PostalReporter.com Blog

Shirley Jasper has been appointed Maintenance Division National Business Agent “B” in the Western Region, Craft Director Steve Raymer has announced. Jasper is the first woman in the craft to serve as an NBA.

She will begin her duties Jan. 27 at the Pasadena, CA, field office, replacing Richard Shepard, who is retiring. Jasper currently serves as the Maintenance Craft Director for the Great Los Angeles Area Local.

In accordance with the APWU Constitution & Bylaws, division directors fill vacancies, subject to the approval of a majority of members of the division council, which is composed of all national officers in the craft.

From PostalReporter.com Reader

Over a dozen postal union officers were the target of DOL/OLMS criminal enforcement actions in 2006.  These were the most serious cases. 

A name that will be recognizable to many is John McGovern, who ran for APWU National President in 1998, 2001 and 2004.  Delegates to the 2004 APWU National Convention voted to uphold his expulsion from the union.  As a result his name was removed from the ballot.

The lesson from these enforcement actions is for union officers to take their legal responsibilities seriously.  Mistakes can be costly.

2006 OLMS Criminal Enforcement Actions

On December 29, 2006 in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Charyle Emel, former President of American Postal Workers Union Local # 2013, was charged with one count of falsifying union financial records by willfully making or causing to be made a false loan agreement between herself and Local 2013. The agreement purportedly allowed Emel to borrow approximately $7000 of her USPS salary from the local and required her to repay the loan by the end of her term in office. The charge follows a joint investigation by the OLMS Philadelphia District Office and the United States Postal Service Inspector General’s Office. [Related documents: HTML | PDF] (more…)

President George W. Bush on Saturday proposed tax breaks to make health insurance more affordable to the nearly 47 million Americans who lack it, while removing some tax benefits for the most expensive employer-provided health care plans.

The president, looking to gain momentum for his domestic agenda amid concerns it will be overshadowed by the Iraq war, will include the health proposal in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Currently, employees who receive health coverage through their jobs do not pay taxes on the benefit. Bush would set a cap on the amount of coverage that would be considered tax-free. Anything above that would be taxed as income.

The basic concept is that employer-provided health insurance, now treated as a fringe benefit exempt from taxation, would no longer be entirely tax-free. Workers could be taxed if their coverage exceeded limits set by the government. But the government would also offer a new tax deduction for people buying health insurance on their own.

“I will propose a tax reform designed to help make basic private insurance more affordable,” Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address on Saturday, “whether you get it through your job or on your own.” He did not offer specifics, but an administration official provided details of the plan.

It would work like this: The administration would cap the amount of benefits that can remain tax free at $15,000 for a family and $7,500 for an individual. Anyone whose health insurance cost more than that would pay taxes on the difference. For example, a family with coverage costing $16,000 a year would pay taxes on $1,000.

The cap would also be used to establish the amount of the new deduction for people who lack coverage. In this example, a family buying insurance on its own could take a $15,000 deduction — even if the insurance cost less. The cap would rise with some measure of overall inflation, but would not necessarily keep pace with the costs of medical care and health insurance.

more from the NY Times via SF Chronicle

Dinosaur is a town in Moffat County, Colorado. The population was 319 at the 2000 census. It is the westernmost town in the state of Colorado.

In the center of Dinosaur, Colorado there is a small park with model Dinosaurs. On the fence of the park there is a sign that says “Owned And Operated By Town Of Dinosaur.” Under that sign there is another that says “No pets.” (source: Wikipedia)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23437487@N00/364017836/

According to the Flickr photo description: Postmaster collects ball of sticky peel-off stuff from postage stamps for 13 years! Guinness Book of World Records, perhaps?           

An Acting Finance Supervisor in New York City won mitigation of his removal from the Postal Service for “Failure to Account for Postal Funds / Failure to Follow Proper Procedures.”  Under his supervision shortages of postal stock from the Unit Reserve and from the Retail Floor Stock occurred totaling approximately $45,000.  Management failed to consider mitigating factors such as his “lack of intent and culpability.”

The Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) administrative judge determined that, although the Acting Supervisor’s misconduct was serious, the removal penalty exceeded the bounds of reasonableness. Specifically, the administrative judge found as follows:

[The deciding official’s] overwhelming concern was the amount of the shortage, which is substantial, and his belief that as the acting supervisor, the appellant should have been held to a higher standard because of his fiduciary role. [The deciding official] failed to consider the appellant’s previous record, which he testified was irrelevant, [the appellant’s] years of service, any possible mitigating factors, e.g., his time away from the station, or his wife’s illness, and the fact [that] the appellant has no prior discipline.

In mitigating the Acting Supervisor’s removal to a 60-day suspension, the MSPB administrative judge relied on the Salvatore Del Prete’s 34 years of unblemished service, his prior work record, his time away from the station, and the fact that he was only an acting supervisor and may have been improperly held to a higher standard of conduct. The administrative judge further found that there was no evidence of intent or culpability on the appellant’s part and that the absence of intent was a mitigating factor.

The inital case stemmed from the Del Prete’s failure  to explain a $45,000 shortage in postal funds for which he was responsible and violated agency rules by telling two Postal employees the combination to the Unit Reserve safe, by failing to have a second Postal employee witness and verify a withdrawal from the safe, and by not requiring two employees to conduct inventories, instead conducting inventories by himself at 4:00 a.m. 

… in mitigating the removal penalty, the administrative judge relied primarily on the Acting Supervisor’s lack of intent to defraud the agency, his “approximately 34 years of unblemished service,” and the fact that the Postal Service erroneously held him to a higher standard of conduct, despite the fact that he was only an “acting” supervisor.

MSPB Del Prete vs USPS (PDF)

Postal Employee Kanal Gaston filed an appeal to the the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) alleging that the USPS  Office of Inspector General (OIG) engaged in prohibited personnel practices as a result of his whistleblowing activity under the Whistleblower’s Protection Act (“WPA”), 5 U.S.C. §.  MSPB dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction because Postal Service employees cannot appeal violations of the WPA directly to the MSPB under individual right of action (“IRA”) provisions. Gaston asserted that the OIG was not a part of the Postal Service. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the OIG is subject to appointment and removal by the Postal Board of Governors, which serves as the “head of department” for the Postal Service. The Court concluded that the employee was a Postal Service employee and that the MSPB lacked jurisdiction over his appeal.

Therefore, Gaston was a Postal Service employee. Because employees of the Postal Service cannot appeal violations of the WPA directly to the Board under IRA provisions, we affirm the Board’s dismissal because it lacked jurisdiction over Gaston’s WPA appeal.

While Gaston’s appeal was pending before MSPB, he was removed from his position with the OIG for being absent without leave (“AWOL”) for over 280 hours.

Gaston v. Merit Systems Protection Bd. (Fed.Circuit 2006), 

APWU News Article #02-07, Jan. 18, 2007

The U.S. Postal Service announced in early January that it was calling off the only Area Mail Processing studies in the states of Montana and North Carolina. (more…)

by Carl Bosland, FMLA Expert

Plaintiff Antoinette Pirant sued the Postal Service alleging that she was terminated in violation of Title I of the FMLA for missing work due to a covered chronic serious health condition.  The record established that Pirant had worked 1248.8 hours in the 12 month period preceding the unscheduled absence that gave rise to her termination. 

The court rejected Pirant’s argument that the Postal Service failed to count two hours that she lost when she was wrongfully suspended by her supervisor and directed to clock out early one day.  The court found the record void of evidence that Pirant’s suspension was wrongful. Critically, the court noted that Pirant’s argument “is based entirely on her own belief, which however honestly held is insufficient to warrant crediting her with the two hours she would have likely worked had she not been suspended.” (more…)

PostalReporter Reader:  Many locals and branches are going to discover that they are not in compliance with LMRDA:

The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) has established a Union Advisory Services program to provide enhanced advisory support and compliance assistance to labor organizations at the national, intermediate, and local levels.  This support and assistance is intended to promote union democracy, transparency, and financial integrity under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). 

The program will address three common problems which unions frequently encounter under the LMRDA or the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) in the case of Federal-employee unions.  The first problem is that of union constitutions and bylaws which do not conform to the LMRDA or the CSRA.  OLMS will review union constitutions and bylaws to determine if any provisions conflict with the law.  They will advise unions of any changes needed to bring conflicting provisions into compliance with the LMRDA or the CSRA.

A second problem is that unions do not always file their latest constitutions and bylaws with the Labor Department when they are amended, as required by law.  The advisory program will ensure that DOL has an up-to-date copy of every union’s constitution and bylaws for disclosure on the OLMS public disclosure web site at http://www.union-reports.dol.gov/.

If an LMRDA-covered union’s constitution and bylaws do not fully explain the union’s policy relating to 13 issues specified in the Act, the union must file detailed statements with the Department of Labor with the union’s Form LM-1 describing those policies.  These issues include matters of vital importance to union members such as how assessments are imposed, the procedure for authorizing disbursements of union funds, how contracts are ratified, and how strikes are authorized.  Many unions either do not file a detailed statement that adequately describes their policies and procedures or the union cites a constitutional provision that does not describe the policy in sufficient detail.  OLMS will provide assistance to unions to ensure that their policies are reported in adequate detail either in the union’s constitution and bylaws or in detailed statements on file with OLMS.

The Union Advisory Services program will prevent violations of union members’ rights by notifying unions in advance of problems or potential problems with their constitutions and bylaws.  In addition, it will increase transparency of union operations by ensuring that union members have immediate access through the Internet to a copy of their union’s latest constitution and bylaws and its policies on those matters required by law to be made public.