PostalReporter.com Blog

 The issue of postal delivery on Sunday arose from an article about ”A Seventh-day Adventist is suing claiming she was fired last year because she refused to work on her Sabbath. The woman’s attorney Daniel Faber recently represented a letter carrier who was fired from the Postal Service because he objected to working from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. “The letter carrier, Lonnie Leonard, was reinstated, paid $50,000 in back pay and credited with annual leave as a result of a settlement last October, Faber said.”

In the article, Todd McFarland, general counsel for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Silver Springs, Md., said “the U.S. Postal Service is “our main nemesis” on the issue, partly because the service maintains it cannot overrule union contracts calling for Saturday shifts. McFarland said postal deliveries have been moved from Saturdays to Sundays in Collegedale, Tenn., because many residents are Seventh-day Adventists.”

more from Sante Fe New Mexican

Any Postal Reporter readers from Tennessee?

Michael Edwards, a postal worker, died in an auto accident  on March 8th of this yearas he drove to work in Mason City, Iowa. On Saturday (April 22, 2006), Edwards was among workers recognized at the annual Workers Memorial Day service in Mason City.

According to AFL-CIO, “The unions of the AFL-CIO remember these workers on April 28, Workers Memorial Day. The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. Every year, people in hundreds of communities and at worksites recognize workers who have been killed or injured on the job. Trade unionists around the world now mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning.”
more from Globe Gazette

Business 2.0 via CNN Money - Learning the ins and outs of the post office’s operations was the key on how to mail DVDs cheaply and economically. “Every ounce of weight in the mailer added to postage costs - but if the mailer was too flimsy, DVDs broke in the mail.”

“Seven years of tweaking have paid off: Netflix’s low-cost mailers have helped it fend off competition from Wal-Mart and Blockbuster. How well those iconic red envelopes will help the company fend off the newest threat - video-on-demand - remains to be seen.”

more from CNN Money

Netflix is one of the U.S. Postal Service’s highest volume customers. “The current mailer - introduced in early 2005 - adds a bar code at the bottom of the envelope…. this mailer transports approximately 1.4 million DVDs a day to Netflix’s 4.2 million subscribers.”

HackingNetflix provided a link to scanned photos of History of Netflix envelopes dating back to 1999. The gallery was featured in the April 2006 print edition of Business 2.0 Magazine.

Related link:

http://www.postalreporter.com/news/category/netflix/

Trenton, New Jersey - On April 17, 2006 the parties convened to discuss the excessing of Kilmer and Trenton impacted employees.  The manager of labor relations informed me that Trenton was not going to be discussed.  I questioned him as to why was I invited,  he informed me I was invited because I was the NJ state president.  I was shocked because only 3 months ago when Monmouth was excessing I was barred from attending the meeting, reason being, I was too disruptive.  The true reason why we did not discuss the Trenton excessing is the Postal Service was not prepared to discuss the impact.  We did discuss the excessing plan for Kilmer and we also got to see the new FSM 100 Automated Induction units operating. Central Jersey Area Local’s President Hank Anderson did a fabulous job in reducing the number of employees being impacted in his facility.  Hank also insisted that the six month regional notification as required by the contract be adhered to prior to any excessing.  The postal service responded by saying they will only give sixty days notice and will revert all clerk vacancies.  It is clear the postal service only wants to excess clerks into the mail handler craft and not into any clerk residuals that may open.  In Kilmer they posted 40 new mail handler duty assignments.

In Trenton we are awaiting a new corrected impact statement before we can proceed with a regional excessing meeting.  I will also insist we get six months advance notification before any excessing occurs.  We can expect the postal service to violate the principles of Article 12 and rush into excessing.   I will continue to enforce the contract and will work hard to minimize the impact on the clerk craft.  I will advise you of the new meeting date when it is announced.

I am hoping the voluntary early retirement (VER) in the 3 plants will yield sufficient clerk vacancies.

Several of our members excessed from Monmouth inquired about junior employees remaining in the Monmouth P&DC. The NBA’s office has been made aware of this situation and are currently discussing it with the postal service. Any member who is allowed to retreat back to Monmouth will create a vacancy, that position will then be posted for bid and if it becomes a residual we will hold it for the Trenton Excessing.

Management will be posting a new notice for the custodian test, if any one is interested please take the test.  We are currently holding seven custodian positions for excessing.

Currently we don’t have any residual clerk positions in the Trenton P&DC.

Bill Lewis
President
APWU Local #1020

http://www.trentonmetroarealocal.com/

 Those samples were among 19,251 samples collected between 2001 and 2004 from a postal center in Hamilton Township, where anthrax-laced letters were processed in October 2001.

 ”Even though we don’t really think these two samples are outside of the lab, this is not in a mode that we think could be used for weapons,” said Eddy Bresnitz, the state epidemiologist.

Health officials are searching for a pair of capped 2-inch-long test tubes containing liquid meant to prevent the spores from being inhaled.

“But if someone swallowed it, there is the potential they could get gastrointestinal anthrax,” said Health Department spokesman Tom Slater.

The FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified Wednesday, after a three-week inventory at the state Public Health Environmental Laboratory in downtown Trenton only accounted for 350 of 352 positive samples listed in lab records.

more from the Star Ledger

Inventory check shows liquid anthrax missing from state lab

An inventory of samples stored in a state laboratory came up short a pair of two-inch test tubes containing liquid anthrax, [New Jersey] state officials announced today. They said it’s probably a paperwork problem.

The inventory, completed earlier this week, was being conducted as part of a process to move samples from one lab in the New Jersey Public Health Environmental Laboratory to a lab in an adjacent building that’s deemed to be safer.

more from Ashbury Park Press

Related link:

Day: Other agencies unprepared for anthrax threat
Some agencies still have not developed procedures for handling an anthrax attack, the threat of which “remains credible,” says a frustrated Tom Day, the U.S. Postal Service senior vice president of government relations. He offers procedures the Postal Service has adopted as an outline for others.

In its report “Anthrax Detection: Agencies Need to Validate Sampling Activities In Order to Increase Confidence in Negative Results,” GAO said that even the system the Postal Service had in place for detecting, moving and analyzing had not been validated. Generally, GAO concluded that systems certain agencies had in place were so unsound that “they could not provide any statistical confidence with regard to the basic question: Is this building contaminated?”

more from Federal Times

(Visalia Times-Delta) Vandals and thieves have shut down the last two Visalia [Central California] post offices where customers could pick up their mail at post office boxes or buy stamps from machines 24 hours a day.

Postal workers said post office boxes had been pried open and mail stolen in lobbies three times in the past three months at the main post office, 2345 W. Beech Ave., and the Millennium Post Office, 100 N. Akers St. In addition, money was removed from stamp machines and mail taken from outgoing mail boxes, U.S. Postal Service spokesman Rich Maher said.
 
As a result, lobbies at both post offices are closing at 7 p.m., Maher said.

more from Visalia Times-Delta

A Rural Letter Carrier petitioned for review of the initial decision that affirmed the Office of Personnel Management’s  decision denying her application for disability retirement. The Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) found that the employee established by a preponderance of the evidence that she was unable to perform useful and efficient service in her position.  MSPB determined that while the employee might have been able to perform less arduous duties, the applicable Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) prohibited consideration of rural carriers for light-duty assignments. Therefore, the MSPB ordered OPM to grant the application for disability retirement.

Merchant v. Office of Personnel Management (2006)

Article 13.3
“In the rural carrier craft, at any local installation, regular rural routes shall not be considered for any light duty assignment.”

source: National Bargaining Agreement between U.S.Postal Service & National Association of Rural Letter Carriers.

Check out the collection of Post Office murals at Flickr.com. The slideshow also includes a photo of the mural which caused quite a stir last year. (below)

A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report attributed the lower than anticipated participation primarily to low enrollment by U.S. Postal Service employees and those on active military duty. While the enrollment data marks it as the nation’s largest long-term care insurance program, the take-up rate for eligible employees remained at only 5%, some 36% lower than the target initially established by Long Term Care Partners, a joint venture of John Hancock Life Insurance Co. and Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.

According to Long Term Care Partners LLC, , “the terrorist attacks in the fall of 2001 resulted in slower sales of discretionary products, such as long-term care insurance, and also resulted in temporarily reduced access to federal employees, military members, and Postal Service employees for marketing purposes during the open enrollment period.”

According to OPM officials, “the federal program also reached out to retired federal employees, retired military members, and retired Postal Service employees.” (more…)

From a PostalReporter.com reader:

I wanted to share a website with you that is a good idea to visit. http://www.familywatchdog.us/

When you visit this site you can enter your address and a map will pop up with your house as the small icon of a house and red, blue, green, dots surrounding your entire neighborhood. When you click on these dots a picture of a person will appear with an address and the description of the crime he or she had committed. I was really shocked at how many of these people were in my neighborhood. The best thing is that you can show your children pictures and see how close these people live to your home or school. It also gives a picture to a child to keep in their mind should they be approached.

This site was developed by John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted.

Another tool to help us keep our kids safe. 
Please pass on to anyone who has families.
Be informed.
Be aware of what is going on in your neighborhoods.