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From the APWU Industrial Relations web site:

(Oct. 25, 2006) The APWU initiated a national dispute over the Postal Service’s announcement of revisions to the AS-805 handbook governing Information Security. The revised handbook restricts employees from bringing personal information resources (e.g. laptops, notebooks, PDAs, handheld computers and USB port devices such as flash memory sticks) into postal facilities. The union is concerned that the new restrictions may adversely impact the union’s ability to perform its duties.

click here to read the APWU letter outlining the dispute.

Statement by Clint Burelson, President, Olympia WA Local, American Postal Workers Union

The Olympia Local of the American Postal Workers Union will hold an all day informational picket on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at the Olympia Post Office to protest the Postal Service’s plans to consolidate facilities and reduce mail service to the public. The Olympia action is part of a nationwide informational picket by the American Postal Workers Union. Postal workers in cities across the United States will be informing the public about consolidation plans that will reduce service to their communities.

The Olympia outgoing mail has already been consolidated to Tacoma. It is worth noting that the Tacoma Plant cannot handle the extra Olympia mail. The Tacoma Plant is using overtime and often sending Tacoma mail to Seattle in order to handle the Olympia mail. In essence, Olympia mail is being worked in Tacoma and Tacoma mail is being worked in Seattle. The consolidation of the Olympia mail to Tacoma has increased costs and reduced mail service for the average citizen.

However, all too often, the Postal Service no longer acts in the interest of the average citizen. Similar to other government agencies, the Postal Service increasingly acts in the interest of large corporations who have been successful in electing and influencing government officials with large amounts of money. The power of large corporations over the Postal Service is illustrated by the fact that James C. Miller III, a long time advocate for the privatization of the Postal Service, is now the current chair of the Board of Governors for the Postal Service. The governing head of the Postal Service is someone who does not believe the Postal Service should be a democratic institution.

In the case of the Postal Service, the corporate influence has the added element of media power. Time Warner, the Newspaper Association of America, and other large corporate media interests are big customers of the Postal Service and have been actively supporting consolidation and other plans in their self-interest, which often comes at the expense of the general public.

It is difficult for postal workers and other advocates for a democratic postal service to get their views articulated when most of the media is corporate owned and in support of a corporate oriented postal service. Therefore, postal workers will utilize picket signs on Thursday, October 26, as one method of informing the public that unwarranted consolidations will reduce mail service and increase costs for the average citizen in the country.

For more information contact: Clint Burelson - clintburelson@comcast.net or 360-970-2965

From the APWU- a commercial the union is running “in cities where APWU activists have already taken steps to inform citizens about the negative effect USPS network consolidation plans will have on mail service for individual postal customers and small businesses.” Click here for more on the APWU’s radio and TV campaign.

Say- maybe Bill Burrus is right- maybe the big bad mailers are getting away with murder. But here’s a suggestion- instead of eliminating those unfair discounts, let’s offer them to everyone! Why shouldn’t Aunt Minnie get the same discount as Capital One? Why not let her mail her birthday cards for 19 cents a piece or whatever? Read the rest of this entry »

The proceedings in the rate case are in the discovery phase at the moment. Part of the discovery process is the submission of interrogatories, or questions by participants. Most interrogatories, naturally, are submitted by intervenors to the Postal Service. But there are also quite a few questions being asked of other intervenors. Many of these are variations on “Where did you come up with those ridiculous numbers in the testimony you submitted?”

And sometimes interrogatories seem to serve no purpose but to make a point- here’s one, submitted to APWU witness Kathryn L. Kobe by the Major Mailers Association. Kobe had testified that “it seems highly unlikely that the mail that is converting to presort mail is equivalent to the average collection mail that is coming from individual households, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses”. The MMA posed the following questions:

Please assume that you are a dutiful niece who for years sent monthly letters to your Aunt Minnie. Assume further that all these letters exhibited the cost attributes similar to an “average” First-Class single piece letter. Now, in 2005 you and your Aunt Minnie discovered the Internet and you substituted your 12 monthly letters with 12 monthly emails. Please confirm that, as far as the Postal Service is concerned, those letters are lost to the system and First-Class Single Piece has lost 12 “average” Single Piece letters. If you cannot confirm, please explain.

Please assume that you also enjoy calling your Aunt Minnie as well, and in 2005 you decided to sign up for a cell phone. The cell phone company sent you 12 monthly bills in 2005, all of which qualified as Automation letters. Please confirm that, as far as the Postal Service is concerned, those letters are new to the system and First-Class Automation has gained 12 pieces that are similar to an “average” Automation letter. If you cannot confirm, please explain.

Please confirm that, as far as the Postal Service is concerned, the 12 “average” Single Piece letters lost and the 12 “average” Automation letters gained represent a “shift” of letters from First-Class Single Piece to Presorted. If you cannot confirm, please explain.

That’s the opinion, apparently, of one APWU member, who has set up a blog entitled ‘APWU Dictatorship’. You can read his complaints against local President Rick Cornelius at APWUDictatorship.blogspot.com, and you can read Cornelius’s side at the official APWU local site, titled, interestingly enough, not APWU197.org, as it once was, but “UnionRick.com“.

The Federal Times says that the four postal unions, currently in contract negotiations with the USPS, expect their members to be rewarded for their contributions to the postal service’s improved financial picture. The story, in the September 18 edition, also highlights continued USPS contributions to postal workers’ health benefits as a prime concern. The story quotes APWU Communications Director Sally Davidow: “We expect health care to be an issue of contention and we will do everything we can to protect and even advance what our members now enjoy.” According to the Federal Times, “Postal Service employees’ share of health benefit premiums is lower than that for other federal employees under current union contracts.”

For all the contention, the story says that the parties are optimistic- it says that the NALC’s Bill Young is confident that negotiations will reach a negotiated agreement, and both PMG Jack Potter and APWU President Bill Burrus expect to sign an agreement by November 20

Newspaper coverage of the various plant consolidation controversies has been sloppy, but this story from the Akron Beacon Journal takes the cake. According to ace reporter Ed Meyer, the plan to shift mail processing operations from Canton to Akron was “put together by the Bush administration and the Government Accountability Office”. Uh oh.

The rest of the story is pretty much what we’ve heard before- the APWU says shifting the work will delay the mail, and the Mayor of Canton says the city will lose its identity if it loses its postmark. (I’ll resist the urge to make a smart remark about what the “identity” of Canton, OH might consist of currently.)

The idea does sound pretty far-fetched- after all, it is all of 23 miles from Canton to Akron! Imagine that! How could they possible get mail from one city to the other (and back!) in less than a week?

Canton letters could get loopy

I almost titled this piece Why do postal employees hate their customers? You would certainly get the impression from some of the comments posted on postalnews.com, that most postal employees do indeed detest the people who pay their salaries. Now obviously you have to take comments posted anonymously online with an enormous grain of salt, but given the overwhelmingly negative comments, you’ve got to think that the attitude is pretty widespread.

I know that many of the commenters would protest that it isn’t their customers that they hate, it’s the Big Mailers. Which is one of those strange things about the postal service- when postal employees (myself included) think of the word “customer”, we think of the people we deliver to, or serve at the window, or talk to on the telephone.

Most dictionaries, though, would tell you that a customer is “one that buys goods or services”. And who buys the postal service’s goods? Just about everyone in the country. But if you look a little deeper into the revenue reports, you’ll find that of the $55 billion the USPS took in over the first three quarters, only $15.5 billion was from single piece letters, flats and cards. The vast majority of the revenue, and all of the growth came from presorted (i.e. “workshared”) first class (up 1.5%), and the various standard (don’t call it ‘junk mail’) classes (up 2%).

Single piece first class mail volume was down 2.7% from the prior year. Aunt Minnie just isn’t sending as many letters. Like it or not, our biggest customer is Advo.

So why then do so many postal employees, and union heads like Bill Burrus, seem to despise the people who are paying most of their salaries? The most obvious answer seems to be simple short-sightedness. It’s much easier to rail against plant consolidations than it is to respond with well-reasoned alternatives. Burrus might be better off looking for more lucrative buyout options than trying to protect unnecessary plants. Keeping every small plant open will win votes in the union elections, but it might not insure that the USPS is still around when it comes time for younger workers to retire.

The other problem some employees have with big mailers is the perception that they’re somehow getting a free ride- that workshare discounts go too far. Well, maybe they do- but the idea that raising prices will force the mailers to come up with their ‘fair share’ is naive, to say the least. Mailers are in business to make money, period. Raise the price, for whatever reason, and you change the equation, and to some extent, you lose business, and revenue. It doesn’t have anything to do with fairness, or right or wrong.

The bottom line is that the mailers and the postal workers need each other- they should be working together to safeguard the postal service they both depend on, rather than sniping at each other.

It’s the unions, particularly the APWU, that have the most to lose in all this. If the USPS has to keep raising prices because it can’t trim costs, advertisers will find alternatives to direct mail- there are plenty of them out there. Financial services providers will continue to up the incentives for electronic fund transfers rather than shell out more for postage. The growth in workshared and standard volume will slow, and eventually decline. Where does that leave the APWU’s members?

I don’t envy Bill Burrus- he’s in an extremely difficult position, representing the postal workers whose jobs are most at risk from modernization and automation. But demonizing the people who pay his members salaries isn’t going to do him, or them, any good.