PMG Potter’s Response To White House On Pilot Test For Five-Day Delivery
Excerpts from PMG John Potter letter regarding Pilot test on Five-Day Delivery:
From an operational standpoint a pilot test conducted on a regional basis would increase some of our costs in the short term. For example, we either would have to make manual changes to mail processing sorting schemes and payroll or utilize information technology to program such changes for a limited time or geographic area. We believe that our information technology programming changes, estimated to cost $10 million-$12 million for a national, full-time implementation, would grow significantly to accommodate a test, as would administrative costs if we decided to forego programming changes in favor of performing manual processing for the defined test period. We also would have to communicate the pilot’s parameters to the public and employees. During such a test we would be unable to make the permanent, necessary changes to our delivery workforce, transportation networks, and mail processing operations that would yield the projected $3.1 billion savings. The largest financial impact of a pilot would be the fact that many career employees in the pilot area would have to be paid not to work or be relocated, white many of our non-career and part-time employees would see their wages reduced or eliminated. Any savings in wages that the Postal Service would realize during the test would immediately disappear at the test’s conclusion.
It may be helpful for me to offer a distinct example of the internal challenges that a test would present. In City Letter Carrier operations, full -time, regular City Carriers generally are assigned to a single delivery route that they service five days per week. These Carriers are scheduled to have Sunday off as well as one other day of the week. A category of full-time Carriers, known as Carrier Technicians. also are scheduled to work five days per week; but instead of servicing the same route each day, they cover the day off- and the route–of five different carriers. The five-day delivery proposal anticipates the reduction of approximately 25,000 full-time City Carrier assignments and $2.2 billion in annual savings in City Carrier operations. The savings are generated primarily by the fact that under a five-day delivery model, regular Carriers assigned to a single route would have Saturday and Sunday off, eliminating the need for the Carrier Technician and Relief Carrier assignments. We plan to transition full-time Carrier Technician assignments into Carrier positions (that cover a single route) that become available through attrition (a significant percentage of our current workforce is eligible for retirement between now and 2014). Under a pilot test we would be unable to carry out this Carrier alignment, and during the test itself, we would have a surplus of Letter Carriers for whom we would have to find productive work within their craft, and if unsuccessful, pay them to perform no work because our contract with the National Association of Letter Carriers guarantees full-time, regular Carriers a 40-hour work week. Under our national proposal for five-day delivery we Intend to preserve the employment of our career City Carriers.
read letter from Postamaster General John Potter submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission
White House Withdraws Nomination of Paul Steven Miller to USPS Board of Governors
On June 8, 2010 the White House announced the withdrawal of the nomination of Paul Steven Miller to the USPS Board of Governors. There was no explanation given for this withdrawal of nomination. Miller was nominated on January 29, 2010 “for a term expiring December 8, 2016, vice Carolyn L. Gallagher, term expired.”
According to the January 29, 2010 press releases :
Paul Steven Miller is the Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law who is an expert in workplace and employment law. He has spent his career moving between academia, public service, and law practice. Most recently, Professor Miller spent the first nine months of the Obama Administration as a Special Assistant to the President in The White House. Prior to joining the University of Washington faculty in 2004, Professor Miller had been one of the longest serving commissioners of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency which enforces employment discrimination laws. He has also served in The White House as Liaison to the Disability Community and as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs during the Clinton Administration. Earlier in his career, Professor Miller was the Director of Litigation for the Western Law Center for Disability Rights and a lawyer at the Los Angeles law firm of Manatt Phelps and Phillips. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, cum laude, and the Harvard Law School.
On June 8, 2010 the White House announced:
WITHDRAWAL SENT TO THE SENATE:
Paul Steven Miller, of Washington, to be a Governor of the United States Postal Service for a term expiring December 8, 2016, vice Carolyn L. Gallagher, term expired, which was sent to the Senate on February 1, 2010.
Obama Budget Backs Six-Day Delivery
President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal requires the continuation of six-day delivery by the Postal Service. The administration also promises to work with postal unions and other stakeholders to keep the Postal Service strong for years to come. In setting the amount for “revenue forgone” to cover the costs of free and reduced rate mail, the spending plan says payments will be made “provided that 6-day delivery and rural delivery of mail shall continue at not less than the 1983 level….” Looking to the future, the proposal, submitted to Congress on February 1, states, “The Administration will work with the Postal Service, its employee unions, the Congress, and other stakeholders to make sure the Postal Service (remains) a pillar of the American economy and a vital public resource through the current crisis and over the long haul.” Language in a separate section, however, proposes changes in the Federal Employees Compensation Act (FECA) that could be problematic. The NALC is investigating those proposals and will act to protect letter carriers’ interests. See the USPS section of the budget, with key sections highlighted
The Postal Service’s presentation of its 5-day delivery proposal appears to be on a fast track for presentation to the Postal Regulatory Commission. In announcing the MTAC agenda, the Postal Service has included a 90 minute briefing on 5-day a week delivery on February 17. The Postal Service will repeat this presentation on the web four additional times in February.
source: NALC
http://www.nalc.org/images/FY2011AdminBudgetProposalUSPS.pdf
NALC and Organized Labor Succeed In Obtaining Critical Improvements To Health Reform Bill
NALC and Organized Labor Succeed In Obtaining Critical Improvements
To Congressional Health Reform Bill
Rolando Says Legislation Moving Through Congress
Provides ‘Significant Progress’ for American Workers
The NALC and much of the labor movement, led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka,have been successful in negotiating an agreement with the Obama administration and congressional leaders to significantly improve the financing provisions of pending health care reform legislation that will expand coverage to 30–35 million Americans who today lack health insurance.
The measure would also reform the discriminatory practices of the private health insurance industry, improve both Medicare and Medicare Part D, and make a serious attempt to rein in skyrocketing health care costs. Despite its $90 billion-a-year price tag, the reform would reduce the federal budget deficit while protecting the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), which provides health insurance for NALC members and their families.
Major issues still remain to be resolved between the House and Senate versions of the legislation, but a vote on final passage could come before President Obama’s State of the Union message in February.
“Although this compromise legislation is disappointing to those of us who support a single-payer system or a strong public insurance option, it nevertheless represents significant progress for working Americans,” said NALC President Fred Rolando. “The bill will benefit letter carriers specifically by covering the uninsured members of their families and helping to keep the cost of health care from soaring out of control.”
The most contentious sticking point for NALC and the labor movement in general concerned a proposed excise tax on high-cost health plans slated to begin in 2013.
Originally targeted at family plans costing more than $13,000 per year (and self-only plans costing more than $6,500), this 40 percent levy on health plans was included in the Senate bill as a way to finance reform and to discourage excessive spending on health care.But it threatened to unfairly tax union health plans that were costly—not because of overly generous benefits, but because of demographic and geographical factors.
Thanks to relentless lobbying by NALC and other unions, the tax thresholds were increased first to $23,000 and $8,500 in the Senate and then to $24,000 and $8,900 as a result of the White House agreement reached by the AFL-CIO on January 14. Those thresholds will also be adjusted upwards to account for age and gender differences and to account for any surge in health care inflation between now and 2013. Furthermore, dental and vision coverage will no longer be counted against the threshold, effectively raising the levels by as much as an additional $2,000. In addition, the AFL-CIO deal secured an exemption for collectively bargained health plans through 2017; it was not clear whether the exemption would cover bargaining unit postal employees with FEHHBP plans.
“We had hoped to get rid of the excise tax altogether,” Rolando acknowledged, “but since the average cost of FEHBP plans ($13,000 for family and $6,900 for self-only) falls far below the new thresholds, our plans will not be taxed for the foreseeable future.”
“We are still concerned that the indexing of the thresholds is inadequate,” he added,“since health care premiums have traditionally risen much faster than inflation and FEHBP plans like the NALC HBP could be hit by the tax sometime in the next decade.”
Under the law, the thresholds for the tax will rise by the increase in the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percentage point. “Fortunately, we will have 10 years to fix the indexing provisions of the law or repeal the tax altogether,” Rolando said.
source: NALC
Obama: Mail Carriers To Deliver Medical Countermeasures
Executive Order — Medical Countermeasures Following a Biological Attack
ESTABLISHING FEDERAL CAPABILITY FOR THE TIMELY PROVISION OF MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES FOLLOWING A BIOLOGICAL ATTACK
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to plan and prepare for the timely provision of medical countermeasures to the American people in the event of a biological attack in the United States through a rapid Federal response in coordination with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments.
This policy would seek to: (1) mitigate illness and prevent death; (2) sustain critical infrastructure; and (3) complement and supplement State, local, territorial, and tribal government medical countermeasure distribution capacity.
Sec. 2. United States Postal Service Delivery of Medical Countermeasures. (a) The U.S. Postal Service has the capacity for rapid residential delivery of medical countermeasures for self administration across all communities in the United States. The Federal Government shall pursue a national U.S. Postal Service medical countermeasures dispensing model to respond to a large-scale biological attack.
(b) The Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, in coordination with the U.S. Postal Service, within 180 days of the date of this order, shall establish a national U.S. Postal Service medical countermeasures dispensing model for U.S. cities to respond to a large-scale biological attack, with anthrax as the primary threat consideration.
(c) In support of the national U.S. Postal Service model, the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Defense, and the Attorney General, in coordination with the U.S. Postal Service, and in consultation with State and local public health, emergency management, and law enforcement officials, within 180 days of the date of this order, shall develop an accompanying plan for supplementing local law enforcement personnel, as necessary and appropriate, with local Federal law enforcement, as well as other appropriate personnel, to escort U.S. Postal workers delivering medical countermeasures.
Sec. 3. Federal Rapid Response. (a) The Federal Government must develop the capacity to anticipate and immediately supplement the capabilities of affected jurisdictions to rapidly distribute medical countermeasures following a biological attack. Implementation of a Federal strategy to rapidly dispense medical countermeasures requires establishment of a Federal rapid response capability.
(b) The Secretaries of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, within 90 days of the date of this order, shall develop a concept of operations and establish requirements for a Federal rapid response to dispense medical countermeasures to an affected population following a large-scale biological attack.
Sec. 4. Continuity of Operations. (a) The Federal Government must establish mechanisms for the provision of medical countermeasures to personnel performing missionessential functions to ensure that mission-essential functions of Federal agencies continue to be performed following a biological attack.
(b) The Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, within 180 days of the date of this order, shall develop a plan for the provision of medical countermeasures to ensure that mission-essential functions of executive branch departments and agencies continue to be performed following a large-scale biological attack.
Sec. 5. General Provisions.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) authority granted by law to a department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 30, 2009.
DOL to Reconsider Bush’s Last-Minute FMLA Changes
APWU News
Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced [PDF] Dec. 7 that she is reviewing changes made early this year to regulations governing the Family and Medical Leave Act. The announcement has set off speculation that the Department of Labor will overturn revisions implemented at the very end of the Bush administration.
APWU members may recall that just four days before President Bush left the White House, he implemented several regulatory changes to the FMLA, some of which have caused problems for workers, including postal employees. The APWU was among several workers’ advocacy organizations that fought the imposition of the new rules.
Included among the changes were a narrowing of the definition of a “serious health condition,” requirements for additional medical documentation, requirements that medical evidence be provided more frequently, and permission for employers to contact an employee’s healthcare provider directly, without the employees’ knowledge or permission.
“We hope the Department of Labor will reverse policies that were pushed through just before President Obama took office,” said APWU Legislative & Political Department Director Myke Reid.
APWU President William Burrus wrote to Solis in June, saying that the Bush FMLA rules “weakened the law and made it more difficult for workers to exercise the right the legislation was designed to protect.”
The expected “new” regulations will be developed and published by November, Reid said, and the APWU’s concerns again will be shared with the Department of Labor. “Eleven months may seem like a long time, but notice must be given and a 60-day ‘comment period’ is required. We are optimistic that the subsequent review will work in our favor.”
President Obama Nominates Kessler For Re-Appointment to USPS Board of Governors
From the Whitehouse:
Alan Kessler
Alan Kessler is a Philadelphia attorney and partner in the law firm of Duane Morris LLP. He has served as member of the Postal Board of Governors since 2000. In January 2008, Mr. Kessler was elected to serve as Chairman of the United States Postal Board of Governors, a position he held through March, 2009. He currently serves as Co-Chairman of the Governance and Strategic Planning Committee and as a member of the Communications Subcommittee of the Board. As an attorney, he has substantial experience in the defense of class-action litigation, including securities, antitrust, toxic tort and civil rights cases. Mr. Kessler’s public service activities have included serving as a member of the Presidential Transition Team in 1992-93 and as Vice Chair of the Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management, a Presidential appointment he held from 1994-1998. He was a member of the Electoral College, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2000, and, on the regional level, was a township commissioner for Lower Merion Township from 1988 through 1999.
Obama Nominates Two Union Attorneys To Lead The Merit Systems Protection Board
President Barack Obama has chosen two attorneys with extensive experience representing government employees to lead the Merit Systems Protection Board, which rules on disputes between federal agencies (including the Postal Service) and their employees.
Here are the bios as posted on the White House website: Susan Tsui Grundmann, Nominee for Chairman, Merit Systems Protection Board
Since 2002, Susan Tsui Grundmann has served as General Counsel to the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), which represents 100,000 federal workers nationwide and is affiliated with the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). At NFFE, she has successfully litigated cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 2004, Ms. Grundmann represented NFFE and other labor unions in the statutory “meet and confer” process with officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which sought agreement on how to proceed with new DHS personnel regulations. She currently represents NFFE and the United Department of Defense Workers Coalition, consisting of 36 labor unions, and has served on the Coalition’s litigation team in a coordinated response to the proposed personnel changes at Department of Defense (DoD). In addition to DoD employees, Ms. Grundmann represents employees in the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Passport Services, Veterans Administration, General Services Administration, and some 25 additional federal agencies. Since 2003, she has been a regular instructor on federal sector law at the William W. Winpisinger Education Center in Placid Harbor, Maryland. Prior to joining NFFE, she served as General Counsel to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). She earned her undergraduate degree at American University and her law degree at Georgetown University Law Center.
Anne M. Wagner, Nominee for Member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, with the Designation of Vice Chair
Anne Wagner is currently the General Counsel of the Personnel Appeals Board of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. As General Counsel, she has vigorously prosecuted prohibited personnel practices and other violations of federal employment law. Prior to that, she served a five year statutory term as an adjudicating Member of the Personnel Appeals Board having been appointed to that position by the Comptroller General of the United States. Ms. Wagner began her career as a staff attorney in the Office of the General Counsel for the General Services Administration, where she primarily handled labor and employment issues. From there, she went on to become an Assistant General Counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, the largest federal sector labor organization representing more than 600,000 federal and District government employees. In her nearly twenty years with AFGE, she led precedent setting litigation and handled cases arising under the full array of laws governing federal employment. Ms. Wagner graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.
Postal Unions Seek White House Intervention To Address USPS Crisis
APWU Web News Article #079-09, July 16, 2009
The presidents of the four major postal unions have asked the White House to address the “deepening crisis” facing the Postal Service, asserting that “the Obama administration must intervene now to avoid both a political and economic train wreck.”
“The recession has had a severe impact on the Postal Service’s finances,” the union leaders wrote to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, “and the situation has deteriorated significantly” since they met with White House staffers in March.
A financial collapse of the nation’s mail system “would pose a dire threat to the administration’s recovery plan,” the letter said. “Fortunately, such a collapse can be averted without resort to a taxpayer bailout, by reforming the retiree health prefunding provisions of the law. The Postal Service needs immediate relief from a law adopted in 2006, which requires the Postal Service to prefund its future retiree health liabilities,” the union presidents wrote.
“No other government agency or private company in America is required to prefund at all,” they noted, “much less on such an accelerated schedule.”
Congress is attempting to find a solution with H.R. 22, the letter said, but is hindered by “questionable rules” of the Congressional Budget Office that “score” (calculate the “cost” of) intergovernmental transfers, the letter said.
“But it is increasingly clear that this legislation will not be enough to solve the crisis,” the union presidents wrote. “A policy decision must be made at the highest levels on whether it makes sense to sacrifice the future viability of the Postal Service to comply with a misguided policy devised by the previous administration that is, in any case, no longer appropriate in the current economic environment.”
“There is a need to look at long-term structural reforms to help the USPS survive in the Internet age,” the union presidents said, “but the current crisis is not the result of changing technology. Rather, it stems from two factors: the collapse of several mail-intensive sectors of the economy (housing, real estate, finance, etc.) and the excessively onerous prefunding requirements adopted in 2006. If not for the prefunding requirements, the USPS would be able to weather the economic crisis.”
Signing the letter were APWU President William Burrus, National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric V. Rolando, National Rural Letter Carriers Association President Don Cantriel and National Postal Mail Handlers President John F. Hegarty.
APWU President Burrus Calls on Labor Department to Reverse Bush FMLA Rules
APWU News
APWU President William Burrus has called on U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to rescind the new regulations [PDF] governing the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that were imposed by the Bush Administration just days before the former president left office.
The Bush FMLA rules “weakened the law and made it more difficult for workers to exercise the rights the legislation was designed to protect,” Burrus said in his June 3 letter [PDF] to Solis.
The new regulations, he noted, define “serious health condition” more narrowly; require employees to provide more medical documentation about their conditions, and provide it more often; allow employers to contact an employee’s healthcare providers without the employees’ knowledge or permission, and permit employers to request FMLA recertification every six months in conjunction with an absence, at the employee’s expense.
In calling for the reversal of the President Bush’s parting shot to American working families, however, Burrus requested that Labor Department “retain the one positive change” in the new rules: the expansion of FMLA rights for members of the military and their families.
Burrus praised the FMLA Restoration Act (H.R. 2161), introduced in the House of Representatives on April 29 by Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), but asked the labor secretary to reverse the new rules without waiting for the legislation to pass.