General Reflections

By the time you receive this issue of the LIMB Leader the summer will be over. It has been a hot and stressful summer season. Not enough help;  Injures keep piling up; CCA’s come and go. Another short time CCA is used as a 204b with no knowledge of the job yet wants to dictate to a 30 year veteran how to do the job.  Management uses what little workplace resources they have when they use those 204b’s to cover for themselves when they take off, even though it shortens the workforce and it costs extensive amounts of money by paying overtime and penalty overtime to cover those people. The regular workforce is then pushed to work more hours in extreme heat causing exhaustion and more injuries.  When you sit back and try to take it all in you realize that if this was made into a movie, nobody would believe it could be real. The stupidity of the Postal Service never ceases to amaze me.

Now we roll into the fall season and more crap is being shoveled on the craft. Route inspections start up in early September. Useless inspections at that. The service takes many carriers, supervisors and managers out of their respective offices to do these inspections. This shortens the office workforce once again putting pressure on the carriers left to complete the work. They take a CCA out and place them on the team, short workforce. They take a supervisor out on the team. Then they replace the supervisor with a 204b which .shortens the workforce.  They take a postmaster out and replace him with a supervisor who is then replaced with a 204b which once again shortens the workforce. All of this creates the use of massive amounts of overtime for the craft and in many cases the same for the supervisors. I can’t think of another company that would operate under these archaic rules. Who would think it is productive to spend tens of thousands of dollars a week to save 4 hours in an office? And that figure, although a rough guess, does not factor in the cost of injuries and the payment of OWCP for an exhausted workforce. You can’t make this shit up! Gross incompetence at its best; spend a dollar to make 5 cents while choking off your workforce.

Now we also have the caser/streeter test coming to the island. Walter wrote about it in last month’s LIMB. Most know that the service is going into Patchogue on or about September 9th with Deer Park and West Islip waiting in the wings. This is a unilateral test being pushed through under the guise of Article 34. This article gives management great leeway in testing different ways of doing work. It also affords them to show just how incompetent they really are. This is a program that wants to push letter carriers delivering mail into the street for 7:45 hours. These fat cats sitting in front of computers coming up with this type of program could not do it themselves. Many I have seen over the years have trouble getting up and walking across the hall to get a cup of coffee without getting winded. The service keeps talking about safety and productivity yet they shorten workforces to the detriment of the carriers and clerks creating fatigue and injuries. Now they want to shove you out delivering mail on straight time for almost 8 hours. More fatigue and injuries are coming. I wonder who is going to deliver all the mail on overtime when the carriers start to fall. They do not have the bodies now to complete the work and it will only get worse. They tried this in the past. I believe that 2011 was the last time they tried it. Rack up another failure on their part.  Now with any luck they can pin another failure award on their chest. I just do not know what the damage will be to the service for this coming failure. And I must qualify the term service because management has made sure that there is no real service to the public over the past decade. The only service management gives is lip service. And it is not just the public that gets the lip service, it is includes the entire workforce. The USPS has no interest in treating us with dignity and respect. We are disposable to them as they try to replace the regular workforce with a part time low wage low benefit workforce. 

The way to defeat these constant attacks against us is to stand firm and educate yourself. Know your rights and how to use them. Don’t be intimidated by management’s threats and actions. Over my 36 years dealing with management in the USPS, we have won far more battles than we have lost. We have done this by standing firm side by side and watching each other’s backs. Unfortunately we have a new workforce. A workforce that does not seem to have the same stomach for the wars we are going through. I went into an office the other day and found a number of carriers working off the clock. His is the type of stuff that leads management into pushing a program like caser/streeter. Why do carriers work through their breaks; A benefit that was fought for by our predecessors. Again, this just plays into management’s game. Too many carriers take these shortcuts and it is dragging the workforce down. Because of some of the things I cited, management finds it easier to cut roués after inspection. I can’t tell you how many carriers have complained to me about route adjustments after inspections. Yet many who complain are the ones cutting corners. You reap what you sow.  Get with the program. Be professional and do your job correctly. Do your vehicle checks, fill out your forms, and take your breaks and lunch. Do not work off the clock! To all of you new carriers who have joined us in the past few years. You think that you are making an impression to management by cutting corners and running routes. You’re not!  They don’t give a crap about you except to use you to make their numbers look good. Go and get hurt or have an accident, then let me know how you were treated. Call in sick multiple time and see  how it goes. Give e a call when I have to do your discipline for getting injured or use what management believes to be excessive leave. This is a long term job for most. It pays your bills, takes care of your family; it gives you healthcare and retirement. Too many in labor have lost what we currently have. If we do not protect it by doing the job properly, we will be in the same boat and lose what we have fought so hard to gain over the past 50 years.  Wake up people; we are in a war against the theft of our jobs and benefits. The attacks are not going to stop. Either you educate yourselves or accept defeat.

With knowledge there is power. Use it!