Summer of Discontent

The Summer is well under way. It has been hot and muggy daily. No help in many offices. Carriers already being forced to work 10–12-hour days, 6 and 7 days a week.

This summer is bringing more problems than we have seen in quite a long time. Management has fled in droves here on Long Island only to be replaced by neophytes who have no clue to the contractual rights of craft employees. USPS policy makers in Washington are trying to obliterate fixed office times. They seem to believe that the letter carriers are machines. Unfortunately, we have way too many short time employees. The last figure I heard was that approximately 52% of the Letter Carrier Craft have only been on the job since 2013.  That means that over half of the craft has no understanding of the actual rights that they are entitled to. These new employees, CCA’s, have been mistreated since the get go. Threatened, harassed, and intimidated. They run through routes, ignore rest breaks and lunches because the manager tells them they are not going fast enough. The harm that is being done to the service and the craft is immeasurable. They are giving hard fought for rights back to management without a fight. It does not seem that they understand or even care. I am told time and time again that they just want to get done and go home. It does not matter that they are doing 10 hours of work in 8 hours. Just want to go home. The fact is that these actions have consequences, and they are coming. We continue to try to educate them, but many just do not want to hear it.

We are currently under a new route inspection process; Technology Integrated Alternate Route Adjustment Process (TIARAP). This new process is a jointly negotiated process between the NALC and the USPS. The new process allows adjustments to be made without the old-time harassment management used under the old process. On face value, this could be a good process. Unfortunately, after 39 years of dealing with management in the USPS, nothing is ever as it seems.

The process of putting the teams together and training them on the rules of the TIARAP. This training is already falling by the wayside. Those members and managers who we have determined to be the teams doing the process, have already been shortchanged. Imagine going to the initial training sessions and not having the tools to learn. You spend all this money to fly carriers and managers in from around the country only to not have the tools available. The use of technology fails when the systems go down. So, give them a few days of verbal training and have them take notes. Promise to get them the tools they will need and fail to do so in a prompt manner. Another thing I have an issue with is the fact that the teams are working from separate installations. Why? They are told to use ZOOM. What a crock of manure. The letter carrier side of the process is told to find a place to work from while management is handed a landing spot. How is this fair? Why do we accept the secondhand status? Why do we accept our own team members to be looked at like red headed stepchildren? It is a disservice and embarrassment to those involved. The teams should be set up in the same buildings. They should either be in the same or adjourning offices. I also question why management will have access to all data and the NALC will not? Management has way too much leeway to screw us over as they seem to do time after time. Management has the tools and intimate knowledge how to manipulate any data they so desire. If you (we) don’t believe that or understand that, then what can I say? 

In this process the teams will be using a 7-week timecard analysis like the way they did under the old process. My concern is “What 7-week period” will they be using? I have already made my thoughts clear to our National Officers that at no time should they be using any period when we were under the COVID MOU’s. This is time that is clearly tainted. The service and the NALC signed multiple MOU’s including the agreement to liberally use the “7:01 Rule”. That rule allowed carriers to do 8 hours of work in 7 hours and leave early while getting paid for the 8. It is a little worrisome to find that much of this process seems to be hidden from plain sight. Why? If we accept the use of any time while under the COVID MOU’s we are selling out the membership. Also, during the COVID period, many carriers did all they could to get the mail delivered. Carriers did an unbelievable job in getting this work done. Many corners were cut to do so, and management readily agreed to look the other way to get the job done. How is this data any good? I hope they pay heed to this.

I can go on and on about my feelings regarding the use of (easily manipulated) technology to adjust routes. Our decision to jump in on this is eroding the very foundation of the rights we have fought for over the years. We are giving credence to the very technology that we all know is fallible. Currently we have management pushing projected, estimated DOIS times down our throats as if it is definitive. It is not! Yet they currently harass and threaten carriers for not maintaining the estimated, projected DOIS produced office and street times. This is all a coordinated attack on the Letter Carrier Craft in managements ongoing attempt to maintain order through a set of fixed numbers. The ongoing use of DOIS, GPS, Scans and COR are an attack on the very things we have fought so long and hard for. All this data is easily manipulated to read as they wish. It is another way for managers and supervisors not having to actually do their jobs. Manage through technology and a computer screen! And we seem to be buying into it.

Let’s see what comes out at the NALC Convention in Chicago August 8 – 12th. It could be very interesting.