Have employees abused the use of USPS-issued travel cards, as reported by some news outlets and on social media?
Out of half-a-million employees, the actions of a few bad apples can make life difficult for everyone — including the vast majority of employees who have USPS individually billed travel cards and use them responsibly and only for travel-related business purposes.
Contrary to news reports, employees — not the Postal Service — are responsible for paying their travel card debts. And no taxpayer funds have been or will be used to pay back personal charges on USPS travel cards.
In fact, USPS doesn’t receive taxpayer funds to support its operations. Revenue is generated from the sale of its products and services.
USPS takes all allegations of misconduct very seriously. When claims of abuse surface, they are thoroughly investigated. Action is taken to ensure compliance with USPS policies and federal laws. For that reason, the Postal Service is implementing more stringent controls — including enhanced monitoring, oversight and approval requirements — to ensure compliance.
The more than 500,000 men and women who work for the Postal Service are hardworking, responsible and exceptional. The allegations regarding the individuals referenced in recent news articles do not fairly represent USPS or its employees.
As a NAPS rep. I defended a guy whose wife used his card by mistake. He paid the bill but was still up for removal from the U.S.P.S. I asked and received a list of other employees that used their card for non-postal purchase. I was handed about five pages with about forty or fifty names on each page of managers that used their card for non-postal uses. Quite a few were in the six figures. Charges against my guy were dropped.
The bottom line regardless of who they were issued to and how they were used is that the charges as that is entirely immaterial and had to be approved by “someone”. Lets focus on that statistic instead of diluting it as symptomatic of the general workforce. How many craft workers have approval authority? Can supervision approve their own charges?
The overwhelming number of these employees are managers. Employees would be fired for stealing a stamp!
ONLY MMGT HAVE CARDS TO SPEND FREE MONEY
To the poster who said only mgt get these cards, that is incorrect. Almost every maintenance employee (besides custodians) get these cards. Maint craft employees (ET’s, MPE’s, MM’s, BEM’s, MSC’s, etc) have to travel for training, and they travel quite a bit for that training. Anything they charge on the card, is put on a bill by Citibank and sent to the employee’s address for payment. If they don’t pay, it will count against their credit score. The employee and the employee alone is responsible for payment of the charges.
if this was a letter-carrier, the supervisor would hold a morning talk to chastise us and make everyone pay the price.
example… carrier gets caught with mail in his car, every carrier cant go their car after clocking in.
as usual, management hypocrisy.
Some maintenance craft employees have credit cards for travel.
that’s why 204B have to kiss ass to get promoted
Apparently your reading comprehension is lacking. Which part didn’t you understand. A postal issued credit card is paid by the employee. There are no Postal funds used to pay unauthorized expenditures. If any postal employee; management or craft is caught in the Postal till such as the window they are dealt with equally. So don’t mislead the public. You must be one of those employees that think the organization revolves around them. If you don’t like your job or the organization quit. I’m sure your talents may get you a job at McDonalds.
Selective enforcement, no doubt. If they really took reports of misconduct very seriously, they’d have to fire themselves. It would be interesting to find all employees who believe this propaganda. That is a quick way to expose the stupid, gullible, and management hopefuls, and that is all under the management hopeful umbrella. Unless you have connections up the wazoo, you’re nothing but a pigeon if you’re a supervisor and you’ll be abused, used and blamed for all the idiocy they make you do or else. Why in hell would anybody want to subject themselves to that?
TSP – You are mistaken about ONE statement. As a craft employee, I and others like me, use USPS Travel Cards for official business when overnight travel is required for our jobs. Believe me when I say that any expenditure I place on this card is scrutinized heavily by my approvers. As for the rest of your statements, I have seen things “swept under the rug” myself.
AMEN!
I have employees using the gas cards to fill up personal vehicles, buy snacks…these are carriers and clerks and nothing ever happens to them.
That TSP guy is just a bitter angry union slob!
As usual, postal mgmt spews more lies, deception, and deceit.
I.e., why the multiple references to 500k employees in this article ?
A tiny, tiny fraction of that number have access to these cards.
And guess what; each and every one of them is in mgmt ranks.
If a craft employee steal postal money, and that is what this is, they are fired and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
If mgmt does the same ?
Promotion, swept under the rug, all is forgiven.
Postal mgmt/eas = liars and thieves.