Working Off the Clock
As I visit some of the stations that I am assigned to, some of the complaints that I hear from carriers about other carriers is that they work OFF the clock to get out early so that they do not have to hear management or that they must because they must get home!
This seems to be happening more and more even during the Covid-19 pandemic when you would think that carriers would want to social distance themselves from each other, but I constantly hear about carriers working off the clock side by side getting their DPS or FSS together to case before work starts.
According to Article 7 section 1.A.1… regular schedules consisting of five (5) eight (8) hour days in a service week. Article 8 section 4.b states: overtime shall be paid to employees for work performed only after 8 hours on duty in any one service day or 40 hours in any one service week. Article 41 section 3.k states: Supervisors shall not require, not permit employees to work off the clock.
These three articles in the National Agreement guarantee that you are paid overtime after 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. These three articles do not allow management from ordering you or allowing you to work off the clock without receiving compensation - pay.
Some management are allowing carriers to work off the clock because it shows an increase in productivity and makes management look good when they are on the teleconference. Any letter carrier that knowingly works off the clock is violating the contract, betraying his fellow letter carriers and is only going to get an addition when management reviews the routes under route adjustments. These carriers are undermining our protections and guarantees under the National Agreement. These carriers working off the clock make other letter carriers performance look poor because their performance will appear better than carriers that do not work off the clock.
The letter carrier that works off the clock is not only hurting himself or herself but also is depriving other letter carriers beside himself or herself of overtime if warranted. Working off the clock also has an impact on CCA’s that may not receive an 8-hour day or a 40-hour work week, because you are working for free.
Letter carriers that work off the clock for an extended period of time daily will eventually affect all of you, this is because when management does route reviews these carriers that are working off the clock will be getting an addition in the office and maybe on the street too, because their assignment will be showing less than 8 hours a day. Management will abolish an assignment to make these carriers (that are working off the clock) routes up to 8 hours a day and this will affect ALL of you!
So, think twice before you work off the clock, our union and other unions fought hard for you to be guaranteed 8 hours of work for 8 hours of pay. Our national union negotiated and fought hard to get these articles that I spoke of before into our contract. No one should violate these rules. If you are working off the clock STOP IT! If you know a letter carrier that is working off the clock tell them to STOP IT! If the letter carrier continues to work off the clock inform your shop steward. Some carriers may be authorized to start early, and others may have an approved change in schedule which should be authorized by your shop steward. Remember, the job you may be saving by doing this may be your own!
Working off the clock does not only mean casing mail. It means getting your FSS in order if your office has FSS, your DPS in order, doing forwarding’s or even cleaning up you work area. Working off the clock doesn’t mean prior to or after you clock out it also means if you work through your lunch period which is a half hour because we do not get paid for lunch.
We are in a Covid-19 pandemic a lot of the things we normal do we are not doing because of the pandemic but one of the things we should NOT be doing is working off the clock, regardless. Hopefully soon or later this pandemic will be over. When that happens management will be conducting route inspections again. We would not be happy with management if they use the times while we were working off the clock to adjust routes.
These are just some examples of working off the clock that you should not be doing! We should all be smart, management nickel and dime us to death over minutes, so we must protect what we have and fight for what we want!
Stay safe!
