Members of the American Postal Workers Union will get about a month to decide the fate of a new contract, with the union dangling prizes to encourage locals to get out the vote, according to a news release. Ballots will be mailed out starting April 8 and are due back by May 10, with the actual count taking place the following day, May 11, the union release says. Depending on size and turnout, individual locals will be eligible for up to $4,000 in prizes to be used on members’ behalf. The union has also scheduled nine briefings around the country.…
Browsing: U.S. Postal Service
Attentive (and we mean really attentive) Fedline readers might remember a post from last month about the apparent disconnect of the Office of Personnel Management’s charging the U.S. Postal Service more for its current pension contributions at the same time the Obama administration is proposing a big refund to the Postal Service on past contributions. We’d asked OPM for comment and finally received an answer yesterday. So, in the interest of thoroughness, we’re rerunning the original Feb. 22 post, with the OPM response appended verbatim. Here’s an intriguing nugget from the U.S. Postal Service’s latest quarterly report: Even as the Obama…
Attention, postal junkies: Here’s a look at a door knocker used by nineteenth-century mailmen to save wear-and-tear on the knuckles. Interesting to learn that the mailbox requirement came about only a century or so ago as an efficiency move. See–even then, what is now the U.S. Postal Service was trying to cut work hours. Thanks to the Smithsonian Institution for the info.
When you’re an American institution saddled with a business model from the last century and hemorrhaging billions of dollars a year, it never hurts to get the high-altitude view of your challenges. That’s what the U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general aims to provide in a newly released report examining “fundamental questions” for the agency’s future. Those questions include whether the Postal Service ought to keep its letter and mailbox monopolies; whether it should be allowed to expand into non-postal lines of business; and whether it should be considered a profit-driven business or part of the national infrastructure. Particularly thought-provoking is…
The U.S. Postal Service has shelved a proposal that “would have expanded its ability to subcontract rural routes to contract delivery service,” according to an announcement this week by the National Rural Letters Carriers’ Association. The decision “came after extensive discussions” between the NRLCA and Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, as well as other postal officials, according to the release on the union’s web site. “We have tabled the issue while we are in the process of resolving a labor contract,” Postal Service spokesman Mark Saunders said via email, when asked for confirmation of the union’s claim. Although Donahoe recently acknowledged…
Now here’s something you don’t hear every day from a leading organized labor figure: “We must shift the focus of the union away from acting as a grievance machine,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey says today in a release on the organization’s web site. “Leaders at all levels of the organization must get more involved in legislative activities and other union efforts.” If labor-management relations at the U.S. Postal Service will likely never resemble a group hug, there’s an obvious reason for the APWU to re-prioritize: The world’s leading mail carrier is at risk of going broke and…
“Since OPM refuses to exercise this authority, we urge you to use your authority as President to do so,” postal labor and management groups said in a letter to President Obama.
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…
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…