A few provisions of the Tentative Agreement have been misunderstood by some union members. APWU President Cliff Guffey sets the record straight in video messages.
Pay Raises vs. Health Benefit Costs
Non-Traditional Full-Time Assignments
54 thoughts on “Guffey Videos On Cleaning Up Confusion About The Tentative Agreement”
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I’m not worried about the sky falling Roko, just my hours and benefits. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna vote yes to a contract that permits that.
Working 30 hrs a week will put many if not most of those bid holders into the $10-$15 range. Welcome to China Light!! I personally think with Guffey we will lose in the long run. He has shown his effectivness and priorities. But this contract stinks. At least in arbitration there is a neutral vote and one vote for each side. No neutral arbitrator would give away the 40 hour week like Guffey is allowing. We need effective bargining and representation. Of course they could also go back to the table, if both sides agree. Vote NO!!!
Pay Attention!! In arbitration, when a union backs away from an agreed contract they WILL lose. Now is not the time to posture. I know many people who are getting a 0%pay raise because they have lost their jobs.It would really be sweet if the “SCABS” were not entitled to any of the benefits of collective bargaining. Think what your wages would be without collective bargaining agreements. $10-15 an hour? Most of the posts make me laugh because of “the sky is falling” mentality.
Give up the 40hr workweek!!!—“FATHER,FORGIVE THEM,FOR THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.”—VOTE NO.!!!
Thanks Cliff! I don’t know why I was so confused the first time? It’s so simple a moron could get it.
I agree with Postal Pete! What would Rush Dittohead do when his/her job is abolished and transferred to China or other foreign countries that is truly socialist or communist??? Maybe he/she won’t call us union workers “lazy” or “socialist”. We definitely are not FYI, Rush Dittohead! You probably don’t even know any issues of what we are talking about so please keep the hate email to yourself. Thank you.
LOL! Ditto! The real world will soon be China where all the jobs are! El Rushbos real world is an oxycontin haze! I’m jus a lovable lil’ fuzzball…
You people are so spoiled. That’s what happens with lazy union socialists. Go and try working in the real world.
If you have a bid you like and are sure won’t be abolished AND are close to retirement, this contract is for you! Arbitration would not take away the 40 hour work week like this contract. This contract gives the whole store away. I don’t understand why. But it does. Vote NO!!!! Or take a twentyfive percent pay cut, working six days a week, five hours a day.
my gut feeling is that postalgal has got it together. you better listen
Is it really prudent to vote on a contract that has unresolved issues? Do you feal comfortable with not konowing what will happen with with Your future? Do you feal that the national explained the issues in this TA well eough to make an informned decision? Why are they waiting 6 days after the ballots have been mailed out to start explaining this TA? ( By the way, where is your ballot?) Do you trust the same organization that brought you to this TA, to put forth a better effort during arbitration to get you a better TA than you have now? Questions, questions, questions!
The current officers could have asked for a better contract. Everyone who is voting should read the whole contract to familiarize themselves of its benefits and losses. After familiarization and gaining more knowledge of what has been negotiated, ponder on it! Just don’t accept what the national officers or local officers have to say about it. All of them have a personal agenda why it is good for them or the union. Of course, those officers will only point out the positive side of the contract and not the negative. I for one, will vote “NO” because of the division in pay for new hires and the delay of the implementation of the COLA and wage increase. Ask an Economist. There is what we call the “Time Value of Money” and we will not be gaining any increase at all because of the inflation that is occuring this year and next! By the time we realize the so-called increase and COLA, we will all be behind in the VALUE of our money! Plus, postal management is doling out $20,000 for management’s VERA and not the clerks!! What gives Mr. Guffey???? Vote “NO”.
NTFT? Nifty? What is “nifty” about a less than 40 hour work week? Guffey calls it “nifty”? Hah! It’s nifty to call a part time postion by any other definition a “non-traditional full-time” postion? Non-traditional? This union is becoming non-traditional. Vote yes for a 25% pay cut.
Yup. Straight pay. No bid will include overtime pay in the scheduled hours.
So if I’m in a 44 hour bid then I am work those 4 extra hours at straight pay?
If the Postal Service truly needs more flexibility within the workforce why not just raise the percentage of the part time flexible compliment? Why do we have to create a glorified “Casual” workforce to satisfiy the Postal Service who will never have the opportunity to make reach the end of the current pay scale?
Oh you wont be forced into a 30 hr week but it’ll be the only real option you have. My guess is if this is approved that you wont see many 40 hr a week jobs. This is a HORRIBLE contract for the workers.
Oh my god! Some republican congressman was ranting and profiling on c-span! Let’s give up! Give me a 25% pay cut to shut the congressman up! I surrender!
PSYCHIC is 100% correct!!
Issa and Ross are venomous to put it bluntly.
Before you even consider voting “no”, you should watch the hearing from last week. All 2 hours and 40 minutes of the c span broadcast are available online
One more thing, for every 20 hour regular extended to 30 hours, doesn’t there have to be a 40 hour regular assignment reduced to 30 hours? How will they do that without forcing the 40 hour to voluntarily reduce their hours. They’ll have to abolish the 40 hour job and force the employee to make a choice of taking the 30 hour or remaining unassigned in the office.
I have a question, If your slotted into a 44 hour a week position, would your base pay for retirement purposes be base on 40 hours or your regular 44 hour base pay.
Base pay is 5k more at 44 hours.
Work over 40 hrs in a week with no overtime? A guaranteed 30 hr week? Guffey negotiates away the 40 hr work week? I thought we had labor laws? This isn’t a contract. Guffey is a terrible negotiator. Vote NO!!!!
The only work hour “guarantee” in this contract is a 30 hr week. They can make as many NTFT positions as they want. They won’t force you to bid on a NTFT, but you will have to if management abolish’s your bid. If you want to bid on another bid, it won’t be 40 hrs. This is the start of a 30 hr week for many, or no overtime if you do work over 40. Guffey has the nerve to bring this to us?
Another gray area is if you have one of these 40+ hour assignments does this mean you are receiving guaranteed OT ? I doubt it, but there are many gray areas and this will only work in managements favor.
“In function 4, Management may create as many clerk NTFT duty assignments of 30-48 in a facility as operationally necessary.” Page 189 of the tentative agreement. This is not true in a function 1, but we should all stand together. I myself work in a function 1 so this as of now will not affect me.
Republican backed contract? 48 hr work week? No overtime over 40 hrs?? Seriously, what are you guys smoking??? If you cannot research something this important any better than that, then this Union is in trouble. First, the GOP did not negotiate this contract. Assertions like that are mindless. Second, FTR can be forced into jobs of 40-44 hours, not 48. Last, any time over 40 hours is overtime. This is not rocket science children, please pay attention. Vote this contract down and the GOP will negotiate the next one. Open Pandora’s box and things can and will be infinitely worse. We seem to want the national officers to wave a magic wand and pull a contract out of their ass. Check out the rusty steel belt of this nation. That is what those unions wanted, now most of them don’t have pensions, and the factories are rusting away. I think our union was brilliant with this contract. Right now is not the right time for a big fight. Pick your battles wisely!!
Vote “NO” on the Republican-backed Postmaster General’s contract , and negotiated by Guffey in desperation.
Our experienced APWU president Bill Burrus knows all about sell outs in contract negotiations. He has made his case against this unpopular pending union contract in which the postal management are secretly licking their chops.
VOTE NO!!!!!!!! We are supposed to be one of the strongest union –keep it that way!!
I wont stand up and cant man up. What should be my course of action?
I’m voting NO! Let’s go to arbitration, at least we will know we stood up like men and tried. Man Up!
postalgal….STFU
I will be hosing ya’ll anyways. I can’t stand anyone making more than 2 dollars a day.
If you guys vote no and we go to arbitration I think we are going to get hosed. It’s a historically proven thing. Check it out .
I guess we’ll just see what happens. I am voting yes for reasons I stated. Everyone has to vote how they feel.
Good luck to us all 🙂
Go to youtube and search for petepostal. He has a video that is pretty good. If you can get by the ‘joke’ for the first few seconds.
Mr. Guffey is spouting misinformation.
1)The contract increases employee health insurance share by 5% not 4%.
2) The most popular health insurance plan is the family BCBS standard family plan which has a cost of over 15,000. 5% of 15K is $750.
3) Over the next 4 and a half years those costs will go up so the average employee will be paying significantly more than $750 more per year in health insurance at the end of this contract. If they rise at only 5% a year the employee share of the BCBS family plan will be over $1500 more per year at the end of this contract than it is now.
Do not let them scare you into voting yes. The only entity that is not recovering is the US Government.They caused this economic debacle with their spending over the past 30 years and now it is totally out of control.The US needs the paid up retirement benefits and will not return that $$$ ever.Now they want to bring attention to the Postal Service. Why don’t they take a look at themselves and leave us alone?The salaries in the Postal Service are strictly middle class nothing more and maybe less.Take a stand and vote NO. I am tired of having the people lead us, screw us. If we do not stand up for what is right than we just fall right into their hands again and maybe this time it will be too late for ourselves and our families to recover from their ineptitude to correct problems that were really caused by poor management and every man for themselves mentality.
You will have to ask Guffey why. He negotiated it. Read the proposed contract. What is full time non traditional? Read the new employee classifications. Read the hours you will be required to work without overtime. Read about the 30 hr work week for others. I read it. I can’t believe it. I am in never-never land here.
Yappa, I dont understand – Why would Guffey not want us to have our 40 hours? Does not make sense to me. I say this with respect to you.
Here is what I was just referring to about arbitration ending bad for us:
April 11, 2011 by Lu · 13 Comments
Filed under: APWU, postal, rural carriers, usps
This is an opinion by Don Cheney on why APWU members should think carefully before voting NO on Tentative Agreement.
In the past when the national officers of a postal union agreed to a tentative contract and the membership voted it down, the consequences were BAD. Arbitrators view such behavior as bad faith bargaining and don’t reward it unless others try the same thing.
The last postal union to attempt this was the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association in 2002. They were clobbered with the help of the APWU’s Goldberg arbitration award the year before. Former President William Burrus wrote about the Goldberg award in a 2007. It was mentioned again at the congressional hearing on April 5, 2011. Expect the Goldberg award to come up at every interest arbitration. Ignore it at your peril. Read more
I hear you about the 48 hours. With the decline in mail I wonder how much of a reality that would be. Would it be ongoing. Would we have to work a few extra hours here & there? I guess I would not care for that with no OT but if I could still retain my good good I would do it. Hopefully not be abused by it. I just think the dangers are worse if we go to arbitration. Read some of the articles on arbitration & how bad we fared going that route. There was one just mentioned on this site I beleive.
Guffey should be watching out for ALL workers interests. Not only his interests or senior bidders. If you are waiting to bid on a more desirable job slot, it will be part time work. In a few years when the 40 hr jobs are gone, only 30 hr work week postions will be left. This is both the P.O.’s and Guffey’s agenda. This is the start of GOING BACKWARDS for postal labor. Disgusting. Vote NO!!
Don’t forget we have the republicans – hello – the majority – on our backs big time right now. They think we should pay more for healthcare & have wages cut. Dennis Ross & Mica & Connie Mack as well as Darrell Issa. They are gunning for us. In lite of whats going on in other states with the unions not doing well & public opinion siding against these unions, we just don’t need the bad publicity that would give these congressman cover to cut us off at the knees.
I say approve this contract & run…..VERY fast!!! While we can.
As Guffey said you can not be involuntarily assigned to a 30 hour position HOWEVER you can be reassigned to a NTFT assignment of 40-48 hours a week with 2 consecutive days off and a minimum of 6 hours per day but no more than 10 hours a day. So you can work four 10 hour days, one 8 hour day for 48 hours of straight pay, no OT pay until you work after 48 hours!! Their claim is to give the employee more flexibility in their schedule. Who are they kidding, not me! I myself do not care at this time about the raises, what concerns me is the new workforce they want to employ. This is to their benefit and it is not the fix to Postal Service.Wake up people before you are working the new work week of 48 hours instead of the usual 40 hour work week.Do we get any more AL or sick leave for these 4-8 additional hours per week in our new role of NTFT? If I take approved LWOP for the additional 8 hours of work will it affect my retirement age? Does anyone really know the full details of this contract? No because they do not want you to know.
We are really only working contract to contract. I mean the same could had been said about the contract before last. Why did we not get more $. Why did we have to pay more for insurance. I am just saying that you fight for the current contract. 4 years is a good amount of time.
This is not a giveback for any of us. We are standing our ground. I think we come out ahead here. I really do. I live here in California. The jobs are going going gone. My brother has been out of work for 2 years. 2 years. He would love to have what I have. I would love him to be able to get one of the new jobs. He would take it in a heart beat. If I was unemployed heck I would take the newer lowere pay jobs. Yes I would love the higher pay but when you are out of work these jobs are still gold even at the reduced pay. :):)
Listen very carefully to this guy. He is telling you for the life of the agreement you cannot be forced into a job of less than 40 hours! This is a far cry from your entire career. What happens in 4 years? Any member who has more than 4 years left to work is a fool for voting yes. Protect your job, protect your future. VOTE NO!!!
I’m voting yes. I just dont see the USPS getting away with abolishing all these work schedules. Be reasonable here. They are not the boogy man. Yes they want changes. No I do not agree with everything but we will never get all we want.
I want my 40 hr week. I feel confident I will get to keep it. I feel confident we will not be raked over the coals on healthcare. As for the newer enmployees coming in at a little lower wage, well houses are 1/2 what they were. Everyone else is making less & paying more for healthcare & not even getting any kind of retirement. Most companies now are hiring “contractors” so they do have to pay benefits, retirement, etc.
It’s a different ball game out there. I am so glad to have what I have. I actually wondered if we were going to have to take a pay cut & cut in our benefits. No, we did pretty well if you ask this old ga.
If we go to arbitration we will get NADA.
That should read ……”I do feel better about this tentative contract *now*”.
Granted management can’t force you into the 30 hr week bids. But is there language prohibiting management from abolishing your 40 hr/week bid? No, there is not. If management abolishes your bid, you have to bid on what is available, where it is available. Guffey is letting the PO roll back decades of labor struggles to get a 40 hr work week, so he can get new enrollees for the union health insurance company. There is too much wiggle room for management. Vote NO!
what about the next contract pushing us over the CLIFF guffey!!!! VOTE NO!!!!
Thanks Mr. Guffey. I do feel better about this tentative contract no.
It was hard to believe that we would not have that guarantee.
Think about it everyone. Does it really make sense that we would lose that guarantee? That the union would ever agree to something so damaging? It just made not sense at all that this would happen.
I say yes to the new agreement.