X-stew  05-24-2012
07:19 PM ET (US)
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Your current bid determines your category, not what you used to be.
Again, it matters if excessing is going to be outside the installation or within the installation; no one here can tell. Get an answer to that and apply Art 12 as outlined in recent msgs.
Yes, level 7 must bid on every vacant 7. If a junior employee wins a 7, senior saved grade is no more.
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pmrichie
05-24-2012
06:05 PM ET (US)
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Thanks for the information. I have another related question. Are Saved-grade level 7 employees in level 6 positions considered PS-6s or PS-7s for excessing purposes? For example, could a saved-grade employee bump a junior employee who is currently in a level 7 position? I am the junior-most of four level 7 employee (in level 7 positions) at our installation. However there is one "saved-grade" level 7 employee who is senior to me. Would he be counted as a level 7 employee and bump me if all four level 7 positions remain at our installation? Also, do saved-grade employees have to bid on every level 7 position that is up for bid to retain their saved grade?
Once again, thanks so much for your help.
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Union Dude 05-17-2012
12:01 AM ET (US)
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/m5077 The language about sections that X-stew refers to probably does not apply in your situation. If it is deemed to be "Reduction in the Number of Employees in an Installation Other Than by Attrition", which it would be if they are shrinking your installation size, then exessing from the installation would be by CRAFT and LEVEL regardless of section.
They would first determine the total number of Level 6 employees and the total number of Level 7 employees to be excessed. You may have two buildings, but if you have just one seniority roster than they are considered one installation. The clerks would be divided by level but not by section, and the junior employees in each level would be excessed regardless of which building they work in. This comes from Article 12.5.C.5, and applies to excessing outside of an installation.
The language about sections that X-stew mentioned comes from 12.5.C.4, and applies only to excessing within an installation, but not outside of it.
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X-stew 05-15-2012
06:32 PM ET (US)
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/m5077 It's unlikely that those 2 building are considered to be one section. Your local MOU will specify what a section is, but automation is usually a section, and any manual clerks in that bldg would be in a second section. In the bldg with windows, they could be one section, and BMAU and other manual clerks would be another section.
In short, in just 2 bldgs, there may be 4 or more sections. What happens to clerks in one section has no effect on what happens to clerks in other sections. And so in your example, they probably will cut the MPU down to 2 and leave the 15 behind since it seems they're in their own section.
Excessing is by seniority within levels. They could excess all the level 7 and keep all the level 6. Or vice-versa.
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pmrichie
05-15-2012
05:25 PM ET (US)
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Can anyone clarify how excessing would apply in my situation.
We have one clerk seniority list but two seperate locations. The first is a customer service building with the carriers, box section, window, bulk mail acceptance, etc. which has 15 clerks. The second location is a Mail Processing Unit(MPU) which has 25 clerks. The two locations are 5 miles apart. When there is a vacancy in either location anyone can bid on that position and there have been several instances of employees switching from one location to the other. The current AMP proposal for us is to keep the 15 clerk positions at the customer service location and to keep just two positions at the MPU.
My main question is do the top 17 clerks by seniority get to stay? Or do the 15 clerks currently at the Customer service Unit get to stay and the top two at the MPU.
A secondary question is does it make a difference if you are in a higher level position (level 7) ??
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Lori Campbell
05-13-2012
09:57 PM ET (US)
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On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:13 PM, QT - sicpuppy <
qtopic-35-syKgp2Xd9iq@quicktopic.com> wrote:
>
hey sicpuppy you havent been around long have you? you aren't wore out yet < replied-to message removed by QT >
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postalvet 05-13-2012
10:28 AM ET (US)
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/m5074 the point les, is that if management is going to be so stupid as to process the mail without first canceling the stamp we will reuse them. I had this argument with management back in the 70's management wanted to make some numbers and not cancel the stamps. I called the inspectors and the stamps were then canceled again.
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Les Finesse 05-13-2012
10:11 AM ET (US)
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Postalvet, /m5073, Of course you realize that reusing uncancelled stamps is a no-no. Once it's affixed to anything, it is used, whether cancelled or not. I know, I know, cite the source. I will ... just as soon as I find it ... just don't hold your breath. It's a sad statement that a well paid letter carrier has to reuse stamps. Mail Processors such as mentioned by Inga, ought to realize that they are not managers. Don't like it, grieve it, although in this case I am not sure what the basis of such a grievance would be. Besides, the post office must recognize that there is often a chance that uncancelled mail gets to the delivery office. Why else would they provide cancellation pads for every case. Edited 05-13-2012 10:11 AM
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postalvet 05-11-2012
10:18 PM ET (US)
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try theses manuals. there will be lots of reading. also contact the oig, if I get stamps not cancelled I reuse them.
http://www.apwu.org/dept/ind-rel/USPS_hbks...)%20(7.44%20MB).pdf
http://www.apwu.org/dept/ind-rel/USPS_hbks...9%20(1.26%20MB).pdf
http://www.apwu.org/dept/ind-rel/USPS_hbks...11%20(741%20KB).pdf
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Inga
05-11-2012
06:02 PM ET (US)
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Supervisors and MDOs are instructing Mail Processors to run mail on DBCSs that is not cancelled. Mail Processors refuse but are threatened with discipline for refusing to follow a direct order. Anyone out there know where we can find the regulation that all mail must be cancelled before it leaves the building. Thanks
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jennie
05-11-2012
01:37 PM ET (US)
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why don't the clerk union president want us to close on saturdays it the best answer.Then the rural craft would have to pay the price to not just the clerk side we have had our hours cut our lunch breaks drug out for two hours any thing they can do to us to save a dollar. Made us take anual leave closing early for holidays ect. Its time the rural side has some cuts too. CUT out saturdays the windows will still be open and mail will still move but others will share in the reform not just the clerks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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sicpuppy 05-09-2012
07:13 PM ET (US)
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The Union got you higher wages than a casual, AL,SL, Health Benifits after your first year. "Just cause" before you can be fired. First hired if thay ever hire anyone in the future. These are a few that come to mind. As far as your schedule being changed. DUH! You are a flexable work force employee. Your schedule is subject to change just like every casual or PTF that has ever walked through the door. I'm sure when you came in you were told all of this and was more than happy to accept the position. No one else in the FREE MARKET is offering what you are receiving to part time employees. So suck it up and go to work or QUIT! Edited 05-09-2012 07:15 PM
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MentalHealthWeek 05-08-2012
04:30 AM ET (US)
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/m5068
I agree with most of your post.
In this time of turmoil, the Union is the only friend you have.
Frankly, even in good times, it has always taken a long time to achieve justice through the grievance/arb. system.
Discipline cases "float" to the top of the calendar...then they address as many "contract" cases as possible...and
MY PET PEEVE, some really good contract cases get dropped by business agents at PRE-ARB.
I know it sucks, but it's all we have...and if you are not in the Union, no step three for you...Pays to belong.
Good luck...
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PSE
05-08-2012
03:53 AM ET (US)
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I agree, PSE are treated like SH*t. . PSE pay union dues if they joined but honestly I have seen no support from the union at my PD&C. Change hours weekly, sometimes daily, change days weekly, sometimes daily. Same work for half the pay. I literally cannot name one thing the union has done at my plant for the PSE, not one. I have always been a big supporter of the Union (all unions actually) I keep paying my dues, writing congress about not closing, making the phone calls, working my a** off so that the mail gets processed in time and do my job with care and dedication. But the Union just keeps taking along with management and never giving. Edited 05-08-2012 03:57 AM
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koo koo 05-04-2012
10:46 AM ET (US)
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The Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service is comparable to a board of directors of a private corporation. The board includes nine governors, who are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The open session audio webcast will start at May 4, 8:30am ET. A recorded version, along with the presentation, will be posted on this site by May 4, 12:30 ET.
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rn
04-29-2012
08:49 PM ET (US)
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Letter to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe – It Is Time to Resign
Dear Mr. Donahoe,
You are actively presiding over the demise of one of our country’s greatest founding institutions. The U.S. Postal Service is an institution that was conceived by Benjamin Franklin and which has succeeded brilliantly over the generations to service, connect, and allow the people of our land to communicate with each other anywhere at a common rate regardless of whether they live in urban, suburban, or rural areas.
In recent years the cost-cutting and reduction of staff have coupled with the Congressional restrictions on new business opportunities – demanded by corporate interests averse to competition – to place the Postal Service in a cul de sac. Nor can the USPS overcome the draconian requirements to prepay retiree health benefits greatly in advance – an imposition unheard of in either the corporate world or by any other government agency.
Removing the devastating fiscal effect of these prepayments would take care of 80 percent of the postal service’s deficit. Moreover, the federal government already owes the postal service, according to the U.S. Postal Service’s Inspector General, over $80 billion dollars in overpayments the USPS has made to the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System. You need to recover these overpayments. Yet while you have infrequently mentioned these strangleholds, that is not what you are known for in your direction of this historic institution.
What you are known for is a repeated demand to cut services and raise rates – a surefire way to destroy the USPS on the installment plan, a strategy that any business executive knows sets an accelerating downward course. You make the case for shutting rural post offices, slashing 150,000 postal employees’ jobs, ending Saturday delivery, and extending delivery dates as if they do not produce a spiral of decline and loss of customers who will not come back. You make the case, using the cliché of “running the postal service like a business,” when you are ruining the service like a self-destructive business all the while forgetting that postal management for decades has cross-subsidized third class, corporate commercial mail with first class mail but now opposes any cross-subsidization of, at a more modest amount, the community rural post offices that you wish to close down after the May 15, 2012 moratorium ends. Your saying that such close-downs will save $200 million a year completely ignores a greater monetary and human cost of residents having to go without or traveling miles to the next post office by millions of rural Americans already strip-mined of other essential services.
Turning to your gross neglect of a “turn-around” strategy, you have failed in your promise to focus “on selling the business” which you announced you would do when you escalated to your present position. You said it was the USPS’s “job to sell them on the mail.” Although you have received many practical ideas, some within your statutory authority, including nearly two dozen suggestions from Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, and others from one of the conferences on innovation held in the summer of 2010, inaction has been the only follow-up for the most part. Questions we put to you on this subject have received no replies.
Senator Bernie Sanders, among others, has mentioned some of the easy revenue ideas – an honest notary service (badly needed in an era of robo-signings), cashing most checks, selling fishing and hunting licenses, wrapping holiday gifts, or accepting wine or beer for delivery. In mentioning these revenue expanders, he also pointed to the need for Congress to free the Postal Service to enter the digital world that is draining away some of its first-class business.
But we do not hear Mr. Donahoe loud and clear on these matters, especially before Congress. We do not see Mr. Donahoe getting his assistants and encouraging its thousands of postmasters to speak out and stand up for an expanding, innovative, entrepreneurial postal service. Instead, our feedback from the field is that your constant refrain of cutting services and raising rates, together with huge losses of experienced employees, has produced an emerging perilous and costly drop in morale. You must know the operational consequences of that feeling of institutional depression. We do not see the Postmaster General rallying postal employees and gathering postal consumers to pull together for an expansive postal service. You even throw cold water on reviving the U.S. postal savings system, shut down in 1967 under pressure from the banks. At its peak in 1947, the postal savings system had deposits of the equivalent of about $35 billion in today’s dollars. Today there are over 30 million unbanked people who could use such a service provided by a delivery system in 35,000 communities – greater than the number of outlets of McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart combined. When we last suggested this idea, you told us you would look into it. Recently, you dismissed postal savings as not being part of the “core business” of the USPS, after the distinguished Appleseed group, with detailed expertise in the scope of the unbanked, wrote you an unanswered letter on October 14, 2011. (attached)
There is, in Washington, D.C., a combination of relentless ideological opposition to the USPS’s very existence as a public institution joined by thoughtless upper-income pundits and editorial writers who really do not use the postal service as they clutch their e-mail and text-messaging gadgets. They are both remote from the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the postal service in tangible and intangible ways that these deprecators could rarely understand or imagine. There are reporters, however, who have written compelling features from the field on what would happen were a rural post office closed to the people (many of them elderly) living there.
Which constituency are you obliging here?
If you truly wanted to be responsive to postal customers, there is a simple action that you could have taken: publicly requesting Congressional authority to establish a Post Office Consumer Action Group (POCAG). POCAG would be a non-profit group dedicated to representing the interests of postal consumers. Several million people would join, and all that is required would be a simple law directing the Postal Service to send residential postal patrons a letter periodically (perhaps twice per year), which would give them the opportunity to pay a small amount of dues to join and support POCAG. This would not only encourage greater organization and consumer participation in the services the postal service provides, but also in the crucial decisions the Postal Service makes regarding how to best provide those services.
Private corporations pay huge sums for focus groups that help them make business decisions and be responsive to consumer sentiment. A self supporting, non-profit POCAG could, among other things, function as a ready-made focus group that the USPS could help assemble at a minimal cost. After all, the Postal Service has already delivered postcards to all residences nationwide carrying postal promotional messages from cartoon characters – the periodical POCAG letters would certainly be no more burdensome. If you and your immediate predecessor were concerned about postal customers, POCAG is an idea that would have been implemented by now. Instead, it is telling that this important reform remains missing in any discussion of postal consumers.
You are not setting a personal example as you push for unjustifiable cuts. In 2011, despite Congressionally manufactured deficits for the USPS and real deprivations, the value of your compensation package was nearly $400,000. This is nearly double what Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made in the same year. Granted you were not spending $675 million in 2011 just to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. And granted you are running the only major institution – whether governmental or corporate – that receives no money from the Federal government (e.g. tax revenue or corporate welfare) and is a major net creditor of Uncle Sam (a status you should tout more). But, together with other Postal Service executives with annual base pay of over $200,000, how can you damage your moral authority to govern by asking so many people inside and outside the USPS to bear the burden of contraction but not yourselves?
Whether it is in asking consumers to pay more for poorer services, or in slashing postal employee’s jobs and hours, in closing postal facilities and denying the surrounding communities that relied on them, in cutting off citizens throughout the United States who do not have access to the internet from the outside world by closing post offices, or simply proposing cutting services across the board, a leader leads by example, not by exempting himself and his executives from any sacrifices.
Take a couple hours some weekend and stroll slowly through the National Postal Museum only a few blocks from your office. Absorb how previous leaders of the Post Office overcame enormous barriers and hurdles to build and expand the services in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century – even delivering farmers’ eggs. The internet challenge, if the USPS were to participate and provide services, is modest compared to the mountains that the earlier postal service had to climb.
Returning from your visit to the Museum, you may wish to ponder our recommendation that you resign and request that President Obama, who needs to visit this Museum as well, nominate someone who can lead, inspire, and expand the Postal Services of this nation in the 21st Century, while achieving efficiencies that advance rather than retard the mission of the USPS. A leader with vision who can revitalize a mismanaged operation and use the feedback suggestions from your own employees solicited through the Voice of the Employee (VOE) survey.
In a phrase, you are not up to the job!
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
P.O. Box 19312
Washington, D.C. 20036
Robert Weissman
President
Public Citizen
1600 20th Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
Linda Sherry
Director, National Priorities
Consumer Action
P.O. Box 70037
Washington, D.C. 20024
Judy Lear
Acting Director
Gray Panthers
1319 F Street NW, Suite 302
Washington, D.C. 20004
John Richard
Essential Information
P.O. Box 19405
Washington, D.C. 20036
Carol Miller
Public Health Activist
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