Floor Edition

December 30, 2010

Update by Jackie Engelhart

Plan Failures at CS for Christmas...

Carol Stream has had several plan failures in December in spite of employees working up to 16 hours in a service day and 60+ hours per week. I also hear that the Area VP was not happy about not being informed about DPS sort plans being changed just before the holiday rush. DPS sort plan changes were made by new CS Plant Manager Sciurba effective 11-30 to "optimize and streamline DPS processing" The sort plan generated more reject mail that had to be reworked. It was probably not a good time to change sort plans but did the AMP consolidation of mail create inevitable plan failures during the Christmas peak volume period? It will be interesting to see the service scores for December as management promised no service degradation. CS has been calling overtime since the Palatine mail came yet they want to excess 67 Clerks out.

Delayed Standard Mail

Both Carol Stream and Palatine had delayed standard mail sitting in Automation. The delay of standard mail continued at both plants even with the overtime being called. Since impacts were issued for 67 Clerks each at CS and Palatine in early September, Clerks have not been put on stand-by at either plant. Instead, overtime has been called and standard mail has been delayed. Management's normal tactic is to put impacted Clerks on stand-by before they are moved to show they are not needed, but if they can't get the mail out they work them. The fact that no Clerk has been put on standby since the impacts were issued on 9-2 and 9-3-10 proves these Clerks are needed and the impacts should be rescinded. At Palatine management plans to staff some of the 96 FSS ail Handler jobs with the 67 impacted Clerks. The excessing will stop when the overtime gets too high or they can't get the mail out.

Moratorium

Management has issued impacts for 220 Clerks in the Associate Offices of the Northern Illinois District in September but no one has been moved yet. There is a freeze on excessing as the parties at the national level agreed to a moratorium on 12-14 as contract talks continue.

AO's Already Short

The current AO impacts will take an already bad situation in most offices and make it worse. In River Grove the office has two Clerks and one PTF. When a Clerk is off sick management can try to get a PTF from another office but most offices no longer have a PTF to spare so the POOM tells the office to make do. That means the Clerks work short-handed and management performs Clerk work. Small offices like Bellwood have no coverage for Clerks on leave and need to borrow a PTF from another office to cover a Clerk on leave but already short offices have no PTFs' to lend. I called POOM Mike Raia about problems after these offices called him for help but they had to "make do".

Voice of the Employee???

Management has a survey called "Voice of the Employee" but the fact is management does not want to hear the voice of the employee. At one meeting I attended last summer a senior manager threatened to end the meeting because he did not like the questions being asked and this was a meeting the Clerks had waited months for. He did not like their tone and threatened to end the meeting. Management does not care what you think and does not want to hear what you have to say, unless its VOE time. VOE participation is part of their scorecard for merit evaluations, unless that changed. I read the most recent VOE scores posted at Palatine which show a 41% response rate. The overall favorable response rate to the questions asked was 47.6% (of the 41% who responded). Question #13 stood out as it had only a 22% favorable response. The question receiving 22% favorable was "I am confident in the ability of senior management to make decisions necessary to ensure the future success of the Postal Service." Does the 22% represent their opinion on the question or is it just a measure of how they feel about management in general? 22% of 41% are confident in senior management. It is my experience that senior management has no time to listen to the employees and on the rare occasion when they do meet with employees it's usually to give them bad news. Even the rare Town Hall Meetings are scripted service score recitals which allow little feedback from employees. The APWU has been consistently opposed to participation in VOE for good reason and we continue to advise Just Say No to VOE.

CMSH Has New Plant Manager

Alan Mitchell is the new A/Plant Manager at Chicago Metro Hub as Tony Alvarado ends his stay. We have not met Mr. Mitchell but have spoken and will meet soon. Management needs to post enough bids so that every Clerk has a bid. Some of the O'Hare Clerks who came in on 8-15-10 have no bids. The 29 reassigned Clerks were put into details with the understanding that 29 new jobs would be created. In addition management recently added 11 new tour 2 SPBS jobs which means every Clerk should have a bid and there should be 11 withheld residual vacancies. We also have concerns regarding the return of a certain MDO who has a history of behavior problems.

Beware...Zero Tolerance Can Happen to Anyone...

The APWU never signed on to management's zero tolerance statement not because we disagree with the intent but because the policy is usually aimed at craft employees, and zero tolerance does not mean zero just cause. Any work-place disagreement, no matter how small, once reported to management becomes a zero tolerance issue. In some cases the employee filing the incident report may be the aggressor. The person who started the incident may want to cover themselves because they think the other person will report them to management. Hopefully there are witnesses other than the actual employees involved so the truth comes out. For minor issues think hard about filing an incident report because someone will be put out and kept out as long as it takes for management to conduct their investigation. I would hope no employee would file a report unless they really feel threatened.

Steward Release

Tour 2 Steward Rick Szczesny was denied union time for the last two weeks prior to his Christmas vacation. Management allegedly told tour 2 employees who asked for a Steward that no Steward was available which was not true as Rick and Bob LaFoe were there. In accordance with the 3-10-77 Charters Memo "In most cases the grievant and the steward should be able to discuss the grievance without delay but 95% of the time with no more than a two-hour delay. While circumstances will sometimes necessitate a delay of more than two hours, normally the delay should not extend beyond the tour of duty in which the request is made." We have settlements at Palatine where employees have been paid for violations of the Charters Memo (but management has stopped signing those locally). If you ask for a Steward and this policy is not honored you should file a grievance for the violation. I have talked to Greg Johnson and Ricky Hilliard about the fact that Rick will need dedicated union time to catch up for the two weeks he was denied union time. Rick is the Chief Steward on tour 2 and has a heavy maintenance caseload.

Election Committee Notice

We have posted a notice for the 2011 Election Committee which will be selected at the 1-9-11 membership meeting. We need three members and an alternate who will be paid lost time to perform the work of the committee. For the two elections the Local has used election companies for printing and counting of ballots. We want to make sure all members are aware of the solicitation. If you are interested submit a letter prior to the 1-9-11 meeting.