Adjust the Route around the Carrier, Not the Carrier around the Route
This Holiday Season, I want for all of you, the gift of a fair Route Evaluation. However, I must ask you; “Have you been a good little City Letter Carrier this past year?” Have you been taking care of your route; have you been providing your customers the proper service as per the City Delivery Carriers Duties and Responsibilities (M-41) Manual and have you been abiding by all the USPS Safety Provisions?
Letter Carriers can learn some important lessons from the original story of St. Nicholas, especially in the new TIAREAP environment. The lesson is that, per the TIAREAP process, Regular Carriers will be evaluated based on the way they perform their duties previously throughout the year. Although Memorandums of Understanding(s) M-01982, M-01983 and M-01984 set forth the specific rules of the TIAREAP; many of the principals of the second chapter of the Management of Delivery Services Handbook (M-39) still apply. Especially Section 231.5 that states in part:
The route examiner must inform the carrier that he/she intends to make a fair and reasonable evaluation of the workload on the route and that in order to do so the carrier must perform duties and travel the route in precisely the same manner as he/she does throughout the year.
In this GPS/tracking environment it is very important that we do not get complacent on all the normal rules and regulation that dictate how we provide good service to our customers safely as well as the way our time(s) are recorded. Here are some rules to try to keep our members off of the naughty list if your office is selected to be part of the process.
It is important that Carriers carry their scanner with them at all times. The reason for this is because if the scanner is stationary, the time must be assigned to either 'allied' time or 'other' time. The REAT teams, along with the Carrier Consultation, will try and figure out and properly assign that stationary time, however, the TIAREAP agreement has many flaws in my opinion, and it is possible that the Carrier may lose some route time.
Carriers should take all of their entitled breaks; however they should try to be precise as possible: 10 minute street break, 30 minute lunches; no more, no less! Try not to combine bathroom breaks or phone calls with street breaks. When you are stationary for other reasons other than your breaks, you may want to make a note of this, especially if it is a common occurrence. This will help with you with the consultation process and with properly assigning time. (i.e., was an event of nine minutes of stationary time a ten-minute break, or getting parcels ready for the next relay, or a personal phone call etc.
Regular Carriers should update their edit book to reflect any changes to their route such as: the order of delivery with apartments, CBU location and ranges of deliveries, strange layouts of streets, and none-deliveries. Inaccuracies can lead to errors in Route Adjustments.
Make sure that you are making moves accurately and consistently on the EBR and/or your MDD Scanner. Make sure you do not short change your assignment and over credit an assistance piece when you are in-putting any assistance that you perform on other assignments. The time that you put in for assistance will essentially disappear for purposes of evaluating your assignment.
As per the TIAREAP MOU, Management is obligated to post daily the Workhour Workload Report. You should be reviewing the results of Workhour Workload Report daily to assure that your time is recorded correctly. Carriers should focus on the Mail Volumes for accuracy and the variances on AM/PM office time as well as Street Time. The variances indicate the difference between how long Management thinks you should take and how long you took. Negative numbers means you are performing faster then what Management projected. Negative numbers over a length of time indicate that you need more deliveries; positive numbers over time indicate you need fewer deliveries. SO, if you see a lot negatives numbers but you feel that your route is overburdened or vice versa, you should speak to both Management and the Union about why that may be!
Make sure that you are performing your office functions on Office Time and Street Functions on Street Time. A good example of this is when Carriers organize their SPRs on Street time. SPRs should be cased and then pulled down and/or trayed up on Office Time. Also pay attention to your “load time”. You may want to write down what it typically takes you to load the vehicle. If you are supposed to use the “Load Function” on your scanner, make sure you do so because that will more accurately record your load time. On the street, only separate the out-going Mail from the rest of the Mail. All 3M Mail, forwards, holds etc. should be sorted on PM Office-Time along with putting your equipment away, getting cleared, and your PM wash up.
I wish all Branch 6000 Members a Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays’ and a Happy New Year and a big T-A-RAT Route cut.
~be good to your brothers and sisters Letter Carriers; be grateful for your customers and never work off of the clock.
