Ballots to elect National officers should have been received in the homes of all members by now. If you did not receive a ballot, please contact the Local headquarters at 412-321-4700 and let us know. Arrangements will be made to provide you with one. Whoever you support in this election, please remember to vote. It's a right and a responsibility.

President Moe Biller has announced that he is retiring at the end of this term. We owe the man a debt of gratitude for all he has done for postal workers over the past six decades. Thank you Moe, and may you enjoy a wonderful retirement.

RI 399 means Regional Instruction 399, an agreement between APWU, USPS management and the mailhandlers where the three parties met and agreed which work belonged to whom.

The Eastern Region has finally named a single arbitrator to hear the 13-year backlog of grievances awaiting decisions on the battle for jobs between clerks and mailhandlers. The first case scheduled to be heard was in West Virginia. National Business Agent Mike Gallagher, our region's RI399 expert, presented the APWU's case. The hearing dates set in October and November have been cancelled. No further cases will be heard until next year.

National officers and experts from other regions have advised us that any grievance in the system involving a dispute over jobs that no longer exist should be withdrawn-- arbitrators are not inclined to award money in such cases. Accordingly, we are setting aside these types of cases so we can discuss them with the craft director and regional expert before we withdraw them.

Locally, we've formed an RI399 Committee to review our own RI399 backlog. Arbitration Advocates Rheba Salac (REC Site) and Rick Ling (BMC MVS) are working along with former clerk craft director Bill Jacobs, and President Penascino. The committee has completed a 'walk-through' at the Pittsburgh GMF to look at some of the contested jobs. This will be done at all sites with grievances in the system.


Rick Ling, Bill Jacobs, and Rheba Salac-- The RI399 Committee

The APWU has won a case on the national level that involves management's decison to replace clerks in the personnel department with EAS-11 employees. Pittsburgh has grievances in the system that could result in a return of some of this work to the clerk craft. The national clerk craft officers are meeting with management to determine how this award will be implemented. The parties have agreed to arbitrate the dispute regarding management's decision to place EAS employees in the Address Information Specialists section next.

In the past few years, all of us have experienced a reduction in the workplace; this downsizing is an effect of automation not only on the workfloors but in personnel systems as well. You would think that when the size of the workforce is reduced, the number of supervisory positions would decrease as well. This is not the case. We are grieving the assignemnet of our work to supervisors in the TACS and RMD situations. It's clearly a case of management making "room" for their own by taking clerk craft jobs from us.

Our grievances now have a new look. As of August 21, 2001, we switched over to a new grievance tracking system. This system was developed by the National and runs on a Windows-compatible program, File Maker Pro. The system will change the way your grievances are tracked, not how they are appealed through the established procedure, which is outlined in Article 15 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

These are the changes that you will notice:

1) The color of your copy of the grievance will be white instead of salmon; and
2) the number of the grievance will have six numbers with a hyphen instead of seven numbers.

An example: Old System: 2100000-- New System: 21-0000

Presidents from the ten locals representing Priority Mail Centers met with National APWU Officers in late July. Discussions were held involving the jurisdictional disputes between the APWU and the postal service over management's unilateral assignment of (what we believe is) clerk's work to mailhandlers at the facilities.

The parties have agreed to have all disputes heard before January 2002, when career employees will be staffing the PPMC's.
Pittsburgh is one of only two facilities that remain without staffing packages.


Tom Maier, NBA; Anton Hajjar, APWU attorney; Asst. Clerk Craft Director Jim McCarthy; PMAPWU President Rose Penascino; Advocate Tony Massar; a MHU representative; Rochester President Jim Bertolone; managment's Labor representative, Dan Magazu.

On August 15, 2001, the National parties signed off on an amended agreement for seniority at the PPMC's. Originally, those who transferred would have lost all their seniority if excessed from that facility at any point in the future. Now, if excessing would take place, the employee would retain his or her seniority provided there is no change of craft.

Here's the exact statement taken from the new agreement:

"Specifically, we agree that employees who are accepted and transfer to a PPMPC and are subsequently excesses from the PPMPC will retain the installation craft seniority they had when they transferred, plus the time spent in the PPMPC, rpvided their service was uninterrupted in the same craft."

Read more about the process and have some questions answered....

Management has begun excessing impacted clerks in city stations and branches and associate offices. We now have clerks with retreat rights to Cedarhurst, Bloomfield, and Wilkinsburg/Homewood stations. The excessing was much less than originally projected.

Many thanks to steward Bob Montana for the excellent job he is doing in tracking the bids, the clerks, and management in resolving our disputes in Article 12 issues.

Management has met with the Local three times to discuss their proposed staffing changes at the AMF. So far, they've been willing to at least listen to our input and consider our documents and ideas. We believe their cuts are too deep, especially since they are not yet certain of the impact of the FedEx agreement. Management is hoping to have new AMF bids in effect by the end of September 2001.

As in the Emery situation, Federal Express has contracted with Aero Link to perform many clerk and mailhandler duties. The appropriate grievances have been filed.

Management met with the Local concerning a possible excessing of level 5 and level 6 clerks at the AMF. As of this date, the restaffing package has not been finalized.

There has already been a reduction of the level 5 positions at the AMF, which is considered a section of the GMF. Any clerks excessed from the AMF will be assigned to the GMF as unencumbered regulars.

President Penascino has discussed our Local's pending non-compliance arbitration cases with both the Director of Industrial Relations and the Executive Vice President of the APWU. They have made arrangements for National Business Agent Eric Wilson to travel to Pittsburgh to discuss the issues with management and attempt to resolve the situation.

If this fails, the National officers have pledged to pursue resolution of these cases in Federal Court to bring management into compliance. These are cases that we won in arbitration several years ago and have never been paid out to our members. Hopefully we'll be able to bring an end to this impasse and get our people paid in the near future.