Editorial: USPS! Something About The Blues
Editorial by Ronald Williams, Jr.
I’m taking a moment to use my pen as an exhaust pipe to vent my view about a controlled combustion inside this mail industry engine. If you don’t follow the PostalReporter news on a regular basis you might not understand the intended pun to follow in this article. Read more
Burrus: The Biggest Threat to termination of door to door mail services is Washington politicians, Congress
“Senators, Carper, Collins and Coburn hold the future of the United States Postal Service in their hands”
Part 4 – Will The Post Office Survive?
I have written this series to address the uncertainties of thousands of APWU members who are concerned about the long term survival of the Postal Service as a continuing place of employment. Postal employees of this generation have witnessed the demise of the manufacturing and auto industries and have legitimate concerns about the future of the Postal Service which has offered career employment to millions of families that have depended on postal wages and job security.
News reports are abundant, predicting a postal melt down for a variety of reasons with consequences that do not bode well for future employment. Most employees get bits and pieces of news but their lives are full of personal challenges and since there is little that they can do to influence events they listen with half an ear and hope for the best. This series is intended to put the different circumstances in context from the eyes of 53 years of postal experience and explain from my perspective, the challenges and the solutions. Read more
Editorial: Postal Service Keeps Employees Disciplinary Records Forever
Stamps are not the only item USPS considers “Forever”
The following is an editorial by Don Cheney:
USPS Labor Relations keeps a reference copy of an employee’s disciplinary action for the employee’s entire career. Don’t believe it? THEY DO. See the USPS Privacy Act Notice of June 17, 2011 at http://federalregister.gov/a/2011-15038.
Labor Relation’s reference copies are never purged regardless of the disposition of the discipline. Keeping disciplinary records forever is legal under the collective bargaining agreements as long as they are “not considered” in subsequent disciplinary actions. The APWU challenged this nefarious practice and lost.
Postal employees need to keep the disposition of discipline they have received forever, because Labor Relations is not obligated to do so and often doesn’t. I have seen ancient disciplinary actions that were supposedly reduced or expunged surface more than a decade later. Typically, it is to refute a claim made by the employee like, “I’ve never been disciplined for such and such.”
USPS 100.000
System Name: General Personnel Records.
CATEGORIES OF RECORDS IN THE SYSTEM:
4. REFERENCE COPIES OF ALL DISCIPLINE OR ADVERSE ACTIONS: Letters of warning; notices of removal, suspension and/or reduction in grade or pay; letters of decisions; and documents relating to these actions. These are used only to refute inaccurate statements by witnesses before a judicial or administrative body. They may not be maintained in the employee’s OPF or eOPF but must be maintained in a separate file by Labor Relations.
http://www.federalregister.gov/a/2011-15038/p-33
RETENTION AND DISPOSAL:
3. REFERENCE COPIES OF DISCIPLINE OR ADVERSE ACTIONS. These records are kept for historical purposes and are not to be used for decisions about the employee. The retention of these records may not exceed 10 years beyond the employee’s separation date. The records are maintained longer if the employee is rehired during the 10-year period. They may not be maintained in the employee’s OPF or eOPF, but must be maintained in a separate file by Labor Relations.
http://www.federalregister.gov/a/2011-15038/p-45
In the days of paper records and locked filing cabinets, Labor Relations kept disciplinary records for only seven years. Paper files were hard to search. Today, computers have memories like elephants. Do you agree with this statement? “The Postal Service does not expect this amended notice to have any adverse effect on individual privacy rights.”
Don Cheney
Auburn WA
Federal Disability Retirement for Postal Employees: Does the NRP Guarantee Success?
Editorial by Attorney Robert R. McGill, an exclusive to PostalReporter.com
In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, one of the issues which always must be confronted is whether or not the U.S. Postal Service can accommodate an individual’s medical conditions, and the letters which are issued by the U.S. Postal Service as a result of the National Reassessment Process, might give some comfort to the Postal Worker that the issue of accommodation might be satisfied, and therefore that the chances of obtaining an approval of a Federal Disability Retirement application might be greatly enhanced. Such a belief, however, might result not only in a potential miscalculation, but lead one into a fatal error based upon wrong assumptions. Read more
Send Both Of These Editorials On USPS By Major Newspapers Back To Sender
A few days ago APWU President Cliff Guffey in a message to its members said: “The USPS is under attack by anti-labor politicians and some sectors of the business community..” Guffey provided examples of anti-labor articles written by various news websites. Well, it appears the anti-labor groups are ‘pumping up the volume’ on misleading and inaccurate news reports on USPS. Just take a look at two recent editorials:
From the Washington Post Editorial Opinion Board:
With each passing day, it is more obvious that the U.S. Postal Service’s business model is “not viable,” as a Government Accountability Office report put it last year. Having lost $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, USPS expects to lose another $8.3 billion in fiscal 2011. Personnel accounts for 80 percent of the Postal Service’s costs, but its new 4 1 / 2-year agreement with a 205,000-member union cuts costs only $844 million a year. And USPS has to pay $6.7 billion to retiree health and worker compensation funds by Sept. 30. USPS, in short, could be unable to make payroll in the near term unless Congress acts. Yet the likeliest answer from Capitol Hill is to extend more aid, enabling USPS to limp along for a few more years, without attacking the Postal Service’s dysfunction at the roots.
The Washington Post use to be a reputable news outlet. But it seems with the increase of so many other news outlets on the internet the Washington Post has resorted to telling fairytales to maintain readership.
The Miami Herald has jumped into the fairytale business as well
In an editorial by Glenn Garvin
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays the U.S. Postal Service from its appointed rounds, as long as it gets a giant bailout. Largely reduced to a delivery service for subsidized junk mail, crippled by sweetheart deals with its labor unions, the Postal Service is a good candidate for the dead-letter box. Instead, its managers are frantically lobbying for a federal bailout nearly twice the size of the one General Motors got.
Make that two bailouts. The Postal Service is not only trying to sneak a direct $75 billion payment out of the government without congressional approval, it’s also asking to be let off the hook for a $5.5 billion payment into a trust fund to guarantee the absurdly generous pension benefits it has promised its retirees. When the Postal Service can’t pay those benefits a few years down the line, who do you think will get the bill? Hint: Look in the mirror.
Adding $75 billion (plus who knows how much later when the Postal Service pensions implode) to the federal deficit at a time when federal debt is already bigger than half the entire output of the U.S. economy is a bad enough idea on its own terms.
More than half the Postal Service’s business these days is generated by junk mail that’s delivered at less than cost thanks to the lobbying prowess of the direct-mail industry. The percentage of junk mail is only going to rise as digital bill-paying gets safer and more efficient.
USPS Aging Workforce?
Filed under: Articles, postal, postal employees, postal news, usps
Update: Deadtree Edition updated his article after reading my post and reading a USPS report (a retired postal manager helped lead him to the report) on active postal employees that has been published for years. But my point still remains the same. The age of the USPS workforce has no bearing on its financial woes. As one reader pointed out:
The companies may not have a high rate of older employees due to salaries or benefits. Older people need job security and higher wages to take care of their families. The study absent salaries, benefits and throw in geographic location is practically useless in comparing to any company, govt or private.
Like I have mentioned on the frontpage of PostalReporter.com. Deadtree Edition normally writes insightful articles about issues facing the USPS. However, I believe this article is does not truly reflect the purpose of the Retirementjobs study nor does it accurately compare the average age of Postal Workers to employees of Fortune 500 companies.
Oh, by the way, the HAT report says the average age of postal employees is 49 yrs. old. This includes temporary and non-career employees. The average years of USPS service is 16 years which is certainly not enough years to equal the 30-year requirement for retirement of most employees. Now, let me leave this issue alone before I get more “gray hairs”
Deadtree Edition recently wrote an article with the title, “USPS Workforce Has More Gray Hairs Than the Fortune 500. The article is an analysis of a study by RetirementJobs.com and a news article from US News and World Report. The purpose of the RetirementJobs.com study is to highlight:
It is helpful to age 50+ job seekers and existing employees to understand which companies and industries tend to employ a disproportionately high or low percentage of mature workers,” said RetirementJobs.com Founder and CEO Tim Driver.
Just because a company employs a large number of older workers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hiring older workers. In many cases, companies have long-tenured employees who have aged on the job, says Bill Coleman, vice president of research and certification at RetirementJobs.com and author of the report. But the study “does give a sense of where older workers are and where many of them would be most comfortable,” he says.
But Deadtree Edition has taken the study a little bit further and compared it to USPS Workforce.
Deadtree Edition says:
The U.S. Postal Service apparently has a larger share of employees who are over 50 than any Fortune 500 company, a new study indicates.American Airlines leads the big companies, with a workforce that is 39.1% over 50, estimates the RetirementJobs.com study, based on public records.The number of postal workers over 50 does not seem to be publicly available, but the data that are available suggests USPS has the private sector beat in the older-worker category.
First of all, it is absolutely erroneous to compare Fortune 500 companies to the U.S. Postal Service. As the US News and World Report pointed out:
Companies without many older workers aren’t necessarily making a deliberate effort not to hire them, says Coleman. “The reason those companies rate low on the list is because of the nature of what they do or the nature of their organizations,” he says. “Places like Goldman Sachs have large numbers of young employees because they bring in large pools of people just out of college or just out of business school.” Logistics company C.H. Robinson.
In a recent USPS report it states that there are approximately 351,409 postal employees over the age of 50. But the report is not broken down as to how many are CAREER employees within USPS. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter how many employees are over th age of 50. Why? because it does not mean over 50 employees will be eligible for retirement in less than 10 years as the point Deadtree Edition is alluding to in his article on USPS.
RetirementJobs.com also pointed out :
Internal research within leading retail companies now ties the prevalence of older employees directly to higher revenues, due to higher satisfaction rates when a customer (of any age) interacts with an older associate. Finally, companies addressing high turnover rates strategically recruit and emphasize retention of mature employees since these age 50+ employees turn over at one third the rate of their younger (under age 50) peers.
USPS, unlike its competitors has a very low turnover percentage. However, reduced and/or lower wages, reduced workhours and benefits will more than likely drive that percentage to an all-time high.. Can USPS operate efficiently and effectively with a revolving and younger workforce? Only time will tell in the upcoming years as “older” workers retire. But for now, writing articles or trying to force out retirement eligible postal employees is not the answer to curing USPS financial woes. Deadtree Edition should be careful when writing about employees over 50. One would tend to think he is bias against ‘over 50′ employees in the workforce which includes our nation’s military veterans. Or better yet should Morris Wilkinson retire because he is eligible for retirement and over 50? 91-year-old postman Morris Wilkinson stamps 70 years of service I don’t think so.
USPS has reduced its workforce by at least 100,000 employees over the last few years and it is still in financial trouble. But yet pundits and some lawmakers are forever pushing for USPS to cut its workforce even more. USPS is in the business to serve the American people and not to the whims of anti-union forces or lawmakers seeking to score political points with the competitors, businesses and the mailing industry. This is one factor that seems to get lost in discussions about the future and stability of the U.S. Postal Service.
Will The Post Office Survive?
Former APWU President Bill Burrus’ perspective on the survival of USPS
Over the past 50 years pundits and politicians have speculated about the imminent demise of the United States Postal Service and to date they have been proven wrong. Despite the outstanding record of existing for 30 years without government subsidy, a cottage industry emerged at the Cato Institute, a right wing think tank, that existed solely to impress upon Americans that postal services should become profit centers for investors. Throughout this period it has been predicted that successive advances in technology has rendered hard copy messages obsolete and that the Postal Service is a relic of the past to be remembered through the pony express. The real underlying message was not that hard copy and the Postal Service would go away but that profits should be generated from postal activities. Read more
Editorial: USPS Memorial Day
Filed under: Articles, postal, postal employees, postal news, stamps, usps
From birth dates to death dates when we think of Memorial Day most of us think about our military veterans who have given their lives in defense of America. Of equal importance is the Workers Memorial Day celebrated one month earlier. Today, I would ask that you also think about this day with high regard for all postal employees. Read more
Editorial: USPS Loose Change for ‘Paid Performance’
Editorial by Ronald Williams, Jr.
Recently at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing the USPS Postmaster General made statements to the effect that 65,000 non-bargaining employees get no COLA or step increases. He summarized that the pay-for-performance system has been around for 10 years and his experience is that managers like it because it is competitive, and it sets goals for national service, finance, people and individuals…
In the business world the workforce is expected to adapt to change and do more with less using advanced technologies, and platforms for operations. These ideals can present improved paradigms if endorsed, and measured by the management. Bottom up thinkers pray that every performance based system devised to reward bosses incorporates how they transparently coach the players beyond the captains who shout-out the numbers in the “bored-room.” Read more
Q and A on Non-Traditional Full-Time Jobs that APWU Members Should Know Before Voting
“Here are a few key questions that I think the membership should be aware of before they vote on this proposed contract.” By Clint Burelson, APWU President of the Olympia [Washington] Local
NTFT [non-traditional full-time] Questions and Answers on the Contract
The NTFT jobs will significantly affect current workers at the Post Office in a negative manner. Based on my understanding of the proposed contract, I have created a few key questions and answers regarding the impact of NTFT jobs on current workers. Read more