May 2009
Well here we are starting summer,
and I am really stretching to find some good news to share with you. With all
the recent route adjustments it may surprise many of you to know that in May and
June basically every route in the U.S. will be adjusted using the new MIRAP
(Modified Interim Route Adjustment Process), and then reviewed and adjusted
again this September. If you take the time you are using daily on your route
and deduct any time that you were on waiting time, training time, red book time,
etc…, and the remaining time is less than 8 hours, you will probably be added on
to. That is why it is imperative that you watch your times. If management is
still moving you or having you move on the clock inappropriately, your route
WILL show shorter than it really is using this new process. Please find out
from your Steward if your moves are appropriate. If you have not been verifying
your volumes, and if management has been miss counting it, then your route WILL
show short in this process. When this new process begins in your station please
participate in the carrier consultations. Even more than last time, this
process is designed to be joint and to listen to the carriers. From our local
web site (nalcbranch2589.org) with a link to our National’s web site, you can
read this new Memorandum. Nationally, our mail volume has dropped from 20 to 30
percent in the last 2 years. This means a lot of carrier routes are under 8
hours now.
On another note, we need to all be
aware of the rules we are to follow when carrying mail. Management from the
station level all the way up to area and above has set their minds on getting
carriers off the rolls. Singer station has been especially bad with their
Station Manager’s style of management, and now the carrier supervisor there has
become just like him. It is very difficult to argue logically with them when
their train of thought is so different than ours. Please be aware that if they
see you doing something that even appears to be wrong, they do not intend on
“correcting” it, but to take immediate disciplinary action against you. Watch
your lunch and break times, watch your safety rules, all of them. Work all day
on the street like your boss was right behind you, or across the street
watching. You can bet your butt, at a couple of offices, they are. And they
are not there to help you to be a better Letter Carrier, but to catch you doing
something.
Now the Postal Service is doing away
with 27 positions on the clerk and mail handler side from the plant. They are
telling me that possibly 14 of those clerks could be excessed into the Carrier
Craft, as full time regulars with seniority at the bottom of our full time
list. I realize that if you are a PTF, this concerns you. I also realize that
if you are a TE, this scares you, and maybe it should. All we can do is wait
and see what happens. If I was a TE and a decent job offer came along, I think
I would take it. This is not intended to scare you, but just to make you aware
of the USPS’s intentions. They are doing away with positions in Amarillo, Ft.
Worth, Midland and many other places, on top of the 300+ jobs gone in Dallas,
and the 400+ jobs gone in Houston. Hang on, I think we are going for a ride.
Remember, knowledge is power.
JANUARY 2009
Welcome to
a new year and a pile of new issues. We have settled the route count grievances
in Muleshoe, Floydada and Litttlefield. We are currently working to resolve the
route count cases at Lubbock Downtown and Midwest. All PTFs which had their
hold down positions terminated should now have been returned to those positions
and paid for their lost time.
We
have several new agreements, some national and some local and you all need to
study these new agreements and learn how they can help you and how to protect
yourself with them. Each of these is reprinted in this issue of the
newsletter. The first one I want to talk about is a local grievance settlement
dealing with incidental annual leave within the city of Lubbock only. You all
know that after first round AL bidding the percentage of carriers allowed off in
each unit drops to 10%. In most units throughout the year if you requested AL
and there was one of these slots open in the AL book it would be approved, but
this was not guaranteed. Some supervisors felt that it was always at their
discretion. With this new settlement there is no longer any doubt. If you
request incidental annual leave by Tuesday prior and there is a spot open in the
book, it MUST be approved. With this in mind I would encourage the senior
carriers to please not bid all of your annual in second round and then turn back
all but the weekends. Although it is legal to do that, I ask you to be a little
more considerate of the less senior carriers.
Our Lubbock Local
Memorandum of Understanding (LMOU) states that a 3971 (leave request form) must
be approved or denied within 2 days. Many of us have had the problem of
management not addressing them until they are ready to do so. The second
settlement deals with this issue. It states that, even though you can file a
grievance after two days, if a “properly submitted” 3971 is not approved or
denied AND RETURNED TO THE CARRIER within 4 days, then it is automatically
approved! No grievance is even necessary, you are off. This is huge, but you
must do your part properly for this to be affective. As this settlement states,
the carrier MUST submit his/her 3971 in duplicate (I recommend triplicate) and
personally hand it to management and have them sign it as received and return a
copy to the carrier immediately. If you just drop it on the desk or do not get
your signed copy back right then, you will not be able to enforce this! If you
did this in triplicate management would still have a copy to return to you as
approved or denied, and a copy for them to keep. Now combine these two
settlements and it works like this. You turn in for incidental AL “properly”,
and if there is a slot open it must be approved. If the book is full, it should
be denied within 2 days and returned to you. Now since you will obviously keep
your copy, if any one else gets off on those days it must be you first because
you have a previously denied slip, which means you asked first.
The next big
agreement is the new process for route evaluation and adjustments. Surely we
would all like the idea of no more route counts! The new process works by
taking the regular carrier’s actual average times on the route, office and
street, and evaluating the route from those times. In Lubbock we have already
used this process at Singer Station to adjust routes and are currently using it
at Freedom. Overall it seems to work pretty well. The one issue that concerns
me, and should concern you, is office times. This process compares your actual
times with the standard time for the same time period according to your volumes,
and automatically takes the shorter of the two. Now it don’t take a train
engineer to figure out that if ALL of your volume is not counted everyday, when
the time comes to evaluate your route it WILL show shorter than it really is.
If you do not fully understand how this will work then ask me. We need all
carriers to completely understand this. If you spend two hours in the office
all year and according to your volume you should have only spent one hour and
forty minutes, then your office time will be set at 1:40 and your route now
shows 20 minutes shorter than it is. This makes it imperative that we all
verify our volumes every day and make sure it has all been counted. Don’t let
yourself believe this is too much trouble or you will be sorry later when your
route gets added to.
Talk this up with
your fellow carriers and get them all to read their newsletter. The more you
talk about these issues the more people will understand. As a matter of fact,
come to the next union meeting and bring someone with you. Visit our local
website at nalcbranch2589.org and you can learn a lot. There you will find the
Lubbock, Plainview and Levelland LMOUs. The one for your town is not very long,
so read it, print you a copy of it and learn it. Remember, knowledge is power.
Mitch Terral
JULY 2008
The 66th Biennial Convention was a great
success and the Delegates made it home safe and I am sure with a
lighter wallet. If you ever get the chance to be a Delegate to
National, I highly recommend it. The next National Convention is
set in Anaheim California in 2010. At this convention Fred Rolando,
our Executive Vice President, gave a report on the task force
studying possible new methods to evaluate and adjust routes. He
made it clear that any new method must not only be jointly developed
but also jointly implemented. He described joint tests being
conducted in 12 cities across the country. The union and the USPS
both have their own ideas to test, but they are all tested jointly.
They are trying to figure out how to fix DOIS and COR. Rolando said
that DOIS is still subject to manipulation and abuse by management,
and COR automatically removes time from your evaluation for things
that it considers are not “normal” such as delivering parcels,
driving and accountable mail. It also sets “its own reasonable
speed limits, like let’s say 115mph”. The NALC’s best method
involves using a carrier’s average route time over a 6 to 12 month
time period. We can all hope they can agree on a less intrusive,
less confrontational method.
On a more personal note, how many of you want a cut in
pay? If you were able to make more money doing the same job, would
you? I expect that most of you answered yes, but many of your
actions say something else. There are several ways to get more
money and make yours stretch a lot further that many carriers are
not taking advantage of. Like the TSP for instance. If you are
under the FERS retirement system, which means you were hired in 1985
or later, the USPS automatically puts 1% of your pay into your
account for you, as long as you are putting something in. If you
just put 5% of you pay in the TSP, the USPS matches it with 4%, so
you get 10% going into your account by only putting in 5%. It does
not take a genius to figure out that you just increased your pay by
5%, and it did not cost you a dime. As a matter of fact, that money
will grow and make you more money, compounding over and over. Get
it? I have had many a young carrier tell me they could not afford
to put any money into the TSP, but obviously you cannot afford not
to.
Over the last few weeks I have experienced, like most of
you, management asking for under time. But this had a bit of a
twist to it. After several days of this, one day I had three twice
my usual parcel count and a full set of letter sized circulars that
had to be cased. Even though I truly believe that it is my job to
determine if I have under time, not theirs, I could not figure out
how I showed under time. I told the boss that maybe they needed to
learn how to count mail better, and he said “I don’t show you to
have any under time but I have to ask”. Now this is a game we do
not want to play. It’s one thing to disagree about the time you
need to carry your route, but to try to trick you into thinking you
should have had some so you had better hurry up when you really
don’t show any under time is just plain wrong. This is the type of
management we are dealing with. They are instructed to do what ever
necessary to capture time. I know you have heard me say this
before, but if you have under time you should help out on another
route if that’s what is requested of you. But, do not cut corners,
skip breaks and lunches or not do all of the little things that are
required of you because management makes you feel like you should
have some extra time. Management tells us all the time that we are
the “professionals”, so act like it and do your job correctly, not
just fast.
The last I heard was that the MDA Bowl-a-thon scheduled
for Sunday the 8th of August has been cancelled due to
lack of participation. This may not be printed until after that
date, I’m not sure. But the point I would like to make is this. We
have 6 stations in Lubbock and 8 other cities, with around 340
members in our branch along with our friends, the clerks, managers,
etc… After planning this fundraiser for months, which could be a
lot of fun for everyone, we had three people sign up to bring a team
to the Bowl-a-thon. I have people ask me all the time why we don’t
do more things as a Branch. Where were you? I know it sounds like I
have a bad attitude, but that’s just because my attitude is so bad.
Oh well, I guess this too will pass.
MAY 2008
I am
going to take a wild guess and say that you have heard someone at
work say our volume is down. Have you noticed this on your route?
Most of us have noticed a decrease in volume, just not as much as
management claims. We all know in their number driven world that
the “reports” are gospel. Let’s investigate why these reports show
such a decrease in volume and what the results will be. First of
all we must admit that our volume is down from last year. Second,
some of you may have noticed that the base volume for your route has
been changed once or twice in the last 18 months or so. Now lets do
the math without any of management’s “fuzzy” techniques. If your
base volume was 950 pieces and today you get 900 pieces, then your
volume is down 50 pieces. Now if they change your base volume to
1025 pieces and today you still get 900 pieces of mail, your volume
is now down by 125 pieces, without you getting any less mail to
work. Now management shows you with more under time without you
having any less work to do. Pretty sneaky, huh? Thirdly, they now
measure your volume by the inch instead of the foot. What use to be
just under a foot, therefore called a foot, is now measured as 10
inches. That pile of mail did not get any smaller, but you now get
less time to work it. Again, your volume has decreased without you
getting any less mail. You got to love this place.
Because of all this, management has been instructed to capture under
time at all costs. Please make note of these upcoming actions.
Management has a “Know it all” report that will tell them where you
should be at any given time on the street. They will be showing up
on your route with this report. If you are where they think you
should be, they are to commend you (yea right). If you are not,
they will ask you why you are behind. They will document this a
couple of times, and then try to take disciplinary action against
you. It is imperative that you give the correct answers to these
questions. Here is my advise. Most of the time, of course, you will
have an obvious reason and will know why, so tell them. On other
occasions, it could be things such as blocked boxes on curbline,
retracing for first class mail, necessary comfort stops, customer
inquisitions, gassing your mail bucket (don’t let them tell you this
is built into your route, it is not), poor mail conditions (DPS) or
maybe you just do not feel very good today and are not able to work
at your usual efficient pace.
The
next thing they are going to try is to claim you have under time and
give you the choice of taking a pivot from another route or taking
annual leave. I want to be very clear about this one. Just because
management says you have under time, that does not mean you do!!!
If you know you truly have under time, then take a pivot. We did
hire on to do 8 hours work for 8 hours pay. It is management’s job
to use their tools to “estimate” your workload. It is the Carrier’s
job to ultimately determine his work load for the day. Only you
can know if you have under time, and this is best determined at the
end of the day. Many things, such as those listed above, can
legitimately eat up any under time you do have, and if you
volunteered for an extra pivot that morning it could now cause you
overtime. If you are not on the 10 or 12 hour overtime list, this
just became a contract violation and each and every one of them must
be filed on to help control this situation. Please ask to see your
Union Steward when this happens. You cannot be forced into taking
annual leave! Annual leave is for your request only. Once you are
at work as a full timer, you are guaranteed 8 hours pay. Do not be
mislead into believing that you must take annual leave. Do not take
short cuts or skip breaks or lunches to have under time. Do not be
intimidated by management and their “reports”.
Management will also be looking for carriers asking for aux
assistance when they don’t need it. They will help you the hour or
so you asked for, then go with you on the street to see if you get
done early. Watch out for this one, it will end in discipline. I
know this sounds like a very negative article, but remember, you do
work for the Un ited States Postal Service.
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