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Thanks to an
APWU Local President for the info below:
The outcome of the binding arbitration process between USPS and the
National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association has resulted in a
contract.
The agreement is effective July 3, 2012 and lasts through May 20,
2015.
The Postal Service is facing a critical financial situation that
requires both substantial cost savings from within, as well as
substantive legislative reforms from Congress. The arbitrator’s
decision includes important cost-savings provisions that will
benefit the Postal Service over the life of the contract. However,
it does not go as far as the Postal Service believes is necessary to
address its financial challenges.
The results of the Interest Arbitration Award include the following
provisions:
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A 2-year wage freeze, followed by modest increases
-
A lower wage scale for new career employees (more than 10 percent
lower)
-
Lower wages for new non-career employees (more than 20 percent
lower)
-
An increase in the employee share of health insurance premiums
(the same phased-in schedule as the American Postal Workers Union
agreement)
-
An agreement to reopen health insurance negotiations if Congress
or another union acts on a proposal for new health insurance
package other than the Federal Employees Health Benefit plan.
-
Work standard changes that will improve productivity and lower
costs
SUMMARY OF HIGHLIGHTS OF 2010-2015 NATIONAL AGREEMENT
The following is a summary of highlights of the new National
Agreement between the United States Postal Service and the National
Rural Letter Carriers’ Association resulting from the July 3, 2012
Interest Arbitration Award. The Award and the separate opinion and
dissent of Interest Arbitration Board Member Joey C. Johnson are
available in their entirety on the NRLCA’s website.
Term
-The term of the new Agreement is November 21, 2010 through May 20,
2015'
Salaries and COLA
-General Wage Increases Totaling 3.5%:
November 17, 2012: 1.0% increase (COLA deferred to 2013)
November 16, 2013: 1.5% increase plus COLA
November 15, 2014: 1.0% increase plus COLA
-New wage schedule for new regular carriers hired after November
20, 2010
-New hourly rate for RCAs hired on or after August 11, 2012. These
RCAs will receive a 7.0% general wage increase over the term of the
Agreement, but no COLA.
-The Step progression for those career rural carriers hired on or
after November 21, 2010 will be 52 weeks for each Step between Steps
1-12 of the new Rural Carrier Evaluated Schedule
-COLA for RCAs/RCRs on the rolls prior to August 11, 2012 will be
rolled into hourly rates during the first full pay period of August
2015
Health Benefits -Adjusted USPS Health Benefits
Contribution
2012: 81%
2013: 79%
2014: 78%
2015: 77%
2016: 76%
(Employees hired on or after the effective date of this agreement
will start at 77% upon conversion to regular)
-MOU to consider separate Postal Service health benefits plan in
future, contingent on Congressional action or agreement of other
Postal unions.
-MOU to consider separate Postal Service health benefits plan in
future, contingent on Congressional action or agreement of other
Postal unions
Mail Counts
-2013: 18-day count (February 9 – March 2)
-2014: 12-day count (February 22 – March 7)
-2015: 18-day count (February 7 – February 28)
-2016: 12-day count (March 12 – March 25) (unless parties agree
otherwise)
-All routes will be counted unless the regular carrier and
management agree in
writing not to count
-National mail counts will be effective at the beginning of the
fourth full pay
period following the count
Equipment Maintenance Allowance
-2013: increase EMA base rate by 0.5¢ (46.5¢ per mile)
-2014: increase EMA base rate by 0.5¢ (47¢ per mile)
High Option Election
-A regular carrier must have a minimum of ten years of service
from his/her retirement computation date to be eligible to elect the
high option
Standards
-DPS Letter standard for LLV routes: 43 pieces per minute
-Prepaid Parcels Accepted: 90 seconds per event and 9 seconds per
parcel
-Dismount Distance (Walking Speed) standard: 0.00429 minutes per
foot (2.647 miles per hour)
-Industrial engineering study of time standards, to be completed
and implemented by May 20, 2015
-Moratorium on Article 34 time standard changes, except for new
work functions
Route Conversions
-Auxiliary routes will be converted to regular routes within 30
days of increasing to 42 weekly standard hours. If increase is a
result of a mail count, then the conversion will be effective with
the mail count.
-Regular rural routes may be converted to auxiliary status if
they decrease to less than 35 weekly standard hours
Route Consolidations
-Encumbered regular routes may be consolidated and the excessing
and/or reassignment provisions of
Article 12 will be applied when the route evaluation decreases to
less than 37 weekly standard hours
I nterest
Arbitration Panel Issues Award: Four and a Half-Year Agreement Calls
for Wage Increases and Industrial Engineered Study of Time Standards
In an interest arbitration award
dated July 3, 2012, the NRLCA and USPS finally have a new National
Agreement, which is effective from November 21, 2010 through May 20,
2015. The Award and the NRLCA’s partial dissent are available for
download here.
The path to a new Agreement began
in September 2010 with our first of many negotiations sessions, the
exchange of numerous collective bargaining proposals, and high hopes
of reaching a voluntary agreement, especially after the USPS and
APWU reached an agreement in May 2011. Unfortunately, after several
members of Congress publically criticized the USPS and APWU
contract, we reached an impasse in negotiations. Instead of
reaching a voluntary settlement, we proceeded to interest
arbitration before an arbitration board led by neutral Chairman Jack
Clarke, USPS party arbitrator Robert A. Dufek, and NRLCA party
arbitrator Joey C. Johnson. The interest arbitration hearing took
place during 26 hearing days spread over five months and resulted in
hundreds of exhibits and more than 4,000 pages of transcript
testimony.
Not surprisingly, the Postal
Service’s financial straits and Congress’ failure to resolve those
issues made it a particularly difficult environment for interest
arbitration. The Postal Service cited its financial predicament to
support its case for extreme concessions from the rural carrier
craft – concessions that went well beyond what it agreed to with
APWU. It viewed the case as a bankruptcy proceeding – something
squarely rejected in the Award – and demanded extraordinary cuts –
from wages and benefits to standards and EMA.
In response and in support of its
own proposals, the NRLCA presented compelling evidence and testimony
from dozens of witnesses, including economists, health benefits and
transportation experts, industrial engineers, as well as Rural
Carrier officers, members and former USPS managers. Through this
effort, the Association successfully beat back the extraordinarily
aggressive proposals put forward by the Postal Service at the
beginning of the case. Indeed, had the Postal Service’s original
proposals been adopted it would have – among other things – frozen
wages, eliminated COLA and no-layoff protection, drastically cut
annual and sick leave benefits, imposed a new self-funded health
care plan, and reduced EMA below the IRS per-mile rate. The
sought-after changes to standards, alone, would have cost the craft
billions of dollars.
Ultimately, financial realities
dictated the final economic package, which is similar to that
obtained by the APWU in its voluntary agreement. There are many
other significant provisions of the new Agreement, but several
aspects of the Award deserve special comment. From very early on, it
was clear that, beyond the individual proposals, the evaluated
system itself was on trial. We believe that the evaluated system
compared quite favorably to the other pay systems in the Postal
Service and the Award reflects that. Significantly, Chairman Clarke
also made it quite clear that the evaluated system is an incentive
system. Still, it has been the case for too long that the USPS has
been determined to “cherry pick” standards that it believes are too
loose, despite knowing that other standards are surely too tight.
The extent to which it tried to do so again during this proceeding
was unprecedented, and the changes made by the Arbitration Board
majority to prepaid parcels and DPS letters on LLV routes are
regrettable – although much less than what the Postal Service
proposed. Those changes are the primary reason for NRLCA party
arbitrator Joey Johnson’s separate opinion and dissent, which you
are encouraged to read. Arbitration Board member Johnson
strenuously objects to the two standards changes – compared to the
one walking speed standard awarded to the NRLCA – in light of the
relative quality of the evidence submitted in support of these and
other standards proposals and the admonition of our experts to
review the whole system given the lack of industrial engineering –
not focus on individual pieces. Indeed, as Arbitration Board member
Johnson points out, tinkering with certain individual standards will
further distort the evaluated system at least until the standards
are finally engineered. Arbitration Board member Johnson also
strongly dissents from the imposition of a new pay chart for RCA’s
hired between November 21, 2010 and today.
Fortunately, the standards changes
are made subject to perhaps the most important and historic part of
this award: the MOU providing for an engineering of the time
standards in the evaluated system. By this MOU, for the first time
in the history of the evaluated system, the parties will engage
industrial engineers to study and to establish accurate, objective,
and scientifically appropriate time standards that capture the full
duties of rural carriers. We expect that this process will end the
counterproductive pattern of cherry-picking in future collective
bargaining and interest arbitration cases, and set the evaluated
system on a solid long-term footing.
As is to be expected when the
parties are unable to reach a voluntary settlement, especially in a
challenging economic environment, this National Agreement certainly
is not everything we would have hoped for. Obviously, we would have
preferred to achieve greater increases in wages and EMA, for
instance, and no changes – or at least equitable changes – to
standards (pending a review of the system). But given the
extraordinary concessions it sought on every issue we litigated, it
is important to remember that the Postal Service did not get
everything it asked for either.
The end result is one that
preserves the evaluated system and recognizes its inherent value to
both the Postal Service and rural carriers. It acknowledges that
the Postal Service’s financial problems must be solved by Congress,
not by taking money out of the pockets of the men and women who work
hard every day to make it the federal government’s most trusted
agency.
A summary of the highlights of the
interest arbitration award will be posted here shortly.
https://www.nrlca.org/Admin/UploadedImages/ContentDocument/201200703%20USPS-NRLCA%20Final%20Award%20.pdf
source: NRLCA'
Rural Carrier Contract Award
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