Recent headlines that predict the Postal Service will collapse within one year demonstrate the importance of APWU members getting involved in legislative affairs, President Cliff Guffey said.
|
“To ensure the survival of the Postal Service — and our jobs — I urge each and every member to make a commitment to legislative action,” he said.
“The USPS is under attack by anti-labor politicians and some sectors of the business community,” Guffey continued. “It is crucial that APWU members get involved.
“When your local calls on you to visit your Congressional representatives, you must act as if your job depends on it, because it does,” he said.
Recent news stories suggest that the Postal Service’s financial problems will lead to the downfall of the USPS. Bloomberg Businessweek published an article on May 27 titled “The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse,” which blamed the Postal Service’s financial crisis on labor costs. “The Postal Service’s business model [is] so badly broken that collapse [is] imminent,” the article concluded.
Other news sources blamed e-mail for the Postal Service’s decline. A report on National Public Radio (NPR) said, “The U.S. Postal Service can’t shrink fast enough. Its revenues are falling and its losses are rising as mail migrates to the Internet.”
“The true cause of the Postal Service’s financial woes is the congressionally-imposed mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund future retiree health benefits,” Guffey said, “but you wouldn’t know it from reading many of the recent articles about the USPS.
“Absent this pre-funding burden, the Postal Service would have experienced a cumulative surplus, despite falling mail volume and the worst recession in recent history,” he added.
|
“We must support measures that will enable the USPS to remain viable in the future, such as H.R. 1351,” Guffey said. The bill, introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), would correct postal pre-funding inequities.
We also support some provisions of S. 1010, introduced by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE). The “POST Act” would address the pre-funding requirement by allowing the USPS to use overpayments to its pension accounts to meet the pre-funding obligations. It also would give the Postal Service authority to close post offices solely for financial reasons, and would require arbitrators to consider the financial health of the USPS when contract negotiations end in arbitration. APWU supports the overpayment provisions, but does not support the bill entirely, as written. We will continue to work with Senators and staff to address the issues of concern to our members.
The union president urged members to get involved. “It is imperative that we contact our legislators to win support for bills that will provide immediate relief to the USPS,” he said. “It is essential to our future.”
source:
Wow, all’s I know is we barely have enough people to staff the machines overnight in Omaha. And while we get our DPS out on time, we stick thousands of pieces of standard mail every night lately. No tour two (day shift) to run this mail anymore. Tour three has to focus on the first class and outgoing mail. The other day, 35 nuttings full of delayed standard, thats about 45 thousand pieces of mail.
estimate,
what a bunch of losers on here
GET A LIFE! Who writes blogs that are 20 pages long?
BLA BLA BLA Do you actually think anything is going to get done ? For the last 50 years this country has been in a downward spiral . Nothing has or will be done until it’s all over ! What this country needs in a good civil war . But no one will fight for anything anymore . Why half the people here don’t even belong , much less give a sheot about this country . You can’t even get them to put down thier cell phones down long enough to hold a conversation . BLA BLA BLA .
The USPS days as it has been for years are numbered.
Rampant cost must be controlled. Waste must be eliminated..
Congress must do its job.
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Things Are Spinning Out of Control
The pretense of centralized control of history is wearing thin.
The single greatest conceit of the Status Quo in the U.S., China and Euroland is that systems and trends can be tightly controlled. That conceit is slowly being revealed as hubris, as all sorts of things are spinning out of the control of the centralized authorities and financial elites in each geopolitical power center.
Does anyone really think the people of Greece will stand idly by while the state treasures of their nation are transferred to the banks which foolishly lent billions to a visibly risky enterprise? The banks, of course, lent freely to insolvent governments throughout the European Union, confident in the backstop of the E.U. itself.
The analogy to subprime mortgages in the U.S. is near-perfect: banks lent freely to extremely risky borrowers, breezily confident that their worker-bees in the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Treasury and Congress would all toil feverishly to transfer the risk to the U.S. taxpayers, by whatever means were necessary.
Does anyone really think the uprisings against this transfer of national wealth to the “too big to fail” banks in Europe will fade as unemployment rises and the true costs of the transfer become apparent to all?
Does anyone really think there is no chance that the citizens of one of the nations lined up to be stripmined by the E.U. will openly rebel against the stripmining, throwing out their government until they find some politicians who are not spineless lackeys and factotums of the financial Status Quo?
Does anyone really think the banks are really that precious to the people they are stripmining? Just how awful would it be if all the big banks with exposure to sovereign debt in the E.U. went belly up and were declared insolvent? A handful of very wealthy managers would lose their jobs, a handful of very wealthy owners would lose their stake, and all the pension funds and mutual funds which bet on the infinite passivity of the citizenry and the infinite checkbook of the E.U. would lose, too.
It’s called Capitalistic risk and return, baby, and return can be negative. All the big players assumed the citizenry would quietly line up to have the clothing ripped from their backs and their flesh flayed to extract the pound of flesh “owed” the banks. But as the citizenry of Europe wake up to costs of the stripmining, which extends now to the taxpayers of Germany, Finland and beyond, they are withdrawing their support of the financial Status Quo.
Here is my plea: Ireland, Please Do the World a Favor and Default (November 29, 2010).
Things are spinning out of the control of the centralized mandarins in the E.U. They seem to have borrowed the Federal Reserve’s playbook to keep the stripmining proceeding as planned: lie, frequently (practice helps); obscure systemic risks by printing money; and issue a foul sewage of propaganda about how nicely the economy is “recovering” to mask the real game, which is diverting the national income stream to the banking cartel.
The levers of interest rates, credit and money supply do not control larger trends; the appearance of control is illusory. The E.U. and the Fed are both busily applying the duct tape of various monetary machinations to the overheating boilers of the global economy, and presenting their frantic improvisations as “finely tuned, guaranteed to work” policies. As things spin out of their control, reality is poking through their rice-paper facade of “normalcy” and control.
Here in the U.S., the Fed’s game plan of stripmining the nation to “save” the banking cartel is based on a cruel deceit I explained yesterday in The ‘Baseball’ Economy: The Fed Strikes Out (May 24, 2011): while the Fed maintains incentives for financial speculation and backstops any cartel losses in those speculations, it claims its policies are designed to “boost employment” in the real economy.
That is the world’s most dangerous joke: if you believe it, you die from extreme irony. What the Fed is actually doing is starving the real economy and thus precluding any gains in employment as it diverts the national income to fatten the insolvent banking cartel.
Does anyone seriously believe their scam can endure? As I described in Your Pick, Ben, But One Goes Off the Cliff (April 22, 2011), the Fed’s policies are setting up multiple double-binds. The Fed cannot finesse the unraveling of the entire financialization project.
There is currently a “great debate” over QE3, the next round of Fed “stimulus” (read stripmining). As things spin out of control, it no longer matters what the Fed does. That is, after all, their central conceit and the basis of their power: that the Fed actually controls anything. This quote, attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, is increasingly relevant: “Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything.”
The Fed claims it can force the real economy to “grow” by forcefeeding it credit. But all the Fed is really doing is fattening the banking cartel with guaranteed profits (borrow from the Fed for free and then deposit the funds at the Fed for interest) and enabling another speculative frenzy which generates fees and profits for the banking cartel while the U.S. taxpayers play bagholder.
The Fed has lost control of the reaction to QE3. There is no “surprise” in QE3, so the potential positive is lost. Whatever the limitations the Fed imposes on QE3, they will be recognized as limiting the “high” of the credit-cocaine injected by the Fed.
If the Fed chooses an open-ended, essentially infinite QE3, then it will be recognized by the market that the Fed has lost all control and the pretense of “growth” is truly threadbare. No matter what the Fed does with QE3, the results will be negative. If they try to finesse a limited QE3, the markets will recognize the policy is unable to force-feed more speculative bubbles. If the Fed unleashes the printing press, then inflation will wrench free of the last rotten ropes restraining it, and the market will recognize that the current stock and bond bubbles are so tenuous that only unlimited money printing can keep them inflated.
Simply put, things are spinning out of the Fed’s control. The Fed has been transferring the wealth of the nation to the banking cartel and the financial Power Elite for three long years, and the fraud at the heart of their claim to be “stimulating” the real economy is now in plain view.
Does anyone really believe Japan’s economy is under control? The tragedy at the out-of-control Daiichi Fukushima reactors might well be an analogy for the entire Japanese economy. Does anyone seriously believe Japan’s over-indebted experiment in endless quantitative easing will sustain a demographic sea change and yet another explosion of debt to support rebuilding and more “stimulus,” i.e. bailing out Japan’s insolvent banking cartel, which has been insolvent for 20 years?
As for China: inflation is now out of control. Party authorities are frantically pulling the same levers of monetary policy, but the wires connecting the levers to the real economy have snapped. All their efforts to “cool” rampant speculative bubble-blowing and rampant inflation are failing. Taking their cue from the U.S., they are desperately trying to mask their loss of control with doctored statistics, but the conceit cannot endure for much longer: rents are rising even as housing sales decline. Local governments are still borrowing and speculating wildly, in a last-ditch effort to prop up their own income streams, which are dependent on real estate speculation and land grabs from peasants.
Things are spinning out of control. Trends are beyond the feeble grasp of central financial authorities. Power is based not just on controlling events in the real world but on the perception of having some control over the real world. Once the central banks’ control over large-scale trends and systems is revealed as illusory, then the unraveling of the Status Quo’s powers will gain momentum.
Raising the Roof on Debt
by Peter Schiff
Today the U.S. government officially borrowed beyond its $14.29 trillion statutory debt limit. And even though the Obama administration has assured us that accounting gimmickry will allow the government to borrow for another few months, the breach has given seeming urgency to Congressional negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans are making a great show of acting tough by linking their “yes” votes with promises for future budget cuts (that could even slow the rate of debt increases at some uncertain point in the future). But as we go through the process, many novice observers may wonder why we have a debt ceiling at all when our government has never shown the slightest inclination to respect its prior self-imposed limits.
The ceiling was first imposed in 1917 as part of a deal that passed the Liberty Bond Act that funded America’s entry into the First World War. To make it easy for the Treasury to sell those bonds, Congress also amended the Federal Reserve Act to allow the Fed to hold government bonds as collateral. But given the potential for unchecked Federal deficits, Congress sought to limit taxpayer exposure to $11.5 billion.
The problem was that Congress never passed a law to prevent future Congresses from raising the ceiling. And even if it had, that law could have been rewritten by future legislation. Sure enough, when the Second World War rolled around the debt limit was raised frantically, leaving it at $300 billion by 1945. But believe it or not, after the War ended, the limit was actually reduced to $275 billion.
Despite the costs associated with the Korean War, the next increase did not come until 1954. And over the ensuing eight years, the ceiling was raised seven times and reduced twice, finally getting back to $300 billion in 1962. Since then, Congress has voted to raise the ceiling 74 times without a single reduction.
Practically speaking, a ceiling that is raised automatically is no ceiling at all. Given that, why not dispense with the pretense? The reason is politics. No Congressman wants to be on the record voting for unlimited debt, yet most are willing to rail against fiscal recklessness while raising the ceiling every time it’s reached. Any Congressman who gives lip service to a balanced budget Amendment but votes to raise the debt ceiling is a hypocrite. No one needs constitutional help to hold the line on the debt right now!
But epic levels of Federal red ink and the approach of the 2012 elections have raised the stakes. Despite the newfound urgency, nearly all Democrats and a very large chunk of Republicans argue that failure to raise the ceiling will be tantamount to economic suicide. They argue that such a rash move will cause the U.S. to default on outstanding debt obligations, thereby sending interest rates sharply higher across the board. Higher interest rates they argue would cripple the economy and permanently increase debt service costs. As a result, they predict capping debt now will precipitate a far deeper economic contraction than what we have already seen in the last few years.
Few see the inherent absurdity in the notion that taking on more debt improves the economic health and creditworthiness of the United States. I would argue for the much simpler idea that more debt weakens a nation’s financial position. More importantly, capping U.S. debt at current levels means bringing a future crisis into the present where it can be dealt with in practical terms. This is something that nobody in Washington actually wants.
If we do today what we have failed to do in the past, we very may well default on a portion of our debt. No doubt our creditors will suffer. But such near term pain will lead to a quicker and healthier recovery. Out of control Federal spending will have to be dealt with now. A downgraded credit rating will make it harder for the United States to continue borrowing, and as a result should be viewed as a blessing in disguise.
A reduction in debt levels is good economics. Remember, taxpayers will have to repay with interest anything the government borrows now. The more the government borrows, the larger it grows, and the larger it grows, the weaker the economy becomes. The less money the government borrows, the more that is available for the private sector to borrow to increase production and create jobs.
Failing to raise the debt ceiling will force Congress and the President to tell the truth to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries who have been promised more than taxpayers can deliver. They will have to concede that so-called government “trust funds” are mere accounting gimmicks, and that benefits will need to be cut if the programs are to be solvent. They will have to tell the truth to our creditors that the U.S government has borrowed beyond the ability of its citizens to repay. And lastly, the stark reality will force the government to tell the truth to Federal employees whose salaries and benefits are unsupportable given our fiscal weakness.
But, on the other hand, if we raise the debt ceiling, we can postpone the crisis into an indefinite future. All of these tough choices could be avoided. Government pay and benefits will flow unabated, and our creditors will continue to get their interest payments now. But in the future, the value of principal repayments and government benefits and paychecks will lose purchasing power. That’s because if we keep raising the ceiling indefinitely, we risk destroying our currency. But the long slow death of a currency and the ebbing of a nation’s economic vitality doesn’t make for huge headlines.
It is for that reason I am 100% confident that Congress will do the wrong thing and raise the debt ceiling for the 75th time in 50 years. In the end there will be some kind of phony compromise with each side claiming victory. But while the politicians celebrate another dodged bullet, the U.S. economy will continue to be shot full of holes.
May 18, 2011
Peter Schiff
Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In
As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble. Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in. The ADP jobs report was a “disaster”, the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock. The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well. All of this bad news is starting to spook investors. On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data. QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3. If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.
This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now. Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money. Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.
Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an “economic slump”….
“Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we’re starting to see a broad-based economic slump.”
So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?
Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now….
“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”
The bad economic news just keeps rolling in. It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.
The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days….
*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month. That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000. This jobs report is being called a “disaster”.
*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting. The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM….
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7.
*Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default. This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.
To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.
*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago. Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.
*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.
So what is causing all of this?
Well, the truth is that the “sugar high” that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.
QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal “stimulus money” has been spent. Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.
But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?
Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic….
“The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it.”
The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression. The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad. If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.
How much worse?
Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC….
“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”
Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the “economic recovery” but most Americans know better.
According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.
Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.
The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded. Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.
But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.
One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.
In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn’t get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: “50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy”.
Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is “unsustainable” and that changes have to be made.
But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.
What do you think would happen if that came to pass?
Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.
We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.
It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.
Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.
Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.
Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.
Hold on to your seats.
Ummmm, I think “Dave” is a supervisor for sure. Fabulous comment LV Carrier.
Co worker they don’t care about you getting out of the union
They saw revenue drying up before this new contract thats
Why they got the new pse
category to get thousands of new
Dues paying members to replace you this is their new partime
Workforce.
Please don’t give me that tired old “been to a union meeting” line.
Every station has a Union Rep. maybe four of them. 25 years at thr P.O. and it is the same crap since day 1. Take a look at the Clerk contract to see what coming, the biggest step back I’ve ever seen.
Your Postal Unions support Republicans/Corporatis/Anti-labor politicians.
Turn off your TV’s and fight this .
That was a really classic carrier whine. Do you people ever stop?
Make sure you hit out to the street when you actually leave for your route and not when your supposed to leave. How many carriers go back to their cases for 10-20 minutes before leaving the building?
On paper everything is working as designed.
How many clerks scan the Boxline all up before its actually finished? We are our own worst enemy.
Every Station has Clerks and Carriers trying to make their bosses look good so they can get Leave approved or a little OT bone thrown their way.
We all need to do the job correctly and stop cheating time
LV Carrier:
Most all of the “problems” that you talk about are happening at most city stations and branches.
Postal Management has been cutting hours and not replacing people for YEARS….here’s a NEWS FLASH….they don’t care about service standards and it looks like it will be getting even worse.
I don’t know WHY you would think that the CLERKS aren’t COMPLAINING big time to the Union about understaffing and that the Union has not filed grievances and peppered management about the situation, because THEY HAVE and will continue to do so.
How in the world would quitting the Union HELP YOU?
When was the last time you went to a Union Meeting?
Have you raised hell at the meetings about the facts of what’s occurring and asked what they are going to do about it?
go griz
EXCELLENT POST!
Relax the service standards a day. Imagine the savings.
Hang in there LV Carrier 🙂
To hell with the politicians and the unions spewing this garbage about trying to save the USPS. We as employees had better wake up and wake up fast. We are rapidly being priced out of a job. It is approaching faster than you might want to admit. There are real problems within the operations that do nothing but waste money. We all know it but we say nothing. The union knows it, but they won’t get involved, no dues money being lost. They can’t see what is going on because they have their heads so far up the politicians arses, they forget about little ole me and you. We have roughly 50 routes at our station and maybe 2-3 clerks at most sorting mail for these 50 carriers. We have changed carrier clock in times from 6am to 6:30 to 7am-7:30 to 8am, back to 7:30, back to 8am and now talk of starting at 8:30am. Why don’t we just skip a day, maybe the mail will be ready then. All the talk of declining mail volume, why does it take so much longer to get the mail to us if that is the case? WHY. We complain to Mgmt that we don’t have enough clerks, management says we have enough clerks. Well if we have enough clerks, why can’t we get our mail. One more clerk for 4 hours is a LOT cheaper than 50 carriers standing arouind waiting from 15 minutes to an hour for mail, parcels, DPS to be spread, accountables and keys to be ready for issue etc. At the end of the day, we just bag up the accountables and throw them on the floor near the accountable cage, REAL ACCOUNTABILITY there.
If Mgmt claims we have enough clerks, and the mail is not getting worked, then a couple of things, mgmt is incapable of supervising the clerks, mgmt allows them to do as they wish, or Mgmt has reported or distorted volume reports for so long, that the clerk staffing is based on the falsified volumes and 95% of the carriers that do not ever make office time, is probably also related to this distorted volume reports. Eveywhere you look at our station, empty equipment is piling up, UBBM consist of several days worth and carriers are allowed to dispose of their own ads, to prevent the piling up even more of the overflowing UBBM tubs. Those sufficient number of clerks just can’t hack it or get it done. A 4 hour clerk would be maybe $100 vs 50 carrier hours of $1350, SIMPLE MATH. You want us out, do your part to get us out, STOP the waste.
Then there is the other stories of the RTS mail, that keeps coming back day after day after day. If you pay 44 cents to mail a letter and it gets delivered, you got 44 cents. If you have to handle it 2 times, 22 cents, 3 times and so on. Who is working on that.
The forwarding system is a joke. All forwarded mail now goes to Phoenix and back to Vegas. Carriers do not know for several days that a COA is even submitted. Most of the time mail has already been held 10 days as HFO and returned as UNC/MLNA, then you get a change notice or verification letter. Still you know none of the details, when it starts, family or individual, etc. The equipment is set up to pull forwards out before the carrier sees them, and it pulls and forwards the wrong mail for/from the wrong apartment by only using the street address as the extract code, totally ignoring the apartment or suite number etc. HELLO, that apartmant number does mean something.
The union says they don’t/can’t get involved in delivery, well how about contacting someone that can get involved in this mess, like maybe the press before we all go down the tubes.
There is another report on this blog about the increase in O/T in relation to declining volume. It seems everything is increasing while volume is on the decrease.
Right now we are going through route adjustments again, like we just did a few months ago and just like we did a few months before that, and a few months before that. How much are you really saving, when carriers are constantly have to learn and adjust to new territority and landscape every few months? I feel so sorry for the clerks trying to learn a new scheme, soon as you think you learned it, SURPRISE, we are changing again. I have territory on my route that I have had and have had taken away and given back no less than 4 times in just a few years. It is a joke with the customers, I am leaving, or I am back, or I am leaving again, but I will be back.
It seems MGMT is wasting way more money than the carriers or clerks could ever conceive of trying to save.
OK, I feel better now, but consider your NALC union collects about $5.2 million every pay period in dues, 203,000 carriers at $26 per pay period. Granted all are not union, most are only because it is extremely more difficult to get out than to get in. What do you feel you are getting for those dues? Do you even get a free picnic? Come on union leaders, pull you heads out of Washingtons arses and look at what is really happening in the PO. The problems we have can and should be solved from within, without the need for politicians. Stand up and divulge what is really going on what needs to be fixed.
Oh and by the way, 5 day delivery should be on everyones mind. So the union loses a few dues dollars. The crap about people needing their medicine is a big joke and everybody knows it. The medicine that comes in on Friday or Saturday in most cases sits in the PO until Monday anyway. I have ordered prescriptions by mail for 20 years or more and never not even once have I ever been concerned with them arriving on Saturday. I order in sufficient time that I have ample supply to last me for a couple weeks after I order. I have never waited until I run out or get way too low, NEVER, NOT EVEN ONCE. You should always allow at least 10 days for mail order to arrive, even though in most cases it arrives w/i about 4-5 days, why take a chance. MOST businesses operate Mon-Fri anyway and as far as checks, the checks are only dated for issue Mon-Fri anyway. I have yet to see a Gov check dated for delivery on Saturday. Check to bank or direct deposit takes care of most of that anyway. The times are changing and we need to start wising up and changing with the times ar we will be taken over of face fierce competition for the outside. Don’t believe me, just watch and wait and see.
In the meantime, ask for a PS1188 and fill it out and hold on to it, until 20 days before your anniversary date of joining the union, no more than 20 days, not less than 10 days, have it signed and follow the instructions for sending it in. You should not ever be required to be a member of or contribute to a particular political party just to have a job and have union representation. You can go onto LiteBlue and find out what you anniversary date of joining the union is.