When American Postal Workers Union members agreed to a contract last year that included wage and benefit concessions, they were obviously binding themselves for the life of the agreement with the U.S. Postal Service. Less obvious—at least to FedLine–was that they were also setting the stage for similar givebacks by other postal unions. That’s a lot clearer now, however, with the award of the three-member arbitration board charged with setting the terms of a new contract between Postal Service and the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. The APWU agreement “provided precedent that would have been very difficult to ignore,” wrote…
Monthly Archives: July, 2012
If you’re eager (and who isn’t?) to see how the U.S. Postal Service responds to Northrop Grumman’s $180 million lawsuit over a monster automation project gone awry, well, sit tight. The original deadline was today, but Federal Claims Court Judge George Miller has given Postal Service lawyers an extension until Sept. 7. “Additional time is needed to conduct further investigation that is required to prepare full and accurate responses to allegations” in Northrop’s suit, Miller ruled last week. Northrop did not object to the delay.
The Veterans Affairs Department has put an end to the headaches for people trying to unsubscribe from its public listerve. A glitch in VA’s subscribers list setting allowed people to reply all to the entire list, VA said in an apologetic email to subscribers on Tuesday. If you’ve been trying to unsubscribe for the past few days, try this link. Here’s VA’s explanation of the problem: All List Serve Subscribers, We have corrected a glitch in the settings for the subscriber list that allowed individuals to reply to the entire list. We apologize for the confusion and the concern this error has…
Today marks a milestone for thousands of Senior Executive Service members, general military officers and other top government officials: The onset of new reporting requirements for most stock purchases and other securities transactions worth more than $1,000. Up to now, such transactions had to be reported only once a year on the public financial disclosure statement known as Office of Government Ethics Form 278. Now, senior officials must file “transaction reports” within 30 to 45 days, under the recently passed STOCK Act. The new mandate applies to almost all 28,000 Form 278 filers, according to the ethics office, which issued…
Now that the U.S. Postal Service and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union are officially arbitration-bound, it seems time for an overview of the state of USPS labor negotiations that will affect both the mail carrier’s bottom line, not to mention the incomes and working conditions of tens of thousands of postal workers. More than a year has passed since members of the American Postal Workers Union ratified a new contract that will run through 2015. But the Postal Service has yet to sew up agreements with its other three bargaining units. Its last contract with the National Rural Letter…
Although wide swaths of the Washington DC area remain powerless and sweltering after Friday night’s derecho storm, the federal government will be open tomorrow, the Office of Personnel Management just said. However, non-emergency essential employees in the DC area will have the option of taking unscheduled leave or unscheduled telework if they choose, OPM said. (But speaking for myself, I can’t imagine why anybody without power would want to stay home this week. Even the worst job sounds pretty good when outdoor temperatures are hovering near 100 and the office has AC.) You can check Dominion Power’s work schedule here.…