Burrus: Pick Your Fight
One of the web sites that focuses on postal issues recently suggests that I favor “throwing in the towel” on 5 day delivery by supporting the Obama plan for postal reform. This analysis misinterprets my suggested course for addressing the USPS’ dilemma. The choices offered in this political struggle are:
1. Issa/Ross – Carper/McCain
a. A Republican controlled House and
b. A Democratic Chairman in the Senate who accepts the GAO report
2. Obama proposal that includes 5 day delivery
3. HR 1351 which has major obstacles in the House and Senate. The path to passage would require a miracle and even then you would be only half way there, requiring Senate confirmation
Each of these options is unacceptable in their present form but the Obama fight is much more targeted and would be among friends
I do not suggest “throwing in the towel on 5 day delivery” but settling on a specific target and directing all the guns in one direction. It gives you a better chance of hitting something you want to eat.
And to the blogger who continues to write about the timing of my retirement, I suggest that when he reaches 53 years of service at the age of 75 he will be qualified to question my decision.
Burrus: What’s Next for the Issa-Ross Bill
Filed under: politics, postal, postal news, postal reform, usps
The Issa/Ross Bill has now been voted out of Committee but it is a long way from finalization. It is a disappointment that the progressive forces were unable to substitute HR 1351 for the regressive legislation intended to break postal unions and continue the long standing practice of using USPS’ revenues as the piggy bank of the federal government. HR 2309 was on a fast track to adoption by the Committee but it was unfortunate that those who supported the Lynch Bill did not immediately discredit the request to GAO as a political stunt.
This political maneuver was similar to the Bush appointment of a Presidential Commission to make recommendations for postal reform. We were able to caste suspicions of a done deal prior to the issuance of the final report, removing it as a defense for draconian change. In this instance, Representatives who wanted to toe the party line were able to cite the GAO report as official review with feigned legitimacy. Read more
Burrus: From Here to there – Focus is now turned to the hiring of PSEs
Filed under: Articles, postal, postal news, postal support employee, usps
My opposition to the new national agreement is well chronicled as I voiced my opinions about the significant changes that would be made to postal employment but the ratification process is now history and focus must be centered on its application and to the issues of the day. Contrary to the opinions of nonunion members, the decisions of the union do make a difference and sticking your head in the sand will not make them go away.
This contract was finalized at a time when forces beyond the collective bargaining arena are shaping the USPS’ future in ways far beyond the contractual restrictions. Negotiated provisions will be inapplicable to the resulting impact on workers and the American public. As I shared in my perspective “Will the Postal Service Survive” it will be the Congress of the United States that will write the final chapter governing postal employment and postal services. Read more
Burrus Letter cites tax subsidies provided to Issa and Republicans political supporters
Former APWU President William Burrus sent the following letter to Rep. Darrell Issa:
Congressman Darrell Issa
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20015-6143
Mr. Chairman,
I am William Burrus, President Emeritus of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO and I take strong exception to your letter of July 11, 2011 to President Guffey of our union. I no longer speak for the union but as a user of postal services and a continuing member and voter I must expose your allegation that the APWU advertisement is misleading to the American public.
Political messages must be tailored to the time and currently the American public is being exposed to the debate over government spending in the political effort to enact legislation that will govern the nation’s debt limit. In these discussions you and your party have taken an inflexible position that tax subsidies provided to your political supporters should be viewed as “jobs creators” and should be considered off limits for inclusion in a package for future savings. Conversely you choose to characterize the relationship between the federal government and the Postal Service as including “implicit subsidies” as recorded by the Federal Trade Commission.
You have become adept at the use of talking points in support of political positions but this effort to take exception to the assertion of the television ad, that taxpayers do not fund the delivery of mail, fails in its legitimacy. The Postal Service is recognized by law as a federal agency and accordingly is exempt from statutes governing private entities. It is not misleading to maintain that exemption from the obligations cited in your letter do not rise to the level of taxpayer support except in the world of poll driven political statements.
It is also disingenuous for you to compare “several hundred million dollars” of exemptions for a federal agency to the USPS annual budget of 65 billion dollars. If one would include such “special treatment” as taxpayer expense, it would constitute 3/10 of 1% of USPS annual revenues.
President Guffey is correct in pointing out to the American public that the correction to USPS finances is not a request for government financing but relief from Congressional actions requiring the pre-payment of future health care cost. I suggest that if you sincerely want to be absolute in the use of political messages that you begin with an analysis of the specific countries where new jobs have been created from the 2001, 2003 and 2008 tax cuts referred to as the “Bush tax cuts” and compare the results to the APWU ad informing that the Postal Service does not receive government subsidies.
Sincerely,
William Burrus
Burrus Journal
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
Burrus: It’s Time For USPS To Consider Offering Healthy Retirement Incentive
Filed under: APWU, early out, postal, postal news, retirement, usps
Perhaps it is time for the Postal Service to consider offering a healthy incentive for APWU represented employees to retire. The wage difference between a Grade 6 Step 0 employee and a newly hired replacement is $18,000 per year ($53,102 vs. $35,182) so for every 1000 employees replaced, the Postal Service saves 18 million dollars per year. It would be in their financial interest to entice those employees eligible for retirement to retire.
The Postal Service is strapped for cash so it will not be easy to fund the cost of an incentive, but there are creative ways to defer the cost while generating savings. In the previous effort, agreement was reached to spread the incentive over two years to lessen its immediate impact on the USPS’ financial position and other innovative approaches could be explored.
The problem is that employees, who are eligible, refrain from severing their employment for a variety of personal reasons and continue to work for lack of an alternative that meets their objectives. An incentive would influence many who will otherwise continue their employment for an indeterminable period.
The consideration of offering an incentive does not include what is known as “early outs” permitting employees to retire earlier than the legal formula. The Postal Service must receive the approval of OPM to offer early outs and such permission will not be granted, if it is intended to replace the retiring employee. Early outs cannot be used to reduce payroll costs.
At a time when the Postal Service is experiencing severe financial problems brought on by the unreasonable payment for future health care costs consideration should be given to this opportunity for significant savings.
In solidarity,
Bill Burrus
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
Burrus: APWU Tentative Contract Analysis
My disagreements with the tentative agreement have been chronicled on this site and repeated on occasion by others. The source of my criticisms have been centered on the severe reduction of pay for new employees without providing them a voice; the significant increase in non-career employees who will be fully integrated in the work force and regressive modification of the 40 hour work week. While others have the right to disagree with my conclusions, these are in contributable facts.
I also find serious fault with the wording of the document. A labor contract is a permanent recording of the agreement governing wages, benefits, hours and conditions of employment and its construction should be exact in its composition. It will be reviewed and interpreted for years to come by individuals and legal entities that have no independent knowledge of postal affairs so it is improper to record shop floor phrases or imprecise wording in the final draft of the national agreement. In the achievement of this objective, this document fails miserably. Read more
Burrus: Agreement is Not Fair
As you are aware, I have expressed my opinion that the tentative agreement is not fair to employees who will be hired in the future because it dramatically reduces their income and they are denied an opportunity to make a decision if the contractual changes are of equal value to the more than $200,000 in wage and retirement losses that they will each experience. Notwithstanding my reservations, I expect the agreement to be ratified and I choose not to express an opinion of the reasons. Each member casting a ballot is entitled to apply his/her individual decision and I do not pass judgment on their reasons. As a retiree, I will not personally be affected by the new agreement and those that will follow but it is my firm opinion that this contract will begin a new era of postal employment in the crafts represented by APWU.
The agreement will permanently reduce the wages of APWU represented employees to a level in existence prior to the 1971 Postal Reorganization Act when collective bargaining was afforded postal employees. The standard for the work performed by clerks, lower level maintenance and motor vehicle employees will be reduced to the new levels established in this agreement. As current employees leave postal employment, the compensation level for work performed will be set at the lowest level applicable. Postal management will refuse to pay $28.00 per hour for work that the union has agreed can be performed by the 2nd tier work force at $16.00 for new hires and at $12.00 per hour by casuals who have been integrated into the regular work force.
In addition, the 40 hour guaranteed work week will not automatically apply to all full time employees and over time, fewer and fewer employees will enjoy the standard work week that has been integral to postal employment.
Keep Our Standards
Over my entire career as a union representative, I have not experienced a union converting employment from middle class to working poor with the objective of expanding the bargaining unit. The cry of “we want our work” is consistent with APWU goals, only if the work can be returned at APWU standards as opposed to reducing our standards to the level of the outsourced work.
Organizing the unorganized is a continuing objective of the labor movement but it is contrary to the basic principle of union collective bargaining for a union to exchange full time, good paying opportunities for wages and careers resembling retail and fast food employers.
40 Years of Progress
There are examples in the food and banking industries where jobs have been transformed from modest income and benefits when unionized, to transitional employment for new entrants in the labor market. But postal employment, through aggressive union representation broke through the barriers of “service” employment and set new standards. This agreement will erase 40 years of progress.
Race to The Bottom
Optimistic projections that this bad agreement will be used as a springboard for future corrections is optimistic at best and a foolish promise. Militant statements of future corrections will meet the reality of the marketplace. The entire trend in workplace justice is downward pressure on non professional employment as being played out in Wisconsin, Ohio and several other states where collective bargaining rights are under attack. To believe that a conservative Congress or the Board of Governors will permit contractual improvements equal to the losses embedded in this contract is a pipe dream and will never happen. These major concessions will serve as a springboard in a race to the bottom.
APWU members can expect a series of future national conventions attended by a mixture of members governed by three distinct wage scales where delegates demand the unification of all rights and benefits at the higher level. Resolutions will be overwhelmingly adopted directing the negotiators to achieve that which will not be possible at the bargaining table leading to a series of interest arbitration decisions. No relief will be forthcoming. Postal management having achieved their 40 year priority to reduce wages will not relent to an agreement that restores lost ground. Arbitration will become the norm.
In the five (5) prior contracts decided by arbitrators, each decided that APWU represented employees compensation exceeded the legal standard of comparability and awarded the Postal Service moderate restraint. The union has now agreed to voluntary restraint and future arbitrators will not serve as vehicles to return to previous conditions that had been consistently found to be excessive.
This For That
This agreement is in fact “out of the box” and will usher in a new day for postal employees. The strategy applied was to exchange the wages of future employees for immediate contractual improvements, “this for that.” In addition to the unfairness of denying the affected employees a voice in the debate over the changes, this strategy has limited continuing applicability for future gains. What is to be traded in future negotiations, COLA – No Lay Off – Health Benefits? And how does the union make improvements if every step forward is balanced against a step backward?
Change
We have been provided a preview of tomorrow and it has no semblance to yesterday. The security of full time employment, middle class wages and the satisfaction of knowing that you are compensated for the work performed will cycle with history to be recalled in interesting discussions. Change is inevitable, but this change is self-induced and it will be negative.
In solidarity,
Bill Burrus
source: Burrus Journal
Burrus Editorial: It’s All About Me
To APWU Members
I have written a number of opinion letters criticizing the tentative agreement; however, while forcefully advancing my position I realize that there is a countervailing position as expressed in the hypothetical letter below reflecting the sentiment of many APWU members.
Dear Mr. Burrus:
I have read your opinion regarding the tentative agreement and with all due respect to your service and experience as a union representative, I strongly disagree.
I was apprehensive about the outcome of the 2010 national negotiations during a period of economic uncertainties in our country and in the Postal Service. The unemployment rate continues at an uncomfortable level and by all reports the Postal Service is approaching bankruptcy putting my employment in serious jeopardy. While I have complaints about several aspects of my job, it does provide me the income necessary to maintain my standard of living and the uncertainties of arbitration would threaten my economic security; I really wouldn’t like that.
When I learned that a negotiated agreement had been agreed to that does not drastically reduce my income; that continues to provide health insurance with a modest increase in my premium, and that the new provisions will not directly threaten my ‘job security’ I breathed a sigh of relief. As added benefits, the tentative agreement eliminates mandatory overtime and limits excessing to a reasonable commuting distance as well as returns contract jobs to the Postal Service. Other features that I do not fully understand will not affect me personally but will not hurt me either.
The initiation of a two tier wage schedule and the increase of non-career employees are negatives but they will not directly apply to me and I will even receive modest pay raises.
The increase in casuals (I don’t care what you call them) is troublesome, but if that is the only price that I have to pay I will swallow it. If someone has to perform the same work for $12 per hour, that’s their problem.
When I was informed that employees hired under this contract would receive over $200,000 less for performing the same work I was disappointed, but those new employees can speak for themselves and those who accept postal employment will know in advance the wage scale that will apply; they will be free to seek employment elsewhere. I hear that McDonalds is adding 50,000 new positions so that will be an alternative if postal wages are not acceptable.
I know that this is selfish on my part because I inherited the advances made by the postal generations that preceded me. I appreciate the struggles of those who jeopardized their careers by participating in the strike and those who were responsible for rejecting the tentative agreement in 1978 that would have capped the COLA and reduced my income dramatically over my career. I appreciate all of the contracts negotiated since I was hired that advanced my rights and increased my income.
I am thankful for the 2007 upgrades Mr. Burrus and the fact that you protected the income of those who have been hired after each of the contracts that you negotiated because if you had agreed to a two tier salary before I was hired it would have affected me and when all is said and done, it is about “me.”
Mr. Burrus, if you or Mr. Biller, the only two presidents that negotiated contracts during my career had reduced postal wages at any time before or during my employment it is possible that I would not have accepted or continued postal employment, but I cannot live in a world of “what if’s.” You did what you had to do and now it’s my turn. In this decision, I have to look out for myself. I am appreciative that I am being provided the opportunity to vote and my vote is “Yes.”
And if my vote makes a difference, I will admit that I was partially responsible for reducing the pay of future postal employees up to 24% and reducing full time jobs to 30 hours a week and still call them full time, but times are difficult and in this instance it’s them or me and I chose the latter. Isn’t that what a union is all about?
Sincerely,
APWU Member