Category: Local Newsletter

(This article was first reported in the September 2017, Local Newsletter)
Written by: Mike Wright Director of Associate Offices of APWU, SJAL #0526

Hopefully the membership has had an enjoyable and safe summer, however, if you work in an Associate Office (AO), like myself, it’s been stressful. Clerks, carriers, and custodians in every office that I have spoken to have all had the same concern, “We need more clerks!” Unfortunately, there’s no relief in sight.

I attended the State Convention in Atlantic City in June and the news is bleak. Upper management wants to eliminate 12,000 to 16,000 jobs nationwide depending on the source. Anyone retiring or separating from service is having their job reverted along with many people in jobs that are being abolished. Long story short, Management on the national level is panicking due to the APWU converting over 47,000 PSEs nationwide. When the PSE position was created, management intended to create a part-time workforce in the long run; most Postmasters & Supervisors do not want to convert people to career. I know this message has been out many times before, but we need to protect our jobs. We can do this by:

1. making the right moves on the clock
2. making sure it’s our clerks performing our daily duties
3. making sure it’s our custodians doing the landscaping
4. letting the Union know when none of these are happening with statements and grievances.

Also in Atlantic City, I had a chance to attend a class on dealing with the Postal Inspectors/OIG. Most of us haven’t dealt with them and, if we’re fortunate, will never have to deal with these agents. Personally, I have. It’s never a good situation. Some of the topics discussed, were the rights of an employee in these scenarios and what is contractually required by the employee in these situations.

We are not required to write statements, at any level. We are required to cooperate with investigations as outlined in the ELM 665.12. We’re also not required to take a polygraph. Management cannot bring a steward into an interrogation if they make this mistake there is a Weingarten Global Settlement in which any information given during the said investigation, cannot be used.

I also had the opportunity to observe a Function 4 audit in Mt. Laurel in June, which I was informed happened to be the last Level 3 (multiple day) Function 4 audit any time soon. The team informed me that clerks took leave on Tuesday rather than complete their full tour leaving work there. I watched as the UBBM went from three containers that had to be checked and verified up to five, then to seven the last day of the audit.  By leaving bargaining unit work behind and taking leave it shows, on paper, that there isn’t a need for as many full time employees.

Another concern in Mt. Laurel was that employees are unaware of the correct functions when it comes to swiping. This goes back to my first paragraph in which we need to protect our jobs. I can understand the newer employees not being familiar with the function codes. Unfortunately, we have some senior employees in the district, who will not be bothered about making the proper moves until it’s too late.

One way to help our LDC 48 score, in the impacted DUO’d offices (those that have lost their carriers) or any office in general, is to make sure we’re scanning anything with a barcode that enters our facility “Arrived at Unit”. This includes the PS Form 3811 (green cards). We also need to make it a habit of giving the undeliverable accountables (Forwards, UTF, ANK, etc.) to a window clerk, who should run it through the RSS as “Numbered Mail Pick-up” then “Undeliverable”. This will help the WOS numbers. These practices add up and help us in our fight, which we were told is the worst attack on clerks in 20-25 years.

Many offices in our local have been identified for excessing, however until a clerk leaves the facility, there is no grievance. For example, clerk Jones gets a Notice of Involuntary Reassignment on June 1^st and must find a new position by October 1^st. There are four months in-between where something could change that could impact the staffing (i.e. a senior clerk retiring). Primarily, the excessed clerk is the person who feels the brunt in these situations, but it also impacts the overall staffing in general; which is already likely short-handed. The PTFs and PSEs are also impacted. Their hours, if done properly, are greatly reduced. In the case with some PSEs, they are separated from service. Even-though on paper it is one or more clerks being involuntarily reassigned, everyone is affected.

We’re also getting reports about Amazon Sunday operations. This has resulted that I have begun making visits again. I started this initiative back in 2015 and have kept management on their toes regarding purposely short staffing. It was quiet for a while, but it seems to be an issue again. We have gotten wind about violations in Vineland and caught them red-handed in Mt. Laurel. SURPRISE! If anyone other than a clerk is distributing mail on Sunday (RCAs, CCAs, management) email me immediately of the incident at: mjwrightapwu@hotmail.com

This also applies for morning operations in the AOs. We can’t complain about being short-staffed and then let management and other crafts do our work for us. I know I beat the complacency drum often, but it seems unless we visit the AO in-person most of the violations go unreported. We need to speak up and protect the work that’s ours.

Finally, I’d like to speak on the August South Jersey District Labor Management (SJLM) meeting. We had brought up the 2016 TACS settlement and how it is only being performed in about 10% of our offices. The new District Manager (who actually showed up unlike the previous one who was here a total of three months) will work with labor to try and get the TACS responsibilities returned rightfully to the LSAAs (T7s) and I will follow up on this at the November SJLM Meeting. We also wanted to address an incident in Millville, which we believe was trying to be swept under the rug in which a supervisor forcefully took money out of a SSAs hands. Upon hearing this, I blew up and began emailing everyone on the issue. After an investigation that took almost two-weeks, even with statements from the clerk and the SSA who was working alongside them, the POOM decided the incident never happened. I presented statements at the SJLM from two employees (one who was not part of the POOM’s “thorough” investigation) who witnessed the incident. After bringing all my statements and emails and wanting answers of what management’s “thorough” investigation consisted of, the POOM (who has been at every District LM meeting in the last two years) was mysteriously absent. However, the new District Manager stated that there is an ongoing investigation of the investigation. Hopefully, the truth of both the incident and the shoddy investigation will come to light even though personally, I’m not holding my breath. The former POOM, who as of this article has been moved to another POOM group, thus rewarding the action of not properly investigating the issue.

(This article was first reported in the September 2017, Local Newsletter)
Written by: Frank Bollinger Business Agent of APWU, SJAL #0526

OIG crossing the line?
Recently I have been working on a removal case. Management has messed up in so many ways that for them to prevail it would almost be a miracle. So what route do they take? They have the OIG try to influence a prosecutor to add language to a Pre-Trial Intervention (PTI) offer that was already agreed to by the parties (the Union of course is not one of those parties for alleged criminal activities that go before a prosecutor). What did they want to have added? That the employee will not work for the USPS in the future.  This language has been pushed all to often by the OIG upon prosecutors to add to PTI’s. What is wrong with this you ask? The OIG is not to have any impact on administrative actions taken against employees nor are they to do anything more than turn the report of their investigation over to a prosecutor if warranted.

From the OIG’s own website: “At the end of an investigation, the USPS OIG reports its findings to USPS management and, as appropriate, to prosecuting officials. The decision of what action to take rests with management and the prosecutor.”

The APWU-SJAL 526, as with any APWU Local, State or the National, has exclusive rights to bargain with USPS management regarding its members. This includes their protections as allowed regarding being removed from the Postal Service. The USPS OIG, though it has USPS in front of its name, is not part of or involved in demands such as denial of continued employment.

Please understand I am not saying that we have any say in criminal proceedings because we do not as a Union. This is not a standardized punishment being demanded by the OIG though. They do this as an end run to try and usurp the Union’s ability to represent the membership. Not only is this an apparent violation of the employee’s rights under the collective bargaining agreement but it also seems to be a violation of the APWU’s right to represent their membership in employment matters.

As of the typing of this article I am looking into the most appropriate way to combat this, it may take some creativity but we as a Local will always try to represent our members right’s under the Collective Bargaining Agreement no matter who is trying to come after them.

Should you have a Union Rep there for a PDI?
I really do not know how many times this has to be answered before it fully sinks in to all of our members. Y-E-S you should have a Union Rep present at any PDI or any investigation that may lead to disciplinary action! We still have members that unfortunately go into these meetings, even for something they look at as a simple attendance issues, without a representative. Some reasons we hear are “Well I did call out…”, “I know I did such and such”, “I didn’t think they were going to issue discipline over it”….. Then of course the Union is contacted and asked to have a Letter of Warning or worse removed from their files. You are putting us behind the 8-ball so to speak. What a lot of you may not understand is the PDI can be a valuable weapon when it comes time to defend a member in a disciplinary matter. There are procedures within the PDI that management must follow, we may not fully know if they were followed if we are not there at the time. They could record your response inaccurately and then it is only your word against theirs.

Take something that happened somewhat recently. A member requested a Union Rep, in the part of the process in the PDI asks if there is anything that you (the employee) would like to add that management should take into consideration.  The employee gave a very reasonable and mitigating circumstance for tardiness. Something that was out of their control and provable. When it came time for the discipline the supervisor wrote that a PDI was conducted and that there were mitigating factors offered by the grievant. This could easily be controverted with the result being a positive negotiation in favor of the grievant.

As an added note: PLEASE if/when you are ever issued discipline, get a copy to the Union as soon as you possibly can. That doesn’t mean 11 days after you receive it, that means within a day or two, max!! We have 14 days to file grievances.

Custodians and Higher Level
If you are a custodian and you are being sent out to do lock changes, deliver express mail or any other thing that has you driving somewhere you should be placed into a higher level pay status (Level 5) for the time spent performing those duties. This is a policy that was agreed on years ago and then apparently when the levels increased from 3 to 4 some management decided that that old agreement only held that they would be paid level 4 and now that they were officially level 4 there was no higher level needed. National met at Step 4 on this issue and the old agreement stands true that custodians should be paid a higher level while performing these duties, meaning that now level 4 custodians should be paid level 5.

We are aware that a few will not press this issue because you may not want to “rock the boat.” Ultimately the decision will currently be yours as we are not going to police each office to see when a custodian leaves and when they return then check to see if they were put in for higher level. It is your money though that you are giving up on if you let management use you for cheaper pay. When you call out a few times and the total call-outs for the office start to impact your supervisor or PM’s bonus check, do you think they will not want to “rock the boat” by disciplining you or more likely will you be calling upon the Union to represent you in your PDI and likely subsequent discipline?

Article 1.6 and Crossing Crafts
President Armentani, Director of Associate Offices Wright, and myself have been addressing these issues on an almost daily basis at some offices. We continue to be successful in getting our members paid when management or another craft performs OUR WORK… We actually have offices where they were scheduling RCA’s (Rural Carrier Associates) to come in and throw parcels!!! Where supervisors come to work dressing in work clothes so that they do not get their better clothes dirty as they perform clerk work. The two main offices where our members are all over this are Mt. Laurel and Sewell. Why is this happening? Of course as many of you know, there is some guy/gal in an office that looks at numbers and to justify their job says “Oh yeah well we can cut this job or that job” without even stepping foot in your office.

This is something we as your Union Reps understand, it is frustrating but we can at least understand why some of the offices are forced to take these measures. Again that doesn’t mean we will just forgive and forget that they do it. What is even more frustrating is when we hear from other crafts or employees from a different office tell us that there are these violations going on yet we get no statements from the clerks at the offices where they are occurring. People, this is how they cut jobs. They show that they do not need all of the clerk hours to process the mail because it doesn’t show that they are performing the work or have employees from other crafts performing the work.

To our custodians who just do this to help out… Are you getting the correct level pay for doing this work? Not only that, but are you swiping to show that you are not performing custodial duties thus increasing the possibility of a Line H payout at the year’s end? Or are you just working at a reduced rate because you don’t care and it is something different than you normal routine?