the USPS Office of Inspector General, that offers a more accurate picture of the Postal Service’s balance sheet.) The clear message was: the Postal Service was failing at best and a financial basket case at worst.
Why all the doom and gloom before now? The headline of the press release for that quarter provided the answer: “U.S. Postal Service Records Loss of $354 Million in First Quarter, Underscoring Need for Comprehensive Legislation.” The former PMG wrongly believed that the best way to get Congress to enact postal reform was to “yell fire in crowded theater.” This panic-creating approach never worked to convince lawmakers to enact the changes he wanted.
That’s why it is so refreshing to see the new PMG portray the first-quarter results for FY 2015 more accurately. She didn’t bury the impact of pre-funding, but she put it in proper prospective— it’s a problem that must be solved by Congress to help the Postal Service build on its strong recovery. Indeed, the title of the press release this year says it all: “U.S. Postal Service Delivers on ‘Our Season.’ ” The release highlighted a 4.3 percent increase in revenue, a 3.5 percent increase in Standard Mail volume and a 12.8 percent increase in package volume along with the overall net loss figure.
During the press briefing, the agency’s chief financial officer managed to acknowledge that the USPS had a “fantastic” quarter—a fair characterization of a $1.1 billion operating profit.
This shift in focus is crucially important. Congress, the mailing industry, postal employees and the public all need to know that the Postal Service is not a lost cause, that its future can be bright with the right kind of reform. We don’t need to dismantle the Postal Service; we need to invest in its future, which was another positive theme in the new PMG’s letter to postal employees. So all in all, it was a good opening week for the new boss.
Of course, we know that we will have disagreements with PMG Brennan in the future; it is the nature of a collective bargaining relationship. But as I told her, if she is willing to negotiate in good faith to reward career carriers and CCAs alike for our hard work, , NALC will reciprocate and seek to creatively solve problems at the bargaining table and on Capitol Hill.
If we can both do that, the glass will be more than half-full.
National Association of Letter Carriers AFL-CIO.
Let’s not forget that Mr. Rolando was the ONLY Union official that praised Mr. Dong-a-hoe for a job well done on his departure. Hope she showered before the meeting, because it sounds like there was lot of butt kissing going on.
Good Stuff , Mr. Rolando !
As my “name” states, it is only the first week, and that is far too early to heap praise upon an official of the Postal Service. Any official.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Brennen started out as a letter carrier and was on IOD within 6 months……………rode Donehoe’s coattails up the greased pole. has to be for nepotism with all her family members in the po. compare that to the former president of american airlines, robert crandall, who despised nepotism and would only let one person in a family work for AA in his 18 year reign.(anyone caught sneaking in a family member-both were fired) in my correct opinion she lacks character……rolando has always been a butt kissing sellout……………..let me guess, next contract a 1% yearly raise…..wow! just another clown like Guffy was.
Mr. President,
The simplest thing the union could offer up to help create a much more pleasant working environment would be to concede overtime pay for the ninth hour of work on a route. Simply put, get a program in place that fairly adjust routes to the eight hours they’re supposed to be. Get an agreement that carriers get paid their hourly wage for eight hours on any given day for completing their route assignment in a window of seven to nine hours. No pivotting and no arguing about the 30-60 minutes of “under time” or overtime that may exist on any given day due to volume fluctuations. If a route needs more than an hour overtime, they can pay it after the nine hour mark or pay someone else for auxillery assistance as management sees fit.
I believe a majority of city carriers would approve of a system like this.
Sounds like the NALC is getting some heat concerning the horrendous maltreatment of the CCA craft. Based on a ton of reports from offices nationwide, the CCA’s have been run to the quick, working weeks at a time without time off, threatened with loss of jobs on a regular basis and bullied into delivering mail in a halfassed unsafe manner that has resulted in some of the worst delivery accuracy in postal history.
CCA’s I know are afraid to take lunches, and usually work through them without filling out “no lunch” leave slips because supervisors make them case and carry a route and add a couple hours of swings to them or make them do collections after doing a route and having them be back by an exact time to begin the collection run.
Something has to give, and it’s ultimately the customer and regular carriers who suffer for this bullying and harassment. We sympathize with the CCA’s and know the pressure they’re under, plus the reluctance of the NALC to do anything on their behalf, but in the meantime when we go out after a day off or some annual leave, the routes are disaster areas (sometimes) with mail crammed into marked vacant boxes, orders ignored and delivered to the street, tons of misdeliveries and pissed off customers who blame the regular for delivering their mail and packages to the wrong address.
It can only happen that way because of the structure of the program. The blame lies with management and the NALC for failing to stop the CCA program. Yes, the union may have lost the CCA battle in arbitration, but they must accept responsibility for ignoring the fallout that happened as a result of implementing a cheap labor force.
I honestly don’t know what to think of this statement by Rolando. Is he a step ahead and trying to get in Brennan’s good graces to achieve goals for letter carriers, or is he just sucking up and allowing the NALC to crumble into a weak shell of its former self? Time will tell.