PostalReporter.com Blog

From USPS News Link:

Consider the irony.

Austin, TX-based Postalunifom.com — which generates about 80% of its business from USPS employees — was using a USPS competitor to ship half its products.

Co-owner Raf Planos told Austin Sales Account Manager Peggy Tripp a competitor was less expensive. Tripp showed Planos that specialized and customized Priority Mail packaging, along with Delivery Confirmation, was a better, less expensive option.

Today, Postaluniform.com uses USPS exclusively. Annual revenues generated by the account have increased by $1.3 million. Meanwhile, the company is establishing a manufacturing arm, which means additional opportunities for the Postal Service in the near future.

It’s a seamless deal for the company and for Post Office employees. “The Postal Service has proven its commitment to providing for our business needs,” says Planos. “Besides, our customers are letting us know they want to receive their packages via USPS.”

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From Federal Business Opportunies: 

Description:The U.S. Postal Service is conducting market research to identify companies with an interest and capability to provide a mail stowage and retrieval system for its delivery fleet of Long-Life Vehicles (LLV).  This will be done in conjunction with implementation of a new Flats Sequencing System (FSS) program whereby large envelopes, magazines, catalogs and circulars will be sorted for letter carriers who must now manually sequence the mail before leaving the office for their routes.   As the FSS program is implemented, the plan is to purchase mail stowage and retrieval systems for up to 18,000 LLVs.   Deployment would start July 2008 with delivery completed by July 2010.

The LLV mail stowage and retrieval system will be used to assist in loading and unloading mail in the delivery sequence of the route.   The system should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate all mail trays (letter/flats) and parcels, and light enough to have only minimal impact on the load carrying capacity of the vehicle.   An average daily volume of mail handled by a letter carrier will consist of approximately 18 trays of mail (Letter/FSS flat trays) and 12 parcels.   During peak volume periods, the daily volume of mail could be 25% to 50% higher on an infrequent basis.

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USPS is also seeking a supplier for 5,856 left-hand drive flexible fuel Carrier Route Vehicles.

USPS Media Advisory: (December 14, 2006)

Americans will place more than 900 million pieces of mail with the U.S. Postal Service on Monday, Dec. 18, the busiest mailing day of the year. About 280 million pieces of that total will be cards and letters. This is an increase of about 230 million in volume over the average mailing day.

The Postal Service also is seeing a dramatic increase in holiday mail to military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the first 14 days in December, there have been 12 more 747 cargo aircraft dispatched with mail to the Middle East than during the same period last year. That is almost an extra 747 lift a day every day. Last year, the Postal Service delivered more than 10.5 million pounds of mail to military installations overseas during the holiday period. This year, more than 16 million pounds of mail have been delivered since Nov. 1.

What/ When:
Monday, Dec. 18 - Busiest mailing day of the year
Wednesday, Dec. 20 - Busiest delivery day of the year

Where:
37,000 Post Offices and stations
269 Processing and Distribution Centers
15 million Post Office Boxes
Blue street collection boxes
251,038 delivery routes
Your home or business

Who:
700,000 Postal Service employees across the country
Postmasters, retail clerks, letter carriers, distribution center employees, call center operators, Postal Service executives

Covering the Story

In person: Visit a local Post Office
Arrangements can be made by contacting media representatives in local markets. Go to USPS.com and click on the Holiday Press Room. Once inside, click on the “USPS Local Media Contact” sheet. Contacts are listed alphabetically by state.

Online:
Information on free package pickup, customized postage, greeting cards, shipping options, stamps, forwarding or holding mail

Visit USPS.com/holiday for customer convenience
Visit the Holiday Press Room at USPS.com for fact sheets, numbers, PDFs and press releases

B-Roll:
DVD of package volume, mail being processed, slates of packing tips
Call 202.278.3118

Audio:
MP3 downloads on packing tips, letters being processed, packages being sorted, Post Office lobby nat sound, packing and wrapping

Go online: USPS.com, click on the Holiday Press Room

Arizona Postal Worker Michelle Zobel filed an EEO complaint alleging discrimination based on disability (due to injury on the job) when: (1) from approximately May 7, 2001, to June 10, 2001, she was reassigned as a lobby clerk to the Tempe South Station in Arizona, and (2) she allegedly performed work outside her medical restrictions in Tempe. The Administrative Judge (AJ) found discrimination and awarded the employee $25,000 in nonpecuniary and $1,440 in pecuniary damages.

According to Zobel, a large part of her job as Lobby Director in Tempe was to retrieve “will-call” items for customers, which required lifting parcels and packages beyond her 5 lb. weight limitations. “Will-call items included mail that was on hold during vacation, postage due mail, and registered mail. She stated that a customer’s will-call mail could consist of entire tubs, and they were in a hurry to get their mail. At the remedies hearing, she testified that the station was very busy, and staff was often not available to help. She testified that customers got irate waiting for their will-call mail.”

A May 28, 2001, letter by a contract OWCP nurse who observed Zobel stated the lobby clerk job had duties outside her limitations such as moving mail tubs.

The Postal Service argued that it accommodated the employee by instructing her to get assistance with heavy items. The Postal Manager of the Tempe station stated that “certified mail shelves were lowered for complainant, and he told her to get help with any heavy parcels or packages. He stated that he repeatedly told Zobel not to work beyond her restrictions, and had no knowledge of her doing so.”

But the EEOC found that this “accommodation was not effective because the station was busy and staff often was not available to help.”

EEOC based their decision in part on the following:

A qualified individual with a disability means an individual with a disability who satisfies the requisite skill, experience, education and other job related requirements of the position in question and can, with or without reasonable accommodation, perform the essential functions of such position. 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(m).

An agency must provide reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified applicants or employees with disabilities unless it can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operations of its program. 29 C.F.R. § 1630.9(a) & (b). Reasonable accommodation may include job restructuring, acquisition or modifications of equipment or devices, and reassignment to a funded, vacant position. 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(o)(2)(ii). Before considering reassignment as a reasonable accommodation, employers should first consider those accommodations that would enable an employee to remain in her current position. Reassignment is the reasonable accommodation of last resort. EEOC Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Reassignment subsection (October 17, 2002)

The EEOC affirmed the AJ’s finding of discrimination, but “reversed the award of past pecuniary damages because the employee did not provide documentation of her expenses.” The decision also ordered that USPS train managers in Zobel’s facility on the Rehabilitation Act. (Zobel v. Potter -November 2006- PDF)

Photo below: “District operations supervisor Mark Dorman helps to move along packages on the automated package processing systems (APPS) at the Orlando distribution center for the United States postal service.”

Photo by Sara A. Fajardo, Orlando Sentinel
see more photos from the Orlando Sentinel or read article “Snail mail? Better hurry

On December 15, 2006 PostCom reported :

From the U.S. Postal Service: “We’ve been asked if the recently passed Postal Reform legislation will have any effect on the current proposed pricing change. It will not. We are still on target for a May 2007 implementation of new prices and mailing standards. We’ll have our revised mailing standards Federal Register published in early January 2007

Related link: USPS Proposed Rates and Fees for Spring 2007

What a mess!

From OPM:

Washington, DC — Due to the continuing interest of federal employees and retirees in the Federal Dental/Vision Insurance Program and their tremendous response during the program’s inaugural Open Season, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will accept belated enrollments through Friday, December 22, 2006. No additional belated enrollment periods are anticipated.

Federal employees and retirees should visit www.BENEFEDS.com or call 1-877-888-FEDS (1-877-888-3337), TTY 1-877-889-5680 to enroll.

APWU Leads the Way in Bargaining

Burrus Update - As previously reported, the APWU position in the 2006 contract negotiations was that we stand on the product that we produce in the negotiations process, without regard to what may or may not be achieved with the other postal unions. Unfortunately, some other postal unions do not adhere to these principles and routinely wait for the results of APWU bargaining to determine whether they can include in their contract those improvements we have achieved. As a result, a sister union has delayed finalization of its agreement and demanded from the Postal Service:

• Bereavement Leave
• Increased administrative leave for bone-marrow donation;
• Safety and health protections for employees in private-sector facilities;
• Right of the union to represent USPS employees in private-sector facilities;
• National union scheduling of two arbitration cases per year;
• One additional payroll deduction;
• Elimination of Social Security numbers for employee identification;
• A 2.5 percent increase in work clothes and uniform allowances, and
• Pay increases that are modeled after the APWU agreement with bragging rights.

The above issues pirated from the latest APWU agreement are in addition to the following from prior agreements:

• Light-duty bidding
• Transfers
• Court leave for PTFs
• LWOP in lieu of annual leave or sick leave
• Annual leave exchange
• Annual leave carryover
• Leave sharing
• Correction of the promotion pay anomaly

This “me too” model of bargaining is not reflective of a union that can stand on its own efforts, but rather of an organization that resorts to waiting to see what others have achieved. At the very least, practitioners of “me too” bargaining owe APWU a public thank you for blazing trails and permitting them to provide improvements to their membership.

William Burrus
President

In other news from APWU

Non-Members to Receive Ballot Mailing (more…)

 From NetworkWorld

The U.S. Postal Service has quietly terminated an 18-year, multibillion-dollar network services contract with Lockheed Martin that was to provide all of its data, voice, video and wireless services.

Dubbed Universal Computing Connectivity (UCC), the contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin with much fanfare in October 2004. UCC had an estimated value of between $3 billion and $6 billion.

USPS terminated the UCC contract in July 2006.

Here’s all USPS will say about its change of heart:

“Due to changing business objectives/conditions, USPS and LM have agreed that the UCC contract cancellation is in their mutual best interests, and that it will not preclude the two parties from entering into other contracts in the future.”

Lockheed Martin has no comment on the UCC contract cancellation

“Lockheed Martin has a great track record with the USPS for its mail handling systems, but obviously Lockheed Martin screwed up on the telecom stuff,’’ says Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president at Federal Sources, a McLean, Va., market research firm. “USPS has a long-term relationship with Lockheed Martin, but they’re not going to be counting on them as a network integrator.’’

With the failure of UCC, the Postal Service in October extended its Managed Network Services contract with the old MCI, now owned by Verizon Business, for an additional four years. USPS also has awarded contracts to AT&T so it can pursue a dual-sourcing strategy for its network infrastructure.

more

From Rutland Herald (Vermont)

Group wins post office court battle

The post office in Pittsford, built in 1956, will remain where it is for now after a recent court decision.

After seven years of battling a plan to move the post office out of the center of town, the Friends of Pittsford Village has won its Supreme Court appeal of an Environmental Court decision.

The opponents contended that the post office, the public library, the town’s largest supermarket, a tavern and a laundromat formed a cluster that encouraged pedestrian travel, and gave the town a sense of community. The town offices had been in that neighborhood, but were moved to a new building along Plains Road.