PostalReporter.com Blog

William Young, President, National Association of Letter Carriers sent out the following message to its members:

Last night, and in the early morning hours of today, we came within an eyelash of accomplishing our goal of enacting meaningful postal reform, at least in the Senate. In the final analysis, letter carriers could not support the bill that Senator Susan Collins was pursuing because it would have established a three-day waiting period for injured letter carriers before they could go on continuation of pay.  We worked with allies in the Senate to block its consideration.

TITLE IX—COMPENSATION FOR WORK INJURIES SEC. 901. TEMPORARY DISABILITY; CONTINUATION OF PAY.
 (a) TIME OF ACCRUAL OF RIGHT.—Section 8117 of 18 title 5, United States Code, is amended—
(1) by striking ‘‘An employee’’ and inserting
‘‘(a) An employee other than a Postal Service employee’’; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
‘‘(b) A Postal Service employee is not entitled to compensation or continuation of pay for the first 3 days of temporary disability, except as provided under paragraph (3) 1 of subsection (a). A Postal Service employee may use annual leave, sick leave, or leave without pay during that 3-day period, except that if the disability exceeds 14 days or is followed by permanent disability, the employee may have their sick leave or annual leave reinstated or receive pay for the time spent on leave without pay under this section.’’. note: exerpt from Senate version of Postal Reform Bill added by PostalReporter.com

I was on the telephone at 5 p.m. Friday with Postmaster General Jack Potter who informed me that he had communicated to both the Bush administration and to Senator Collins that the USPS did not want this bill to fail over the changes in workers’ compensation. It was also reported to me that a small group of mailers had informed Senator Collins that they agreed with the Postmaster General on this issue.  But the White House insisted on workers’ compensation cuts. Senator Collins worked mightily to minimize the negative impact of these cuts, but in the end I could not go along with them.   (more…)

 Citizens Against Government Waste is a non-profit organization that regularly tracks all forms of government waste including the Postal Service. Recently, they posted an article that outlines the Jaffer Scandal . Here are just some excerpts:

 While much of the report is rather sensational, detailing instances of Mr. Jaffer’s alleged excessive drinking and inappropriate behavior toward female USPS employees, a far more interesting picture of USPS corporate culture emerges from between the lines

Some of Mr. Jaffer’s profligate behavior revolve around parties for and gifts of expensive luggage to Vonzell Solomon, a runner up for American Idol in 2005.  Ms. Solomon was a rural postal carrier when she auditioned for the television program.  According to a postal spokesperson, a party featuring Ms. Solomon qualified as an “employee appreciation” event.  The luggage allegedly given to Ms. Solomon was plucked out of a closet in Mr. Jaffer’s office that held a trove of goodies ostensibly left over from the USPS’s National Executive Committee events, including Movado watches, strings of pearls, and digital cameras.  (Ms. Solomon subsequently signed a contract to be a “holiday spokesperson” for the USPS.)

Mr. Jaffer’s reckless spending and “lack of candor” should be viewed as part of the operational culture of the USPS.  Azzezaly Jaffer was just living large because he had swallowed the prevailing party line.  Maybe the USPS does operate like a Fortune 100 business.  Just like Enron, Fannie Mae, or Tyco.  

Full article: USPS Chief Lving Large 

In accordance with a resolution adopted by delegates to the union’s 18th Biennial Convention, the APWU National Executive Board has selected Oct. 26 for a nationwide day of picketing to protest ill-advised postal consolidations. (see APWU Convention Approves Picketing Post Offices Nationwide)

The coordinated informational picketing is intended to highlight the potentially damaging effects of the USPS consolidation plan, and to expose how Postal Service policy panders to major mailers. The Oct. 26 date was selected to give local unions the opportunity to seek support from elected officials and candidates prior to Election Day, Nov. 7.

“I urge locals and state organizations to participate in the nationwide day of picketing,” said APWU President William Burrus, “and I urge them to take our message to the public: This plan will delay mail to local communities, and it is being forced on the American people without their input.

“We intend to change that,” Burrus said. “We will engage the public in a dialogue about their expectations and experience with postal service. These informational pickets are an opportunity to express our concerns.” (more…)

KTVZ.com (Oregon) reports 

“Sens. Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) have introduced legislation that would extend domestic partner benefits to federal employees.

The Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act extends a federal employee’s benefits to his or her same-sex domestic partner. Benefits may include federal retirement benefits, life insurance, health benefits, workers’ compensation, long-term care insurance, the Family and Medical Leave program, as well as dental and vision benefits. Such employees and their domestic partners would assume some of the same obligations as married employees and their spouses, such as anti-nepotism rules and financial disclosure requirements. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that offering benefits for same-sex domestic partners of federal employees would increase costs by less than one-half of one percent.”

 The Tampa Remote Encoding Center (REC) is closing as of March 2, 2007. This action will cause the loss of 445 TE positions as well possible excessing outside the Tampa Installation of 110 full time clerk positions.
 
Richard Phillips, Tampa Area Local President, has addressed this issue to the local media. He has personally delivered signed petitions to our representatives in Washington, DC.

The following is an editorial that Richard Phillips submitted to the local paper earlier this month. They failed to publish it. –Tampa APWU Executive Vice President Pat Davis-Weeks.

Editorial: Tampa Rec Closing

As we celebrate this Labor Day weekend, it’s fitting that we also reflect on the alarming number of good jobs that are disappearing from the Tampa Bay area. Headlines have screamed about many good jobs that are being “outsourced” to foreign countries, where labor can be hired on the cheap. In addition, other good local jobs are being relocated throughout the country, for what has been described as “business concerns”.

Take, for example, the U.S. Postal Service’s recent announcement to employees that they have made a decision to close the Tampa Remote Encoding Center (REC) no later than March 2, 2007. This decision will impact almost 600 employees; including data conversion operators, maintenance technicians, and supervisors. Of this number, approximately 445 are in an employment status known as Transitional Employee. These TE’s are scheduled to work anywhere from four to eight hours per day, and earn an average of approximately $13.00 per hour (including night differential).

The U.S. Postal Service will be laying off all 445 of these TE’s by March 2nd. All Bay-area citizens should be inquiring about how the down flow of this “business concern” will impact the rest of the Tampa Bay community. These layoffs will go much deeper than the immediate financial impact on the students, veterans, mothers, fathers, and homemakers who are currently employed as TE’s at the Tampa REC Site. Simply stated, the closing of the Tampa REC Site will remove an annual payroll of approximately $10 million a year from of the Tampa Bay area. (more…)

(Whitehouse Press Release) The President intends to nominate Thurgood Marshall, Jr., of Virginia, to be a Governor of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, for the remainder of a nine year term expiring December 8, 2011.

Thurgood Marshall, Jr.  “began his legal career as a law clerk to the United States District Judge Barri D. Parker. Later, Marshall Jr. served as a Counsel with the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, as well as the Governmental Affairs Committee. Marshall Jr. worked with then Senator Al Gore in the Senate and then as the Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Counsel for Vice President Gore. From 1997 to 2001, he served as Cabinet Secretary and Assistant to the President. Marshall Jr. was the liaison between the President and the agencies of the Executive Branch. Although Marshall Jr. has had an illustrious career serving the public, he is most widely known as the son of United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall.” source: Sacramento Bar | See Also Thurgood Marshall’s Bio 

Marshall’s Senate confirmation would fill the last vacancy on the Board of Governors.

  Members of the Board of Governors
  James C. Miller III, Chairman (Republican)
  Alan C. Kessler, Vice Chairman  (Democrat)
  Mickey D. Barnett (Republican)
  James H. Bilbray (Democrat)
  Carolyn Lewis Gallagher (Republican)
  Louis J. Giuliano (Republican)
  Katherine C. Tobin (Democrat)
  Ellen C. Williams (Republican)
  John E. Potter, Postmaster General and CEO
  Patrick R. Donahoe, Deputy Postmaster General and COO

 Enough is Enough!

Burrus Update  - After 15 years of fighting excessive postage discounts for large mailers, the APWU succeeded in 2004 in persuading key legislators, mailers, and other interested parties to include specific restrictions on discounts in pending postal reform legislation. The principle that guided us was simple: Discounts should not exceed the costs the Postal Service avoids when mailers presort their mail or engage in other “worksharing” activities.

The agreement was the result of a long struggle. The APWU had been the lone voice asserting that discounts were often excessive; that excessive discounts rob the USPS of desperately needed revenue; that they shift a disproportionate share of the Postal Service’s “institutional costs” from large mailers to small businesses and individual citizens; and that they amount to a subsidy of private, special interests — a subsidy provided by the Postal Service and the American people.

The agreed-upon compromise, which also was included in postal reform bills introduced in Congress in 2005, provided that worksharing discounts could exceed the postal costs avoided only in limited circumstances; that excessive discounts would be corrected over time; and that the Postal Service would be required periodically to justify the postage discounts it offered.

Before long, however, the large mailers, USPS management, and their White House supporters began to renege on their commitment, offering progressively more watered-down provisions to replace those that had been agreed upon earlier. Their goal was clear — to preserve the excessive discounts for major mailers.

While mailing-industry spokesmen wage a constant propaganda tirade against the salary and benefits received by hard-working postal employees, behind closed doors these phonies demand continued excessive discounts in order to pad their own profits. This is hypocrisy at the highest level.

Some of these discounts are so extreme that if postal employees were paid the same value for the work we perform, our wages would surpass $75 per hour! (more…)

Federal Times reports:  ”The U.S. Postal Service is steadily becoming a safer place to work. (note: links below added by PostalReporter.com)

Last year, slightly fewer than 64,200 injuries were reported by Postal Service workers, down from 71,433 in 2004 and 79,514 in 2003.

Workers’ compensation payments for 2005 injuries also fell to about $60 million, about half the amount of payments for new injuries of the previous year, and down to a level not seen since 2003, according to Labor Department statistics.

The change is due to several programs and improvements the agency has initiated in the past several years, according to Henderson.

Problems with bar-code sorter

For all their recent efforts, however, the Postal Service appears frustrated by one mail-sorting machine it introduced in the early 1990s and which, at least according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), poses a risk of injury to those operating it.

After a three-year investigation into the Postal Service’s Ergonomic Risk Reduction Process program, NIOSH reported in May that its Delivery Bar Code Sorter (DBCS), which is capable of sorting letter mail of all sizes, “posed the same or greater risk of injury to workers” as the machine it had replaced.

The author of the report told Federal Times that the latest DBCS, as the sorter is known, is worse than the older sorter because it requires those who operate it to reach higher and bend lower when feeding mail into the machine or “sweeping” it out.

The best answer to the problems posed by DBCS is to automate the “sweeping” function, which requires employees to manually move mail from the tiers of stackers in the DBCS to trays opposite the stackers, said Loyd Reeder, a clerk at the Denver Processing and Distribution Center, where the NIOSH examination was conducted. “The Postal Service has spent millions on the machines and it is committed to its use,” said Reeder, a frequent blogger on the DBCS topic. “So what should be done now is follow the recommendations that NIOSH has made for the machines’ use.”

 2006 NEGOTIATIONS OPENING STATEMENT OF DONNIE PITTS, PRESIDENT
NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS’ ASSOCIATION 

Mr. Pitts Full Opening Statement Can be found Here  

( August 25, 2006) We have two goals for the 2006 negotiations and I want to be very clear about what they are. 

   Our first goal is related to process.  More than ever, we want a collective bargaining experience that works.  We want to have an open and honest dialogue about the issues that confront us from this day forward.  We want to be frank with you and we expect no less from the Postal Service.  We recognize that much is at stake.  We are cognizant that the Postal Service will be negotiating four separate contracts simultaneously but we cannot let that fact detract, in any way, from the commitment we give to you, and expect in return, to make every bargaining session, every meeting a productive one.

Our second goal is substantive.  It involves tangible things.  In order for us to reach agreement and avoid interest arbitration, we must see meaningful improvements to the wages and working conditions of all rural letter carriers.  We need to be direct with you on this point.

We are not interested in stagnation or regression.  We think it is vitally important and economically feasible to continue with appropriate general wage increases and historically significant cost of living adjustments.  The Postal Service’s finances are in good shape.  Your debt is essentially gone and the rural craft employees we represent have contributed mightily to your success.  Productivity continues to be on the rise and our customers, by any measure, are happy.  So yes, we do expect and deserve to share in the successes of this first-class Postal Service. 

 To insure that the standard of living for the rural carriers we represent does not suffer, we will seek to maintain, if not improve, the health care and retirement benefits for women and men who labor for them day in and day out.

APWU News - In a letter sent to every member of Congress, APWU President William Burrus asked legislators to support citizens’ efforts to be part of the debate about plans to realign the nation’s mail-processing network. “The Postal Service has failed to consider the concerns of the American people, denied them the information necessary to determine if the revised network will meet their needs, and excluded them from having real input in the decision-making process,” Burrus wrote.

Those who defend efforts to consolidate mail sorting facilities without proper public input have chosen to ignore the intent of federal law that governs the Postal Service, Burrus said in the Sept. 12 letter. Their “disdain for the needs and wishes of ordinary citizens — your constituents,” he wrote, “is evident in a recent editorial in the newsletter of the Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association, an association of large mailers.”

The editorial reads, in part: But this is the Postal Service, about which everyone who’s not accountable for it still claims the right to a piece of deciding how it should be run, as if its “public service” status means all Americans get to put in their two-cents worth equally with the PMG [Postmaster General]. (more…)