Floor Edition

July 14, 2011

Update by Jackie Engelhart

New News Director

Tour 3 Chief Steward and Legislative Director Walter Elerby Jr. has volunteered for the duties of News Director and he will be assisting with the editing and writing of new letters. We thank Al Czerwinksi for his years of service.

PalatineT2 FSS Jobs

14 10 am Clerk jobs will be posted on 7-18-11 and will be open for all Clerks to bid on. Since anagement will need the jobs at this time for the foreseeable future newly created jobs had to be posted. Tour 3 FSS Clerks who have been on management details to 10 am for the last few weeks have not been paid out of schedule pay. The union's grievance was denied at Step I by MDO Rosemary Kane, and the Union is still waiting for copies of the tour 3 1723's, but Plant Manager Sciruba said FSS Clerks working out of schedule will be paid the out of schedule pay. We will continue to process the grievance until they are paid.

Carol Stream Clerks Reassigned ...

A few Carol Stream Clerks who submitted bids in the excess bidding and who agreed to waive the moratorium are being reassigned to their new facility effective 7-16-11. Palatine Clerks who bid in March excess bidding and who agreed to waive the moratorium are still waiting to go, including some senior in lieu of. Plant Manager Sciurba has said these Clerks will be allowed to leave but the question is, when? The Palatine grievance on this is now at Step 3.

Palatine Still Struggling

Management continues to struggle to get the mail out and this is the middle of July. They say its because they have so many people off on vacation. Palatine has struggled since the BPI and AMP impacts in July of 2010. The current Palatine Clerk seniority list has only 422 Clerks and 17 of those were PTRs who reverted to Part-Time Regular status to avoid excessing. Palatine does not have enough Clerks!

Busse Staffing

Plant Manager Anderson says the volume is light but he does not foresee any excessing out of the facility. We have asked for the Custodian residuals to be filled and Melvin is working on filling them. Most of the Clerks reassigned to Busse in March have been placed into residual vacancies by now, which means they can bid on all Clerk vacancies. There is no SPBS training because management has not been able to locate the necessary equipment, and with the SPBS scheduled to become an Automated Bundler Sorter later this year (9-12-11) there will be very little keying left. Last year management abolished all Sat/Fri bids in the Racks and now they are changing Rack bids to Sat/Fri which is confusing to those who lost the bids. I called In-Plant Manager Alix Nigro and he sent me the current Rack staffing and sure enough they want five Sat/Fri bids. I will be investigating why they would eliminate those NS days in 2010 and then need them back in 2011. It does not make sense.

Maintenance Issues

Maintenance Craft Director Joe Golden just returned from several weeks of required training and one week of vacation. He returned to work on Monday 7-11-11 at 5am, and was sent home by management because they disapproved, his detail but nobody told him. He was told he would be on tour 1 for two months due to a shortage of tour 1 Electronic Technicians. Management recently posted some bids from tour 1 to tour 2 so they should not use that as a reason to deny the Craft Director a detail and/or union time. He has been gone for a month and needs time. Palatine Maintenance Management knows the MCD has been gone for four weeks and has a very heavy workload but they seem to make it as difficult as they can for him to do his job at MCD. Once again Palatine cannot keep their machines up without keeping the MCD off union time. If you are looking for Joe he's on tour 1. *Interviews for Palatine Steward vacancies in the Maintenance Craft will be conducted soon. We are still soliciting for a tour 2 Maintenance Steward at Busse as Chuck Olson is still off of work. In the meantime Jonn Johnson and Ray Stripling are holding down the fort for Maintenance at Busse.

MVS Stewards Appointed

MVS Director Nigel Thomas has appointed TTO Jarrod E. Oden as the tour 1 MVS Steward, Marcia Lloyd as tour 2 MVS Steward, and James Faulkner will continue as the tour 3 Steward at Palatine. TTO Aaron Austin was appointed as the tour 3 MVS Steward, Nigel will serve as tour 1 MVS Steward, and Linda Retel continues as tour 2 MVS Steward at Carol Stream. Jarrod and Aaron are in training.

Management Says Excessed Clerks Will Not be Returned...

We have been told management does not think: they have to allow all excessed Clerks to return to a facility before they convert the Part-Time Regulars to full-time or Non-Traditional Full-Time NTFT. The Union disagrees with this based on Article 12.5.C.5 b (5) of the Joint Contract Interpretation Manual (JCIM) which states: "In the Clerk Craft, in postal installations which have 200 or more work years of employment in the regular workforce, a fulltime employee shall have the option of changing to part-time regular in lieu of involuntary reassignment. Clerks who decide to revert to part-time regular status in lieu of being excessed from the installation will be restricted from bidding on fulltime duty assignments as a part time regular employee until all excessed clerk craft employees have had the opportunity to exercise retreat rights." Based on this language all excessed Clerks must have the option to retreat before the Part-Time Regulars are converted to full-time on 8-23-11. I understand why management would want to ignore this because it will be a real mess but that's what it says ...

HR 1351 Letters Mailed

We asked our members to sign letters to their congressmen to support House Resolution 1351, which would allow USPS to use billions of dollars in pension over payments to meet its financial obligations, including the required payment of 5.5 billion annually to pre- fund future retiree health benefits. We thank everyone who participated in this letter-writing campaign and we must continue.

APWU Launches Ad Campaign

On 7-11-11 APWU began running 30 second ads on MSNBC, CNN and FOX. The ad describes what postal workers do and asks how much this all costs the taxpayer. The answer: "Not a single cent". Congressman Issa who heads the committee that oversees the USPS has asked APWU to cancel the ad which he says it is misleading. He claims the USPS is taxpayer funded because it receives special tax exemptions, but by this logic most large US corporations are also taxpayer funded, including the big oil companies, etc.

National Organizing Week

The APWU has designated July 18-22 as National Organizing Week to sign up new members. NWIAL is one of the few Locals that still pays the new member and the organizer who signed up that new member. When 50-50 was discontinued by the National years ago we decided to continue funding a reduced $25-$25 offer. The money is a nice incentive but the reason to sign up is to protect your job as the unions lead the fight to save the USPS from being pushed into financial insolvency. With the current deadlock in Congress on raising the debt ceiling, no one is paying attention to us. The future of the Postal Service is on the line and postal employees should be taking that seriously. Non-members have as much to lose as the rest of us and should starting paying their fair share of the cost of defending our jobs.

NWIAL Scholarships

Chief Trustee Ray Wience says NWIAL Scholarship Forms are available at all union offices and must be received by the Union meeting on 8-14-11, when four winners names will be drawn.