Mailers Council exec warns postal pay freeze attempt could backfire
Seen on Postcom.org- Mailers Council Executive Director Robert McLean warns that attempts to freeze pay for postal supervisors and postmasters could backfire:
"Information has been leaked to several websites indicating that earlier this month USPS senior executives have been told they will not receive their pay raises this year because of the deteriorating postal financial situation and that USPS Labor Relations officials asked postal supervisors and managers to consider similar concessions.
"The Postmaster General is on record saying he would need the help of the employee organizations in working with the Congress as the Postal Service attempts to develop solutions to its fiscal problems. That support might never materialize from the management associations if the Postal Service pursues any change to the existing “consultative” meaning pay agreement, as appears to have been the case this month. Postal officials asked the management associations to take the extraordinary step of reopening the existing consultative agreement, which was signed in 2007 and runs through FY 2010, with the intention of seeking new pay concessions. Such a move could generate a lawsuit from the management associations."
October 28th, 2008 10:07
Well, when you give the craft employees COLAs on top of 1.7 to 1.9% annual pay increases and you cannot raise your rates greater than the rate of inflation, how long did you think that bubble was going to last? Now that the craft employees got over $1500 in COLAs, does one really think management would be willing to forgo pay raises? These poor individuals are working between 50-72 hours per week now due to the increased workload placed upon them and the PMG wants pay freezes. I say let’s then have work freezes. Let’s quit working over 40 hours and quit giving up our time and donating our POVs for use as well. Management cannot afford to not receive their pay raises. Why don’t we eliminate the District and Area levels of management? Would that not save nearly a half billion dollars?
October 28th, 2008 10:58
Potter new that this was in the making all the time and yet he took a 39% raise and gave all of his buddy’s one too. And now he wants to jackup everyone else. I say start with him, Give back the raise he took.
October 28th, 2008 11:01
ALL employees should share in making the postal service’s budget. How do we tell managers that they get NO increases (they negociated away their COLA for NPA) when the craft received their COLA. And I do agree that the postal service is way over staffed at the district and national levels. What happened to “if you don’t touch the mail, or aren’t managing those employees”? We spend far too much money on employees that are not moving the mail. Let’s trim the fat off the PO and see how well we compete!
October 28th, 2008 11:04
Of course it could back fire! Managers will not be willing to work on lunch breaks, jump through all the hoops etc. How do the expect us to greet customers with this hanging over our head? Will we smile, be kind, helpful, read the script?
How can they JUST give us a yearly review and then turn around and take it away. How can they JUST ask for our goals for this year and call it Pay For Performance? It should be called NO PAY FOR PERFORMANCE.
October 28th, 2008 13:16
How about No Pay, No Performance! How much money do we waste daily running mail to every other office within 50 miles just to have the plant send it wrong again the next day as well? Let us stay in our own offices, to work on our own mail, to help our own customers, without having to worry about having our own backside hung out to dry if we miss something. By the way you did good this year. Put it on tape at least you would have something to show for it.
October 28th, 2008 13:24
Want me to use the family car for street observations? Nope. Want me to give up som annual leave to help “the team?” Not gonna happen! Wnat me to answer the phones during “lunch?” Not only no, but hel* no!
October 28th, 2008 15:46
They are already making tons by taking away our straight hours worked, now they want this !!! I work on average 55 hrs a week for 40 hrs pay. Pay me my 55 hrs and you can have your NPA, I don’t get much because of our areas service scores anyway. i can manage a unit that exceeds a cell 10, but I never get it because of the corporate scores, so why try.
October 28th, 2008 16:21
pm md said: “How do the expect us to greet customers with this hanging over our head? Will we smile, be kind, helpful.”
Customers get this treatment everyday by the clerk and carrier craft. We have to do it along with completing our regular duties. These courtesies are are given to the public no matter what looms over our heads. Like unreachable goals management has required us to meet, without regard of the time it takes to treat customers in a way to ensure a positive image of the USPS. You should be ashamed of yourself as a postmaster that would further jeopardize the integrity of the USPS by not giving the paying public the service that they deserve no matter what goes on behind closed doors.
October 28th, 2008 16:52
With the mail volume dropping and the routes being reduced as well as clerks jobs and hours they have no one left to supervse any way..welcome to our world management
October 28th, 2008 18:48
So whathappen, you’re saying that if the Postal Service decided that after they settled your contract they really couldn’t pay you the wages that they and your union had agreed on, and they took the increase promised AFTER you worked for a year, you would just go on dancing a jig, whistling while you worked, no problem, with a smile on your face GIVE ME A BREAK!
pm md
October 28th, 2008 19:33
letter carriers dont need 3 managers in a 40 employee office. they are all micromanaged by an arm chair quarterback who is micromanaged himself. cut management and leave the carriers alone, most managers would not last a week delivering mail, they curtail mail in an effort to capture fabricated undertime and could care less about service
October 28th, 2008 20:01
the only reasonable solution to this financial mess, is to do what they have been talking about for years…. five day delivery. Recognize, accept it and let the chips fall where they may.
amen
October 28th, 2008 20:47
Well, sure, rural carriers got a pay raise, and then were cheated out of that raise by those people in management conducting counts that showed very low volume and failure to follow all the rules that had been set up. Now these same mangers are under attack the same way they attacked rurals. So. now that they are the ones under attack, they don’t like it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the real world.
October 28th, 2008 22:40
Budget as required-bottom up-(input at local levels as to what is necessary to meet compliance and customer satisfaction.)Delete all positions top down as necessary to ensure budget is met. (This in itself would delete many of the extra unnecessary reports) Ultimately, this ensures customer service, and the ability of the offices to be sox compliant because the offices will have the compliment required to maintain current regulations. However, do we need SOX? Are we SEC regulated? Aren’t current Postal Regulations sufficient to keep everyone honest if followed as required? Have OIG review all top management that have left the Postal System for another job(contractor) in conflict with Code of Conduct and time frames or deals made before they leave. Ensure all Managers are held accountable for bad decisions or actions that are made which cost the USPS monetary settlement charges. Charges to management retirements for any behavior causing these settlement charges. (to include the individual and all parties condoning the action creating those settlements.) Firing or demotion on a case by case management issue, no moving around or protecting of individuals) Thorough review of (all) outsourcing costs concerning contracting by the OIG, with prosecution for false or slanted reports that do not reflect a true picture. Lastly, how can an organization that has become so micro-managed suddenly be so revenue short?
October 29th, 2008 00:41
Yes pm md, that’s what I would do. All except for the jig part. I hit the street day in and day out, and more often than not, after i waste time arguing with a 204b about 15 minutes of extended street time due to mail volume or missing an msp scan or some other nonsense that management has brainstormed without asking for input from the people that actually do the job. And after wasting even more time with an investigative interview, I take to the street pissed-off. But I don’t and never would, show anything other than professionalism to customers that I come into contact with.
P.S. Cindy And Terry above…. I like the way you two think.
October 29th, 2008 12:19
PLEASE WORKING 72 HRS MAYBE THERE BUT NOT WORKING MUCH
October 30th, 2008 06:24
Cry me a fricking river. Try taking an $8,000 pay cut twice in the past 10 years thanks to management participating in the raping of the craft workers. Same people whining on here are the ones who bend over items for a lower credit in mail count. Same ones stopping the stop watch during loading time. COLA doesn’t mean a lot when your route’s evaluation shrinks due to unethical practices. The next time I see a manager “work” will be the first time. You have zero productivity and you should receive pink slips…not raises.
October 30th, 2008 11:24
Apparantely, the lions share of you work in an office where a greivance is filed against one another just for breathing wrong. Believe it or not, there ARE level 11-18 PM’s that have a cash drawer because they work the window. They work the window becasue they LIKE their customers AND they always show professionalism to BOTH the customers AND their employees. And they don’t do it to cut the throat of their clerks. My clerks need a day off, just like I do. Some of us also carry mail when we are short handed and someone needs off to watch their child win at a soccer tournament. We do this because we CARE about our employees. I don’t want to see my employees $$ cut anymore than I want my own $$ cut. DUH. We ALL seriously need to WAKE UP and start working together before we all have no job to **tch about. We ALL need to fight together for 5 day delivery and other ideas that are poo-pooed by both PMG Potter and most unions.
October 30th, 2008 16:54
It took me over 7 years in an EAS position to get to the level of pay I received as a carrier (with overtime). I work harder now than I ever did as a carrier. Cut back on carrier pay 20%, clerk pay 30%, and mail handler pay by 40% and make them work. Most of the carriers in offices make as much as supervisors now.
The field does infinitely more today than they ever did in the past, with all the departments going to shared services.
The USPS is trying to drive more employees into retirement.
If EAS pays go down, the craft is sure to follow…
November 3rd, 2008 08:10
I think that if the supervisors and postmasters are not happy with their job, and reading above it sure does seem like they are not happy, they sh ould come back to the craft. They make it sound like they are working much harder than us and making less money. Why do they keep doing what they are doing? Why dont they come over to the happy side of life and do our easy jobs?
November 18th, 2008 18:35
Sorry if you whining people have to listen a quick moment to a customer…the person that should benefit from all your hard work and intense managing…..but here is how I see it. The workhorses at the Post Office are and always have been the carriers…you use craft. When a customer does not get their mail they complain. The system is easy and self manages. Now will someone tell me what the hell all the other people sitting at desks at stations do?……The comment about 3 managers with 40 employees at one station doesn’t even include the managers of those managers….It’s a never ending nighmare of over paid whining back stabbing, brown-nosing “higher” management and their never ceasing ability to blame someone else hoping noone ever sees the man behind the curtain who does nothing. Your problems are systemic and I am not the only customer who sees your scam.
Leave the carriers alone for God’s sake and start looking in a mirror.
November 29th, 2008 10:45
Divide and conquer. When will we ever learn? There are valid points from both craft and management here; we all have legitimate concerns. If we don’t somehow learn to work together collaboratively on these very serious issues facing the postal service, we will join other corporations in the soup lines.