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THE NEWS ARCHIVE-- Winter 2001 | ||||||||
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| PRIORITY MAIL PROCESSING CENTERS | ||||||||
Effective January 7, 2000, processing of priority mail returned to the Postal Service. There are only ten centers in the entire United States. The PMPC at Warrendale falls under the jurisdiction of Pittsburgh Metro and the Allegheny Area office. By agreement between the National parties, these centers must be staffed with 75% career employees and 25% temporary employees by January 7, 2002. Currently, there are more than 300 temporary employees at the Warrendale facility. On January 10, 2001, I sent a letter to management requesting an opportunity to tour the new facility and witness the operation and staffing. Management responded two days later, stating that the National must first set the groundwork before Locals will be granted admittance to these facilities. We have already notified management that we are prepared to begin negotiating a first contract for the Warrendale facility. | ||||||||
| Each PPMPC will be an independent installation for all purposes. | ||||||||
The following provisions concerning wages, hours, and working conditions will
apply in the ten Postal PMPCs covered by this MOU: | ||||||||
| Staffing | ||||||||
The future staffing of the PPMPC will consist of two categories of employees,
career and casual, with the following conditions: | ||||||||
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| Transition Period | ||||||||
During the transition period, the Postal Service may staff the PPMPC Installation, as
it deems necessary to continue to reach operational goals and maintain service. At the end of the transition
period (January 1, 2002), the Postal Service will be in compliance with the staffing mix as described in
Section 1. | ||||||||
| Duty Assignments | ||||||||
Craft complement and duty assignments will be established as determined by the
application of the principles of RI-399. A dedicated arbitrator will be selected before the end of the
transition period to resolve all jurisdictional disputes arising in the PPMPCs. | ||||||||
| Seniority | ||||||||
Seniority of employees will be established as total craft seniority applying seniority
tiebreakers as provided for in the National Agreements. | ||||||||
| Local Labor/Management Performance Committee | ||||||||
In addition to the Labor/Management meetings required by Article 17 of the National
Agreement, the local parties will form a tri-partite labor/management performance improvement committee
consisting of representatives from the Postal Service, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) AFL-CIO, and
National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU) AFL-CIO. | ||||||||
| Overtime | ||||||||
The parties agree that the penalty overtime provisions contained in Article 8 shall not
apply to APWU clerk craft employees in the Postal PMPC sites. However, their selection of employees to perform
work on overtime shall be in the following order: 1. Full-Time Career Volunteers, 2. Casuals,
3. Non-Volunteers. | ||||||||
| Transportation | ||||||||
During the transition period, the Postal Service may establish ground transportation
as it deems necessary to reach operational goals and maintain service. At the end of the transition period,
transportation for the PPMPCs will be established in accordance with the current contractual procedures and
awarded to Postal Vehicle Service (PVS), where appropriate. | ||||||||
| Maintenance | ||||||||
The parties agree that current arrangements for building maintenance and custodial functions will continue for the transition period. For equipment maintenance, the Postal Service will make the necessary adjustments and staff with Postal maintenance as soon as practicable, but no later than the end of the transition period. | ||||||||
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| GMF STEWARDS ATTEND SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES | ||||||||
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Pittsburgh Metro is sponsoring five stewards who requested training in ASL (American Sign Language) to help them in handling grievances for our hearing impaired members. Michelle Moon investigated and found a school in Sharpsburg. Training began in January and will conclude sometime in March of this year. The cost to the Local is $105 per student. The five stewards attending are Lisa Johnson, Michelle Moon, Doug Willhide, Cindy Miller and Peggy McDowell. So far, the stewards have attended two sessions and most have already used their new skills on the work floor. It is gratifying to see stewards willing to invest the time to learn to communicate with members who are often excluded. Many thanks to these dedicated folks for going the extra mile to represent our membership.
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The building housing the Brentwood Post Office is scheduled to be demolished, and a new facility built. Unfortunately, management failed to secure a rental agreement for the Brentwood operations, so now they are scrambling to make arrangements for emplyees. As described by the Postmistress, tentative plans are as follows: Window operations for Brentwood will be housed in the old Whitehall theater. Distriburion operations will either be moved in entirety to the Pleasant Hills station, or divided between the Pleasant Hills and West Mifflin stations. All plans are tentative at this time. Brentwood employees will be moved into the new structure once it's completed. | ||||||||
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The Pittsburgh GMF is slated to receive a third Automated Flat Sorter Machine 100 (AFSM 100) by the end of February. A fourth is scheduled to be installed by the end of May. As these changes take place, we expect to see more excessing from stations, branches and associate offices. Management has failed to provide us with the names of employees who are most likely to be impacted, claiming the Area has not yet released this information. In the meantime, an employee from Sewickley notified us that she's already received a letter telling her that she is being excessed from that station. We are attempting to lessen the impact on our members by holding meetings with the Clerk Craft Director and the CGOs. We are trying to discover ways to implement rotations that will benefit the Service and protect clerk jobs. Input from members is always welcome. No one knows the operation better than the people who perform these duties on a daily basis. | ||||||||
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The pre-arb blitz continues. We are fast reaching the point where only major issues remain. For instance, the notorious "live record" issue represents probably 2000 cases in the system. At the heart of these cases are seniority, live record, and overtime violations. Management is hesitant to either settle or proceed on these grievances. Cases arbitrated and won by the union years ago also remain. Though it lost these cases, Local management has refused to pay our members. We have employees who worked out of schedule for years-- the UPS strike/Priority win is still sitting out there-- and the maintenance travel case decision as well. These wins represent many thousands of dollars in pay out, and all should have been paid and closed years ago. On another note: There are more RI399 jurisdictional grievances out there than I care to count. These cases represent disagreements between the mail handlers union and our Local over job rights. The National parties have finally approved a panel of arbitrators to hear the cases, and a first decision has been handed down. Many of the grievances are now moot, as manual operations no longer exist in most instances. We will keep the cases open, however, because a win for us could mean payment of overtime to our members. | ||||||||
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| Copyright ©2001 Pittsburgh Metro Local, APWU, AFL-CIO | ||||||||
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