Category: News Around the Country

eOPF Issue

This was just released to the members from Charlie Cash, Industrial Relations Director American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO

 

As I shared before the Postal Service is in the process of addressing any insecurities in their eOPF system. Cybersecurity best practices suggest personally identifiable information (PII) should not be shared on an open internet connection.

Many Official Personnel Files (OPFs) have PII such as social security numbers still in them. Many employees—including myself—have documents that are hand written and have our PII in them. The Postal service is currently “scrubbing” files of this PII. However, because of the older handwritten documents, this process will take up to six months. In the meantime, eOPF will be inaccessible. The APWU does not disagree that these files with PII should be scrubbed and made safe to transfer over the internet.

However, the APWU also demanded that OPFs be made available somehow and without charge. The Postal Service has established a process to do that now.

From the Postal Service:

Employees may request a copy of their eOPFs in person or in writing to their district Human Resource Office.    If the request is made in writing, they will be requested to provide proof of identity.  

No charges will be assessed of active employees for requested copies of hard copies of their eOPFs while the eOPF system remains unavailable due to security upgrades.

I have attached a list of District Human Resource contacts provided by the Postal Service for employees to use. This is how the Postal Service provided the list so I assume it is perfectly fine to share publicly.

It should also be noted that every employee still receives their PS-Form 50s via US Mail. All employees should be advised to open all mail received from the Postal Service and it is a good practice to archive and mailings or PS-Form 50s sent to them. As this problem with eOPF has proven, keeping your own files at home with these documents is worthwhile.

If any employees has problems getting there OPF after following this process, please file local grievances and inform my office through my assistant Lee Branca via email at lbranca@apwu.org.

Thank-you,

Charlie Cash
Industrial Relations Director
American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO

Vaccination Mandates by President Biden

(This article originated from the APWU website: https://apwu.org/news/vaccination-mandates-president-biden)

On September 9, 2021, the White House released two Executive Orders on vaccinations for COVID-19.

The Executive Orders on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees and on Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors do not expressly apply to Postal Service Employees.

In addition, in President Joe Biden remarks, he stated, “…tonight, I’m announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”

Until this emergency rule is developed, the APWU will not know if it applies to Postal Service employees. Once the emergency rule is released it will be reviewed and discussed with our attorneys and additional information on how it applies will be released.

As the APWU has continually stated, all employees are encouraged to wear face coverings at work and are encouraged to voluntarily receive one of the COVID-19 vaccines.