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…
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Congressional hearings on the U.S. Postal Service usually fall somewhat short of spine-tingling, but here’s a fascinating tidbit from this morning’s session before a Senate subcommittee: There are 132 postal workers aged 90 or older currently receiving workers’ compensation, three of whom are 98. That’s according to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “These individuals should be switched to the retirement system; they’re never going to return to work over age 90,” Collins said at the hearing by the panel’s federal financial management subcommittee. According to Collins, employees on…
A week-and-a-half after their old contract officially ended, the U.S. Postal Service and its largest union will keep talking a while longer in hopes of agreeing to a new one. “We will be working late tonight and early tomorrow,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said in a web release this afternoon. The two sides will continue negotiations until they either reach an agreement or decide that a deal is not possible, the release adds. In an e-mail, USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said only that “both parties have agreed to negotiate beyond today.” This is the third extension of…
As it appeals the denial of an “exigent” rate increase request, the U.S. Postal Service is arguing that the Postal Regulatory Commission’s turndown was “arbitrary and capricious,” according to a brief filed late this afternoon with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Among other points, USPS lawyers contend that the five-member commission established “new requirements that were not shared with or explained to the Postal Service,” according to an agency summary. “Instead, the PRC simply denied the request as a whole and punted the Postal Service’s entire financial crisis to Congress,” the brief concludes. The…
The U.S. Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union have agreed to keep negotiating until Dec. 1, following the expiration of an earlier extension of contract talks at noon today, USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said this afternoon. In a release posted soon after on the union’s web site, APWU President Cliff Guffey confirmed the extension and said that bargaining would resume Monday. The union remains hopeful that a settlement can be reached, he reiterated. The union’s contract had originally been set to expire at midnight Saturday, but both sides had agreed to the initial Tuesday extension. An impasse has…
After an initial bargaining deadline passed Saturday, the U.S. Postal Service will keep talking to the American Postal Workers Union for at least another two days, but said that negotiations with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association had reached an impasse, thereby potentially leaving it up to arbitration to decide the outcome, according to a USPS news release. Contracts with both unions had been set to expire at midnight Saturday, but the Postal Service and the APWU agreed to an extension until noon Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, the union said in its own release. “We do not have a new contract,…
The U.S. Postal Service may be struggling, but outgoing Postmaster General John Potter can count on a comfortable array of benefits to sustain him after he steps down Dec. 3, according to a rundown included in the U.S. Postal Service’s 10-K report made public Monday. Chief among them is almost $3.1 million in pension benefits accumulated during his 32 years with the Postal Service. In that respect, Potter would appear to be no different from any other USPS employee with a similar salary history and tenure in the Civil Service Retirement System. But he will also be able to tap…
The U.S. Postal Service’s net losses widened to $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, more than twice the total for the preceding year, according to figures released at Friday’s board of governors meeting. Of that amount, $2.5 billion stemmed from accounting adjustments related to workers compensation liability. The remaining $6 billion is identical to a preliminary figure cited by outgoing Postmaster General John Potter at a news conference last month. For fiscal 2010, operating revenue totaled $67.1 billion, down $1 billion from the preceding year. Overall mail volume fell from 176.7 billion to 170.6 billion pieces. In fiscal 2011, the agency…
Cliff Guffey will be the new president of the American Postal Workers Union after capturing 69 percent of the ballots cast in a three-way race, the union announced in a news release. Guffey, APWU’s vice president since 2001, will succeed retiring President William Burrus. As he moves up to the top job, his immediate challenge will be nailing down a new contract with the U.S. Postal Service, which is seeking to loosen work rules. The existing contract expires Nov. 20; Burrus recently described progress on its successor as “slow.” More broadly, Guffey’s three-year term is likely to be dominated by…
Postmaster General John Potter is standing by his agency’s policy of paying the full cost of health insurance premiums for senior executives. According to a recent audit, the U.S. Postal Service could save about $567 million in fiscal 2011 if its employee contribution rate matched that of the federal government. For most employees, the Postal Service contributes 79 percent, compared to 72 percent elsewhere in the government. But postal executives don’t do as well as feds in other ways, Potter suggested at an end-of-the-fiscal-year news conference Friday. “Postal managers do not get locality pay,” he said. “Postal managers only get…