THE BULLETIN BOARD
August 2009
[August 15th]2009 Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade
Monday, September 7, 2009
Parade Starts at 10:00 AM
meet behind Mellon Arena at 8:15 AM
This year PMAPWU is marching very near the front of the parade, so we will need to be in place by 9:00 AM.
Labor Day Mass will be held at 8:00 AM at St. Benedict the Moor Church; those of us attending will head down to the gathering spot after mass. For all of the details, visit our Events page.[August 14th]USPS Staffing Down 5.7% From a Year Ago
from postalnewsblog.com
Reports filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission show that as of July 17, the US Postal Service has reduced its field staff by 5.7%, or 37,454 employees from the same period last year. (All numbers cited refer to actual employees on the rolls, not authorized positions).
The largest reductions among bargaining unit employees, as in the past, have come in the clerk craft, which lost 16,023 employees, or 8.1%. City carriers were down by 5.2%, or 11,135 employees. The smaller mail handler craft lost 2,829, or 5% of its members. Career rural carriers, who are compensated on an evaluation basis, and generally earn significantly less than their city counterparts, lost just 974 employees, or 1.4%.
Supervisors, managers and administrative staffing in the field was reduced by 3,468 employees, or 8.4%. Headquarters lost 88 staff, or 3.1%.
The $1 billion the agency has managed to save in compensation costs this year has come entirely from reductions in overtime. Sustaining that level of savings solely from overtime in the future will be difficult if not impossible.
[August 13th]House Republican Conference Smears USPS
PDF file from NALC.org
The Republican House Conference (RHC) on August 12 issued a grossly inaccurate and misleading brief insulting the Postal Service and its 700,000 employees in a transparently partisan attack aimed at derailing health reform.
The smear piece, An Ominous Model for Government Takeover of Health Care, makes at least seven false and/or misleading claims that tarnish the Postal Service and its hard-working employees. This will set the record straight.
USPS is "supposed to be self-funded." In fact, the Postal Service is self-funded. Other than minuscule appropriations to fund free mail to the blind and military voting, the Postal Service has not received taxpayer appropriations since 1983, all the while serving 148 million addresses six days a week, including the most- expensive-to-serve rural areas in the country.
The bad news for the USPS is that the complement reductions so far have not translated to any significant cost reductions. Thanks to salary and benefit increases, the USPS has paid out almost exactly the same amount in base salaries and benefits this year as it did in 2008.
Read the other six false and misleading claims found in the entire letter.[August 1st]Clarification on Use of APWU FMLA Forms
excerpted from APWU Web Site
In response to a letter from the Postal Service stating that the APWU's FMLA forms are not equivalent to the Department of Labor's FMLA forms, the union has written the Postal Service clarifying our position on the use of the forms. Some managers have interpreted the USPS's comments to mean that the APWU's FMLA forms are unacceptable. This is not true.
FMLA regulations do not require that certification be provided on any particular form, or in any particular format, as long as the information is complete and sufficient. Management must make a case-by-case determination if the documentation provided is complete and sufficient. If it's not, they are required to explain to the employee, in writing, what they must do to make the form complete and sufficient.
They cannot require the use of the optional DOL forms. In addition, the optional DOL forms contain space for doctors to provide information that is not required by the regulations. The APWU continues to encourage our members to use the APWU forms.
APWU Industrial Relations Updates[August 1st]Lieberman, Carper Join Republicans to Support Changes to HR 22/S 1507
excerpted from APWU Web News Article #085-09
An amendment (one of eleven amendments) to a bill (HR 22/S 1507) to provide temporary financial relief to the cash-strapped Postal Service was adopted by a Senate committee July 29, rendering the bill unacceptable to the APWU.
"We oppose, on principle, legislation that interferes with the collective bargaining process," said APWU President William Burrus.
The amendment to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Funding Reform Act of 2009 (S. 1507), offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), would require any binding arbitration in the negotiation of postal contracts to take the financial health of the Postal Service into account. Under current law, arbitrators must consider the "comparability" of postal wages to employees in the private sector who perform similar work.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), chairman of the subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government information, Federal Services and International Security, supported the amendment, and voted with committee Republicans for its adoption.
Read more about HR 22/S 1507....[August 1st]Postal Service Health A Concern
By Juliana Gruenwald, CongressDaily
While there is little disagreement that the U.S. Postal Service is facing a severe financial crisis, lawmakers voiced concerns on Thursday over the proposed solutions, which include closing some branches and possibly reducing deliveries to five days a week.
GAO this week said it was adding the Postal Service to its list of "high-risk areas" needing attention by Congress.
Mail volume for fiscal 2008 declined by 9.5 billion pieces and had declined by double that amount for this year as of May.
USPS acting Vice President Jordan Small said fewer than 1,000 post offices out of the list of 3,200 are likely to be closed. The criteria USPS will use in determining whether to close a facility is a branch's proximity to other branches and the consuming habits of postal customers in that area.
He declined to give an estimate of how much would be saved by the closures and by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Small said USPS would have a better sense of the estimated cost savings in October when a study on such moves is complete.
Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee ranking member Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said lawmakers should consider providing USPS with economic stimulus funds and urged USPS to do more to make itself more relevant, perhaps through assisting in conducting the 2010 census.
Read the entire article....
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