2018: The Year of Arbitration
As 2017 came to a close, many letter carriers felt a little satisfied because a “new National Agreement had finally been approved and ratified after almost 20 months of negotiations. The contract expired on May 21st, 2016 without a “pay raise”.
As the saying goes, “money makes the world go around.” What could go wrong!
At a recent seminar held by NJ Merged Branch 38, NALC National President Fred Rolando advised the membership that as 2018 began our National Union was engaged with the Postal Service with multiple pending National disputes. These are the issues. 1) There is currently a dispute concerning “retroactive” Holiday pay for City Carrier Assistants (CCAS). The Postal Service has taken the position that CCAs are not entitled to Holiday retro pay. They claim CCAs will only get Holiday pay from the date the contract was ratified (August 7, 2017). Thus Postal Management would deny approximately 30,000 CCAs 8 paid holidays. That is the nature of the dispute. Even considering 6 hours of holiday pay each, times 8 holidays = (48 hours) times 30,000 CCAs this would be the equivalent of (1,440,000 hours).
A second pending National case concerns career carriers and CCAs who are Grade 2 carriers. It is called “hold in place.” In October of 2017, the Postal Service unilaterally (did not negotiate with the union) changed procedures concerning “wages” when letter carriers move from as Grade 1 to a Grade 2. Previously, when this occurred, the carrier would be granted 2 additional step increases. The Postal Service said that this was not going to occur any longer. The Postal Service, however, went even further and said they were going to go retroactive with the change and would “hold” any future step increases (pay raises for 2 steps or 92 weeks) for these letter carriers . I will not try to calculate how many work hours this will be, but besides delaying hourly rates, the pay will affect overtime pay, thrift saving contributions and social security. 92 weeks is almost 2 years. 2 years is about 4000 work hours. Even if it is 20,000 letter carriers affected, that translates into about 80 million hours. Fortunately, this case is scheduled for hearings starting January 30, 2018. If the arbitration is favorable for letter carriers the hours may not be that high but they would still be substantial.
A third issue that affects CCAs is the “withholding” or failing to promote CCAs when a Grade 1 letter carrier position is vacant and has no successful bidder. Originally, when these cases were impassed at the B team level, they were placed in an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) process. Sometimes, cases in the ADR system could be delayed for months or years before they were addressed. Luckily, President Rolando said at this recent seminar these cases were going to be scheduled for arbitration in the future. “Justice delayed is Justice denied.”
A fourth issue concerns letter carrier political activity during National elections.
This issue came about when a letter carrier in Wisconsin complained about having to work overtime because another letter carrier was on Leave Without Pay(LWOP) and working for National Headquarters and the election process. The Senator from Wisconsin who took up the letter carriers complaint was Ron Johnson. In my opinion, he is no friend of letter carriers or working people.
Senator Johnson conducted hearings but in his zeal to support this “one” letter carrier, he failed to invite the NALC to address him or his Committee to explain the background and history of letter carriers and National elections. This has all of the makings of a “Kangaroo” court.
Postmaster General Megan Brennan has already said she will follow the lead of the Committees’ Special Counsel. This might mean a change in Postal Regulations and even language on a form 3971 saying that a letter carrier requesting LWOP was not doing it for the purpose of engaging in elections. What happened to your “freedom of speech?”
A fifth pending issue concerns the “printing” of the “new” contract. We approved a tentative National Agreement but now the Postal Service wants to change some of the agreed to wording. This constitutes “bad” faith bargaining. If the NALC were to agree to those changes, would the NALC then have to send that “new” contract out for membership ratification? Remember, we already voted and approved the agreement. This matter needs to go to arbitration!
A sixth pending arbitration pertains to over hiring of CCAs. Management has exceeded the agreed to quotas. The solution should be to either reduce the CCA complement or promote more CCAs until the agreed to ratio/percentages of career to CCAs is in compliance. I think even Postal Management can reasonability see how wrong this is! Again, however, it is about the money and the benefits. Converting CCAs to career increases their costs for wages, health benefits, leave, pensions and thrift savings. How many work hours does this involve?
The final dispute concerns what is a work year. A work year is approximately 2000 hours. This is important for promoting/converting CCAs in larger offices to either full-time or part-time flexible career positions. The NALC’s position is that all work hours whether career or non-career must be counted. The postal service only wants to count career employee hours. This is a significant difference.
This is only the start of 2018. Who knows what other surprises Management has in store for us? Unfortunately, the NAC spent almost 20 months of negotiating this agreement.
Perhaps our future strategy needs to be after a contract expires we mandate arbitration no later than 90 days from that date. What this means in total, is the NALC would only negotiate for 6 months instead of the last 20. Why spend time negotiating(in good faith) and making agreements if we later on have to arbitrate that agreed to contract that was sent to the membership for ratification. Remember, time is money!
Why are we wasting the members money and time only to have postal management renege on our agreements? Yours for the Union.
