PostalReporter Contributor: Tour 1 Compression, “Drastically Downsized”4 Plants Staffing Changes on 5-19-2012
Cleveland Local APWU
ATTENTION: APWU MEMBERS
FYI
By Danny Pride
The Cleveland Area Local attended an area meeting concerning the consolidation of Akron into the Cleveland P&DC, under 12.5.B.2 of our National Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The Postal Service has taken the position that they will issue 60-day notifications to Akron employees and be able to detail/reassign these 74 employees by June 30, 2012. Akron employees would be unassigned regulars for 180 days (Dec 2012) at which time Cleveland would post 74 bids to be openly offered to Cleveland, Akron & excessed clerks. Bids would be awarded by seniority.
The Cleveland APWU position is: all excessed clerks must be returned to Cleveland P&DC first, before anyone is allowed into Cleveland. Immediately post 74 bids to Cleveland clerks and excessed clerks. Any residual bids would be offered to the Akron clerks.On March 21, 2012, the Union and management held an informational session. Management informed the Union that it was moving forward with their consolidation plans with Akron. Therefore, this would require some major operation changes. Management’s plans: Establish a 20 hr window for processing mail in automation. Tour II: 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Tour III, 4:30 p.m – 1:00 a.m. Reduce automation staffing of 127 employees on Tour I, to 25 employees on Tour 1. Then 102 bids would be established on Tour II and Tour III.
The Union objected to this plan because managements plan was based on changing the mail standard from one day delivery of first class mail to 3 day delivery. Why would you move forward on this plan if you haven’t obtained a mail standard change without approval of congress or public?
Management stated, that they had their marching orders, and they would attempt to implement these bid changes on the April 2012 bid posting, to be effective on April 19, 2012.
Maintenance Craft, (A) Maintenance Manager stated that the impact to maintenance would be minimal. He believes he could adjust to these changes by adjusting maintenance schedules within 2 hours, as allowed by CBA.
Motor Vehicle Craft – impact to the craft would be minimal. There would be changes, mostly to the 7:30 a.m. runs and any runs involving D.P.S. Mail.
Any further changes will be brought to the attention of our members immediately.
Thus far, there has been no official announcement concerning early-out (VERA).
Floor Edition
April 1, 2012
Update by Jackie Engelhart
Carol Stream Meets with Employees..
Carol Stream met with employees on tour 1 and tour 3 in a series of one hour meetings to present information on staffing changes they will make when service standards change on 5-19-12, unless congress stops it. Mr. Colao and his staff worked up a power point presentation that aided in providing information on what is happening on the plant consolidations, what jobs will be posted for CS mail processing, and what the timeline of events will be for the staffing changes planned for 5-19-12. The change in service standards will change mail processing from a tour 1 to a tour 2 operation and bids will be shifted accordingly. Employees were given a hand-out listing the bids that will be posted in each unit as they left. As Mr. Colao said they want to give employees as much time as possible to review the new jobs because they will begin retreat right canvassing on 4-2-12.
380 CS Clerk Jobs
There will be 380 Clerk bids although there are 447 Clerks on the rolls. Seven of the Clerks are former district employees who are on long-term details out of the facility. 24 Clerks are on Limited Duty so that will leave 36 Clerks without bids. John explained that some Clerks will bid on jobs they cannot do and may hold the bid for up to one year. It sounds like the plan is to assign junior unencumbered to backfill those jobs being held by injured Clerks, but management cannot keep these junior Clerks unencumbered for more than four months and will have to post more bids. Even though CS will be getting 30% of Chicago’s originating mail and all of Rockford’s originating mail (if approved) and all LO-11 from Fox Valley they do not plan to add employees to the facility. One reason is the staffing plan must show an 8% productivity increase, and they want to protect CS employees as mail volume continues to decline.
The CS Clerk Bids
Tour 1 Automation will go from 125 bids to O. Tour 2 Automation will go from 0 bids to 100. Tour 3 Automation will go from 126 bids to 102. About 30 Clerks have retreat rights to tour 2 Auto. Tour 1 will lose all 14 AFSM bids while tour 2 will add 28 AFSM bids. Tour 3 will go from 17 AFMS bids to 4 at 1300. The tour 2 AFSM start times will be 0700, 0900, 1000 and 1100 with seven bids at each starting time and all AFSM Clerk bids will have 10/4 schedules. FSS bids are not changed. All 50 Manual Letters bids will start at 1600 and all will be 10/4 schedules. Multi-Line Break-Up will have 11 bids on tour 2 but tour 3 will change from 8 to 2 bids, and tour 1 will change from 6 to 7 bids. Postage Due will have 7 bids on tour 2, 4 on tour 3 and 3 on tour 1. Tour 1 will lose 2 Review Clerks, tour 2 will gain 2, and tour 3 keeps 1 Review Clerk. Express Mail and Registry bids will all stay the same. Retreat right canvassing will start on 4-2-12 so CS Clerks should be prepared.
Palatine Meets with Employees
On 3-28-12 Palatine Plant Manager Chuck Sciurba conducted Town Hall meetings for tours 1 and 3 to explain that Palatine will be changing to a tour 2/tour 3 mail processing operation on 5-19-12 unless Congress acts to stop it. Palatine will also begin canvassing for retreat rights in preparation to post tour 2 bids on the 4-24-12 posting date (with the effective date for the new bids on 5-19-12. The main question for both plants remains the status of Rockford. Carol Stream is supposed to get their originating and Palatine to get their destinating mail and that will affect the number of barcodes and the number of bids to be posted at both Palatine and CS. I’m sure the Rockford employees would like to stay open and work their own mail. We printed the proposed Palatine starting times in the 3-7-12 Local Line and the main starting times for Automation and AFSM remain tour 2 at 0800 and tour 3 at 1650. The proposed 0400 tour start has been dropped and there will be 34 tour 1 Automation bids at 2000. There will be also be tour 3 noon bids when Palatine gets Rockford. For Automation there should be 76 bids at 0800, 36 bids at noon, 94 bids at 1650, and 34 at 2000. For AFSM there will be 4 Clerk bids on tour 2 and 6 on tour 3. The plan calls for more AFSM bids to be added for Rockford. There will be 9 tour 2 1000 bids for the Low Cost Tray Sorter. Non-mail processing bids such as PAU, Registry, Express, and Expediters stay the same for now. We should be able to share the list of Palatine start times on 4-3-12. Their plan has no 10-4 jobs and they did not discuss NTFT jobs.
Impact on Maintenance…
Neither plant has provided us with a specific number of how many Maintenance Craft employees will be moved from tour 2 to tour 1 due to mail processing time changes. Since most of the changes need to occur on 5-19-12 we hope to have specific information from both plants ASAP. Due to the changes in mail processing equipment at both plants new staffing packages will have to be done which could change the number of employees. Since Palatine has been meeting with us on a regular basis we told Plant Manager Sciurba that any residual vacancies in the facility should be withheld for a possible impact on Palatine Maintenance. The next date management can move impacted APWU employees is 6-30-12 and we want to ensure that no more employees move into Palatine until we know what the impact for Maintenance will be. Impacted employees have a right to stay in their own facility if there are residual vacancies in same or lower level positions. Palatine has 14 Mail Handler residuals that should be landing spots in case there is an impact for Palatine Maintenance Craft employees. We have not been told there is an impact but we need to know now before the 6-30-12 date, not after. The same would apply at CS if there were residual vacancies we would want them held for CS. As soon as management knows what the changes will be in the Maintenance Craft they should be meeting with those employees. Maintenance Craft Director Joe Golden has had some discussion with the Palatine Maintenance Manager Ricky Hilliard and is willing to meet with CS Manager Dan Halfman when he is ready.
Chicago Metro Surface Hub
We had a Labor-Management meeting on 3-27-12 at CMSH with A/Plant Manager Larry Muse who is replacing Melvin Anderson while he is on detail to Chicago. We asked how the Optimization changes will affect CMSH and he said that CMSH will get Chicago mail back and is fighting to keep the Palatine mail which Palatine would like to process in-house when they get an APBS machine, and which they are approved for. Every plant is fighting for mail. We have an issue with moving Scan-Where-You-Band Clerks to the NMO Break-Up Unit adjacent to SWYB while moving Rack Clerks into SWYB. Mr. Hudson tried to say the Break-Up is part of SWYB but it is NMO Break-Up. It is a separate unit and SWYB Clerks should not be moved from SWYB to the Break-Up Unit while Rack Clerks work SWYB. The Supervisor who moved these Clerks is causing other problems for Clerks and with our Steward. We requested a copy of the latest Center-Point lease to see what maintenance work is covered since the number of mechanics was reduced based on that lease.
Associate Office Impacts …
AO Director Kathy Stokes and I called into the Impact Meeting for Mount Prospect and Lake Forest on 3-29-12. Both offices were impacted for 1 Clerk and both offices excessed Clerks in 2011. Mount Prospect is calling 70+ hours of OT per week and shows 64 hours of OT per week after they excess! Both offices have supervisors performing Clerk work and Lake Forest scans their Box Mail as being up whether it is up or not. Management said they could not explain any of this!?
Northwest Illinois Area Local 7140
Only Legislation Will Stop the Plant Consolidations…
The moratorium USPS agreed to for plant closings ends on 5-15-12 and Congress has done nothing. The USPS plans to move forward with what they call the Network Optimization Plan or NOM for short if nothing changes by 5-15. We met with Palatine Plant Mgr. Chuck Sciurba on 2-21-12 and he showed us the plans for the new operating windows that would go into affect at Palatine post-NOM. The plans are for mail processing to begin at 0800 and end at 2400. I questioned months ago if there would be a tour 1 and was told there would be three tours, but as of 2-21-12 tours 2 and 3 will be the main mail processing tours. Under the NOM tour 1 would be the preventive maintenance tour with very little mail processing. With the change of first class mail from overnight to a two or three day service there will be no need to work mail overnight on tour 1. The compressions have come full circle with tour 2 and 3 returned and tour 1 drastically downsized. As part of the NOM Palatine will be getting Chicago PARS mail. Management is prepared to move forward on the NOM on 5-15-12 when the moratorium ends unless Congress passes legislation that would stop the consolidations. They plan to move forward on the NOM from 5-15-12 to 6-30-12. I asked where all the employees from the closing plants will go as most of the plants remaining open have no plans to add employees. USPS is likely to offer an early out with an incentive if Congress agrees to return the 11 billion USPS overpayment to the FERS. That seems to be the only option to reduce the USPS workforce.
Providence, RI Local 387
If, the current first class delivery standard gets changed to the purposed two or three day delivery. There will be a lot of changes in the Plant. Last Friday morning I had a meeting with
(A) Lead MDO, Martha St, Germaine and Bob Conroy they told me there plan if the first class standard gets changed.
Here is what the Services plan is;
Tour 2, Automated Letters start time will be 8:00am. Tour 2 Flats start time will be 8:00am
Tour 3, Automated Letters start time will be 4:30pm. Tour 3 Flats start time will be 4:30pm.
Tour 1, Handcase, Manual Flats, and Pouch bins start time will change from 9:30pm to 5:30pm this action will require and abolishment of these positions. Jobs with the new start time will have to be posted for the whole Installation to bid on.
Tour 1, Automated Letters all but 16 to 20 jobs will be abolished and new jobs for the whole Installation to bid on will be posted between Tour 2 and 3. The number of jobs on each tour was not told to me. Tour 1, automation runs on a nightly basis 30 DBCS’s the Service wants to reduce that number to 24 DBCS’s machines.
Tour 1, Flats as of the meeting all jobs will be abolished they are still thinking. They are still thinking about whether or to leaving a crew to staff one machine on Tour 1. That has not been decided yet.
There will be changes in Maintenance Craft and MVS Craft as well, what those changes will be was not expressed to me during the meeting.
Could Members be excessed a crossed craft lines or out of the Installation that is always a possibility. Bottom line changes that are coming and the changes that are coming are from Management and not the Union.
Rests assure that the Officers and stewards will make sure the Service follow the National Agreement. Nothing in that meeting was agreed too.
The time has come for every member of this local to get involved with the future of this Union and the Postal Service to protect our jobs. We are asking every member to write, call, and email their Senators and Congressmen to not change the delivery standards. The Local will be forming a Committee to address the delivery standards we will be formatting a letter for you to sign and send to your Senators and Congressmen. The Officers and Stewards will do their part to protect our jobs now is the time for the whole membership to join in the fight to protect our jobs. If, not you, who will protect your jobs?
Let me say this once again NOTHING ABOUT THE SERVICES PLAN HAS BEEN AGREED TOO.
In Union Solitary
Raymond Kearns
Telly & APWU will save us papsan. Thats why we vote him. He love us long time.
Everyone can complain and scream but the bottom line is “we are the ones to blame”! In every PO across this nation we have fellow coworkers that keep voting Republicans, no matter what our unions recommends and it has come to a time where the Republicans controls what happens to our jobs. You can thank your coworker for the mess we are in and i bet you that, you wont find any coworker claiming to be Republicans now. Thanks you for your service!
hummmm? strange all these postal officals are feeling pregnant all of a sudden, it could be just alot of gas.
May i suggest try sitting on Potters Pot and bear down.
Let’s all take a breather and congratulate Guffey on being 6 months pregnant.
They will probably put us in STANDBY until 2015 when the contract is up. If they do and all we can do is sit there and read books or watch movies as before, we’ll have to SUE for all the stuff the inmates in prison get like a fully equiped weight room. I’ll be buff and looking good while I look for a new job. Meanwhile PMG DONUTHIOLE will get FAT (ter) and richer when he takes his POTTER size walking money after he sinks the USPS like the TITANIC that mangement made. FIGURES!
After May 15th you should have more than enough locker space…
Try to decorate…i used mirrors with a disco ball on top, it did the trick.
We thought you were the superseniority steward… No?
then who the fuck are you?
More grievances need to be filed on the size of lockers in postal facilities and the return of LSM’s to the floor. Where are these “superseniority” stewards when we need em?
“(without) gutting and cutting (service) or closing more plants/post offices.”
Going to 5 day delivery would be gutting and cutting service.
We are spending millions on grievances that are total bullshit.
Really to who? a bunch of illiterate idiots in management who dont have a clue.
Lets not forget Congress and then Pres. Bush that started this pre-payment mess.
Do your employees earn sick leave? And they wish to use it and you bitch? Who’s the idiots?
Sorry Pattie Cakes just dont see eye to eye on things? Lets go take in the new three stooges movie. maybe wise up over some popcorn?
I do feel our own goverment and management has cause this Big Mess and need the Postal Mayan sunami transfer final resolution commode flush lever pulled on them along with enufisenuf.
illiterate idiot bliss 🙂
The only thing that will save the Postal service is a 10% cut in wages and benefits across the board from the Post Master General to the last person hired. this along with a 5 day delivery would save over 10 billion a year (without) gutting and cutting service or closing more plants/post offices.
Good luck everyone I just got hired at UPS
Wow Benji! You read that nonsensical cliche somehere, and have been going crazy waiting to use it. Get a life, Pat is exactly right, If we all took stock of ourselves, we could see that there are problems all through this house. Blaming management or craft exclusively is a load of crock…
APWU will save us!
Hey Pat don’t be so high and mighty. How smart can you be? You work for the USPS It’s one thing to be an illiterate idiot and another to be a literate idiot.
Managements perpetrates a simple theory to the public and you seemed to have fallen for it. They present false facts . They simply believe:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
And please don’t choke on your self righteousness.
Sorry but you guys mostly sound like a bunch of illiterate idiots.
It would be best to give some thought to what you are going to say, attempt to make it grammatically correct and try to understand basic economics…
We are losing millions a day. Of course there has been some bad management.
There are also thousands of people on OWCP that are sucking the system dry.
We are spending millions on grievances that are total bullshit.
Our sick leave is off the charts horrible.
These things are complicated and to just blame one group for our failure is ludicrous.
Wise up all…
The country will follow our example if we don’t get our fiscal house in order.
I can’t afford my mortgage now anyway.
The new Postal system being systematically put in place will delay mail not for days but weeks and bring the USPS to a virtual halt, and someone? will step in and put emergency measures into place, do not think that PMG Donahoe has not been promised something from those for Privatization, this comes from somewhere that it can be traced back and those people would be OIG Fodder, there is no plan to save USPS, the Congress bull is just that, “Bull”, remember these representatives were made to think there was a crisis and to put them on a track away from the real plan, and that plan is USPS management, the Unions ( Who fall right into the trap, who don’t realize this privatization plan?), Big Business ( Investors looking for fresh kill), and other assorted characters, PMG Donahoe, other big management, Strohman, Brennan and others, who all think they will be getting what? out of this?, sad day when the end comes for the workers, the NALC and APWU will not support any bill that does not assure union dues, if the S.1789 is good for members who want to go, the unions will not support it, make room for those who cannot go or will be excessed!
Look at the bright side.We will probably be better off on food stamps and medicare .
No union dues and no begging for a day off.
The Final Resolution;
enufisenuf hits the commode flush lever Postal Mayan sunami transfer final resolution.
On his way out to his new plant, he gave it one last wipe.
His position will not be posted bruthas n sistas.
“wait for congress to approve”????? Isn’t that about the same time hell freezes over? Those self-serving bastards in congress will not do a damn thing they are not forced to do! Statesmanship is just an obsolete word from a lost era….
GONE WITH THE WIND: Scarlett says: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
—————-
What was is our postal “Gone with the Wind” reality.
What is… we craft folk should think about tomorrow.
anyone who still thinks privitization isnt the real plan, I have a piece of land for sale called yellowstone park, make me an offer
What are we going to do?
Who be fighting for mail, Rochester NY took all machines from Elmira NY, and they cannot even process most of it, we leave manual mail for days in APC’s !, and then they want Buffalo N Y mail, these overpaid managers, Supervisors, PMG etc., what job will they have ?, after the destruction is complete?
I’m taking the easy way out.I’m jumping out the window. Oops there are no windows in the plant where I work.
“Some pool tables would be nice.”
Rack’em
“The Postal “Mayan” countdown has begun! The sunami will soon hit the west coast!”
Indeed…. they informed us they are going to make our lunch room and womens locker rooms bigger…. getting some more machines, stuff like that. Some pool tables would be nice.
Resident Officer Restructuring
Whereas: The APWU membership continues to shrink at drastic rates.
Whereas: The amount of National Resident Officers has not decreased at all while their represented members have.
Whereas: Compared to our sister Postal Labor organizations we are exceptionally top heavy with National Officers.
Whereas: It makes fiscal sense in the current climate to have this discussion.
Be it resolved: that the APWU restructure the resident officer structure as follows and institute (by updating the constitution appropriately) said structure effective for the 2013 National Election.
Eliminate the position of Industrial Relations Director and merge these duties into the Executive Vice President position, to include the oversight of the industrial relations department. Increase the Executive V.P. salary by 15%.
Eliminate the position of Asst. Legislative Director.
Eliminate the Director of Organization position, the Research and Education position and the Human Relations position. Create a position titled Union Growth & Improvement Director which will be responsible for all aspects of the three eliminated positions. This positions salary would be the same as the individual salary of the positions it is replacing plus 15%. This position would replace the Industrial Relations Director on the executive board.
Decrease the amount of Clerk craft assistant directors from 3 to 2.
Decrease the amount of Maintenance craft assistant directors (currently 2) and National Rep at Large (currently 1) to just 1 assistant director. The lone assistant director would assume the duties of the National Rep. at Large.
Eliminate the assistant MVS craft director position. Change Article 21 (c) by deleting “the Assistant Director of the MVS division” and replacing it with “the National President will appoint a current MVS NBA as the Director of the MVS division and he/she”.
For the purpose of clarity, no member running for any of the above mentioned positions (excepting the V.P. position) will be considered the incumbent in any 2013 election literature including the ballots.
For the purpose of expediency the membership would ask that the Secretary/Treasurer be responsible for making appropriate housekeeping changes to the following Articles (7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 21, and any others missed herein) to align them with the results of this resolution.
looking for a guy name donuthole? or something like that?
Got a message for him…Special Delivery
We have some of the sorriest, laziest congress we have ever had in office! Important as the postal service is to all america, they sit daily and do nothing to help the situation! Thousand of workers beng moved and uprooted from their homes, and tthe mail service to americans cttzens going down the drain. Yet, the postal service continue to waste money on sending district personnel to facilities with no new information in handd! JUST WASTING MONEY AND TME! CONGRESS, WHY DON’T YOU PASS LEGISLATION THAT WILL KEEP THE POSTAL SERVICE SOLVENT, AMERICAN WORKING, AND THE MAIL DELIVERY TIMELY TO ALL AMERICANS! AMERICA IS DEPENDING ON YOU ALL!
The Postal “Mayan” countdown has begun! The sunami will soon hit the west coast! What are so-cal local union presidents to do? Will the lemmings bail? Will there be enuf PS Form 1187s? Get yours filled out today before its too late! OR…keep paying dem dues and dues assessments bruthas n sistas!
privatization!
I fully agree with Don on Wed, 11th AM 2012 10:00AM. “We are still sinking!”
So the “Gaining” plants will have major shift changes on 5/19 – – that is because the USPS has been planning for 5 months to make massive nationwide movements of mail to the “Gaining” plants from the consolidation plants beginning on 5/19. First will go the outgoing mail and machinery – transportation has already been set up to start this on 5/19. Unions are not informed because USPS will not excess “at this time” – so USPS can quickly move mail and machines before Congress can finally see the problem and react.
Ready or not here we come!
I am glad we gave up our cola for job security.
Unfortunately many of the employees will blame the Union. It appears that they are planning on changing everyone everywhere to the same hours.
The only thing PO management has ever been good at is rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It’s still sinking.
as usual, shoot first and ask questions later,,,,, oops!
Our only job is “SERVICE” and these dimwits want to downgrade it ? What a crock ! !