For anyone who’s wondering, the U.S. Postal Service and its largest union are still talking.
“We are pursuing our goals,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said in a contract negotiations update posted Thursday on the union’s web. Besides seeking job security, Guffey said, “we want to lessen the disruption our members suffer as a result of excessing.” Also under discussion are wages, benefits and “work structure” issues. A Postal Service spokesman confirmed Friday that negotiations are still under way, but had no other comment.
The APWU’s four-year contract with the Postal Service expired Nov. 20, but its terms remain in effect. The APWU represents some 209,000 clerks, mechanics and other workers.
An impasse has been declared between the USPS and another union, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, whose contract also expired Nov. 20. The NRLCA represents about 115,000 career and non-career employees.
The Postal Service’s contracts with two other unions, the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, expire next November.
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I was just at my Local’s meeting this weekend and while not much could be said about the on going negotiations, our President did mention a couple of things that the Union has suggested before. With the Unit Optimization that the Service is looking to do, it has been recommended that if carrier routes are moved out of the smaller AO’s the larger ones in the are and only Window and PO Box services remain, then have 2 to 3 clerks assigned to these offices, don’t close for lunch, and have a Postmaster in charge of several of them. The PM could visit each one at least once a week. If you think about it, many of these smaller AO’s are covered by OICs and not PM because the pay level is too low for any one to want to stay there. Also, in most of them the PM only does 2 hrs a day in clerk work and that’s usually to just cover lunches and breaks for the clerk.