Last night, our U.S. Postal Service mail arrived at 6:30 pm. A few nights earlier, it arrived after 8 pm. Several WSB readers have e-mailed mentioning the same thing, and wondering why they’re getting deliveries so much later than before. Today, we have the answer. Our inquiry to the regional media-relations rep was referred to a USPS supervisor who’s been working out of the Junction Post Office branch, Janet Doyle, who had all the answers, plus a few datapoints we hadn’t heard before:
Westwood Village, it turns out, handles delivery for all but one of the zip codes in West Seattle. 98106, 98126, 98136, 98146 postal mail all goes out from the USPS facility along SW Trenton. 98116 is the only zip code delivered from the Junction Post Office on California SW.
Because of West Seattle’s population growth, Westwood has just gone through a “route adjustment,” Doyle said, adding at least seven full delivery routes to the ~85 it was already handling. That’s meant not just redrawing maps, but hiring more help, “because we don’t just have the people to put into those (new) jobs.” Some of the hires are “carrier assistants,” according to Doyle, part-time workers whose training spans more days because of the part-time schedule.
Compounding that, May through September is prime vacation time, per contract, for USPS full-timers, with 20 percent of the work force off at any given time, according to Doyle.
Fred flores knows his stuff
Stevieg we know management is the only true workers in the usps!!
And let’s not forget the real reason. Regular carriers milking the O/T for all it’s worth. Trust me, this is the real reason.
Who is Fred Flores….and why is he talking sense? Must not work at the PO
Let’s see 85 routes would mean 85 full time carriers plus approx 17 full time relief carriers for a total of 102 qualified employees. I seem to remember USPS being awarded the use of a 20% non career work force that was effective Jan 2013. That would come to an additional 20 employees ready and able to handle any population growth that I am sure didn’t happen within the 3-4 weeks it takes to train new “Carrier Assistants”. According to the carrier contract 15% of City Carriers are allowed off for vacation during prime vacation time. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 15% of 100 full time employees is 15 on vacation. With 85 routes in existence already, you have a daily schedule of approx 17 employees not working due to scheduled off days. USPS in the past would mandatory all off day employees to work an extra day of OT to insure that the mail was delivered in a timely manner. I understand that 15 employees on vacation and 7 new routes puts a lot of pressure on the USPS to deliver the mail in a timely manner. But don’t buy the fuzzy math, they have at their disposal 17 fully qualified Letter Carriers and approx 20 “Carrier Assistants”. The real reason your mail was late, if it came at all, is they refuse to pay the regular mailman OT at the sum of $40 an hour when they can pay the part time, non career, no benefits, “Carrier Assistant” $15. Its not about service, its about replacing a fully qualified work force with an unmotivated, untrained, and under paid work force. Sorry for you in Seattle, and all cities in which this will become the norm!
management always has an answer, when they are screwing up, let a carrier or a City Carrier Assistant (CCA) do something it’s a PDI.
Route adjustments do make a difference, and with seven routes added there will be a bidding process that could take months to fill with a regular carrier under the new system that posts routes for anybody who wants to transfer, the e-reassign program. It’s a nationwide post, and thanks to the CCA program that pays almost half the wage of senior carriers, we are getting new carriers who will not be career employees until they get a route of their own, and in large offices, or even small ones where the regulars have years to go before retiring, the wait is too long for many. Plus, CCA’s get abysmal training if any, are pushed to the physical and mental limits, encouraged to run and take sometimes nearly two complete routes’ worth of mail every day. This of course leads to fatigue, lots of misdeliveries and a complete lack of understanding how to forward mail, return it, or even try to learn customer’s names. The NALC has to share responsibility for this fiasco, allowing management to push this system through by allowing mail to be deliberately late or not delivered at all, and then coming up with this minimum wage style program designed to eliminate as many career positions as possible. The union under pressure admittedly hastily agreed to this process, and shouldn’t have. It’s a guarantee of sloppy service and newbies seem to have no conception of how to pace themselves and even take lunch breaks, with only a few exceptions. Union involvement is way down, too with younger workers, and that’s troubling. Dues are high enough that many CCA’s aren’t willing to pay them if they’re not career employees, and who can blame them? They can be removed at the end of each one year term and the NALC has little if any recourse to save their jobs. If I were a CCA, I wouldn’t pay until I went regular, either. The Wal-Martization of the USPS is at hand.