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Postal News - October 2005 |
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October 31, 2005 - Postal Rate Commission Approves Rate Increase- - PRC website -The Postal Rate Commission issues 33 summary and` 430 page decision| - Mailers at MTAC Discuss Rate Case - PRC OKs, Sends 5.4% Rate Hike to USPS Board |
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October 31, 2005 -
Hallmark, L.L. Bean At Odds Over Postal Reform Bill - Senators Meet to Discuss Hold on Postal Overhaul Legislation - E-NAPUS Newsletter- Trick or Treat – Senate Opening for S. 662 |
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- Thanks in large part to pressure applied by Mail Handlers and other representatives of organized labor on the White House and its pro-business supporters in the U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration has announced that effective November 8, 2005 it will be reversing its backward-thinking order which had rescinded Davis-Bacon wage protections for federal rebuilding projects along the devastated Gulf Coast. The Davis-Bacon Act requires that workers employed on federal projects be paid prevailing wages for the area in which they are employed. | |
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October 28, 2005 -
Senators Meet to Discuss Hold on
Postal Overhaul Legislation |
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October 27, 2005 -Postal Workers From Former Brentwood Mail Facility Seeking Reinstatement of Lawsuits --A three judge panel from the Circuit Court of Appeals is being asked to reinstate a pair of lawsuits brought against the postmaster general and postal managers. The suits contend that Brentwood employees were deliberately kept on the job after officials knew they'd been exposed to weapons-grade anthrax. The appellate court decisions on whether to reinstate the lawsuits could come within months. |
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October 27, 2005 -
ELM Revision: Sick Leave for Dependent Care |
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October 26, 2005 - USPS to 'Outsource' Mail Handler Bargaining Unit Work at Boston AMC - The Postal Service has placed a bid for subcontracting of “terminal handling” work to be performed at Logan Airport in Boston MA, essentially subcontracting Mail Handler work at the Air Mail Center (AMC) in Boston. The proposal, initiated by National Postal Headquarters in Washington, DC, involved the plan to ‘standardize’ AMC functions throughout the country. Notice from USPS to APWU on standardizing all AMCs/AMFs/ATOs | Letter: Instead of 200 postal workers, Worldwide Flight Services will be handling mail. |
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October 26, 2005-‘Katrina’ Employees Who Transfer Voluntarily To Get Relocation Expenses -Employees affected by Hurricane Katrina who request voluntary transfers will be eligible to receive the same relocation expenses as those granted to employees who are involuntarily reassigned. The new policy is the result of an Oct. 26 Memorandum of Understanding signed by the APWU and USPS. | |
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October 26, 2005- Detroit Postal Worker Robbed Of Mail At Knifepoint - Authorities said the postal worker was removing mail from the back of her truck when a man dressed in black approached her. He allegedly pulled a knife on her and ordered her to hand over mail. | |
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October 26, 2005 - Postal Worker Convicted of Stealing $25 Money Order A former Dakota City, Nebraska postal employee was convicted of theft and sentenced Monday to spend 30 days in jail. | |
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October 26, 2005 - Penalty Overtime Exclusion Period Set -For this year, the time period during which the penalty overtime regulations are not applicable begins Dec. 3, 2005, (Pay Period 25-2005, Week 2), and ends Dec. 30 (Pay Period 01-2006, Week 1). |
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October 26, 2005 -
Interest
Arbitration Next for Supervisors' Pay Package? |
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October 26, 2005 - ‘Katrina’ Employees Who Transfer Voluntarily To Get Relocation Expenses -Employees affected by Hurricane Katrina who request voluntary transfers will be eligible to receive the same relocation expenses as those granted to employees who are involuntarily reassigned. The new policy is the result of an Oct. 26 Memorandum of Understanding signed by the APWU and USPS. | |
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October 25, 2005- Postal Worker Awarded Religious Day of Rest, Lost Wages A case involving a United States Postal Service (USPS) employee who was not allowed Saturdays off for his day of rest was settled Oct. 11 when the organization awarded him U.S. $65,000 for lost wages and grievances endured, and granted him his Sabbath off. | |
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October 25, 2005 - Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks DiesRosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose soft-spoken refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, the first great mass action in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, died yesterday. She was 92. In August 2005 USPS released a pane of 10 postage stamps (including the Montgomery Bus Boycott) entitled 'To Form a More Perfect Union' honoring the Civil Rights Movement | |
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October 25, 2005 -
'Postal' Game Set to Shoot Up Big Screen |
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October 24, 2005 - APWU: Locals Threatened with Consolidation Are Urged to Take Action to Protect Jobs, Service - APWU President William Burrus has written to 17 local presidents, notifying them of USPS plans to consolidate some mail processing operations in facilities represented by their locals, and providing them with material to help protect jobs and service in their communities." Any attempt to deter management from closing facilities or consolidating operations will require a grass-roots effort by members of your local, in concert with other postal unions and labor organizations, as well as with community organizations,” Burrus wrote on Oct. 24. USPS to Consolidate Certain Mail Processing Operations -USPS has notified APWU on plans to consolidate certain processing operations of nine facilities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. |- Kinston postal operation to move | Mojave mail to get new postmark |
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October 24, 2005 - PRC Gives No Decision on Periodicals Rate Overhaul -A proposal by a coalition of large commercial publishers for a radical revamping of the rate structure for Periodicals will get no recommended decision by the Postal Rate Commission to be acted on by the USPS Board of Governors. The PRC said last week it won't get involved in a dispute between the U.S. Postal Service and five large publishing companies involving a request to revamp the postal rate structure for Periodicals mail. In the Jan. 12, 2004, filing, publishers Time Warner, Condé Nast, Reader's Digest, Newsweek and TV Guide wanted the USPS to create a stripped-down basic rate structure. In general, large Periodicals mailers would benefit more than smaller ones under this plan. | |
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October 24, 2005 -
USPS: Hurricane
Wilma Service Update
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From PR Injured Workers Forum: "Check out the new USPS delivery vehicle ." |
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October 21, 2005 - Ask President Burrus Question: Why don’t the postal unions merge into one? Wouldn’t we (all the workers) be stronger with only one union? Why do the unions let the USPS play the divide-and-conquer game? Answer: As an industrial union, the APWU endorses the basic principle that workers employed by a single entity are better served when they are united as a single force. As president of APWU I embrace these principles, and I have attempted to initiate the dialogue necessary to achieving this significant goal. Regrettably, I have received no response to my written requests. | |
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October 21, 2005 - Woman Crashes Through Post Office Injuring 3 Postal Workers The car crumpled part of the fence of a Head Start Center, but no children were injured. It then barreled into the post office's personnel room, striking two postal employees and another man. One of the postal employees was pinned under the vehicle. He was taken to the hospital for moderate injuries to his legs. A female employee and the other man sustained minor cuts and bruises.| |
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October 21, 2005 - Political Uproar Over MailingsCalif. Gov. Foes Allege Postal Abuse; His Camp Spurns Accusation - Two small words printed on the bottom of a campaign mailer delivered this week to California voters have Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's opponents alleging his team illegally financed the mailings. The union- and Democrat-backed Alliance for a Better California said Thursday it had filed a complaint with USPS alleging Gubernator's ballot committee had illegally used a ``non-profit organization'' status to mail fliers at a 40 percent discount -- a rate that could save hundreds of thousands of dollars on a statewide mailing. Paul Krenn, national spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service, said that the alliance's complaint had not yet reached his office but said it was something his office would probably look into. | |
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October 20, 2005 -USPS Pursues More Efficiency in Five-Year Plan The Postal Service now spends $1 billion a year to return or otherwise process undeliverable mail, and the plan calls for halving that cost, Linda Kingsley , USPS VP said. "The agency will also continue to rationalize its mail processing facilities and the transportation network to increase efficiencies, and it will continue to introduce technologies to reduce delivery costs. Arranging mail for the carrier according to the arrangement of his delivery addresses — called delivery point sequencing — will be further emphasized for magazines and catalogs. About 77 percent of such “flat” mail is now sequenced, and the transformation plan goal is to get that figure to 95 percent by 2010, Kingsley said. Finally, the postal work force — cut by 100,000 positions in recent years and now at about 703,000 — will continue to shrink, though no exact figure has been established for that, Kingsley said. | |
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October 20, 2005 - The U.S. Postal Service: A Mailbox of Skills and Certifications - The IT department of the U.S. Postal Service employs a little more than 1,300 people. That’s not terribly big in comparison to the total number of Postal Service workers (700,000), but the impact these busy souls have on the organization and the country is huge. Consider that the U.S. Postal Service runs the third largest infrastructure in the world, and probably the largest intranet as well. Now consider that in this $69 billion operation, IT must do every job role imaginable, from operations to business portfolios, developing and maintaining applications, and running two large data centers with literally thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of workstations. |
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October 20, 2005 - USPS refuses request for information on AuthentiDate contract -The United States Postal Service has denied a Times Union request for details of its troubled contract with Schenectady firm AuthentiDate Holding Corp., provider of its electronic postmark service. In a letter to the newspaper dated Oct. 14, the agency said the files contain AuthentiDate trade secrets, and therefore are not available under the federal Freedom of Information Act | |
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October 19, 2005 - OIG Audit Report on City Letter Carrier Operations in San Diego District (pdf) -An audit of city letter carrier operations in the San Diego District found that supervisors and managers did not: adequately utilize programs such as DOIS and MSP; did not adequately match workhours with workload when approving PS Form 3996, Carrier -Auxiliary Control and did not always properly document letter carriers' unauthorized overtime. | |
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October 19, 2005 - PRC Most Likely to Issue Decision on Rate Increase By Halloween - The Postal Rate Commission will most likely offer its recommended decision by Halloween to implement a 5.4 percent across-the-board rate increase, according to Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president, government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association. | |
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John Walsh, 78 who served on the governing board for the U.S. Postal Service is under federal criminal investigation for allegedly using his position for personal gain. Walsh had been on the nine-member board for six years and had been its vice chairman since 2003. He resigned in August as a separate investigation by the U.S. Postal Service's Office of Inspector General was winding down. That investigation substantiated claims by a whistleblower that Walsh misused postal service cars, cellphones and credit cards, according to a 22-page report released to The Courant Tuesday. He allegedly received up to $10,000 in inappropriate benefits." | |
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October 18, 2005 - Postmaster, Supervisor Pay Consultations Concluded- Pay consultations between the Postal Service and NAPUS and the National League of Postmasters have concluded, resulting in a one-year compensation package that will remain in effect through FY 2006. In addition, pay consultations with the National Association of Postal Supervisors (NAPS) have concluded covering the same time frame. Effective January 6, 2007, the maximums to the salary structure for EAS Level 11-26 Postmasters will increase by 2.25 percent. The pay package announced this date by the Postal Service was not accepted by the National Association of Postal Supervisors | |
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October 18, 2005 - EEOC Certifies Class Action Case for Rehab Postal Employees From PR Reader: "An EEO filed involved 861 Rehab postal employees from the Colorado/Wyoming District. On August 19, 2005 EEOC Administrative Judge Dickie Montemayor certified the Edmond Walker, et, al v John E Potter class action in Denver CO. The USPS is appealing the certification decision to the EEOC Office of Federal Operations--this may take a year or longer. The class action certification sought by the Walker case consist of: "All permanent rehabilitation employees whose duty hours have been restricted, from January 1, 2000 to the present, in violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973." | |
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October 18, 2005 -
Postal Service Offers
Explanation for Controversial Artwork |
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October 18, 2005 - Getting Tough On Workers' Comp: Increased Oversight Tames Rise in Costs, Claims -Ron Henderson, manager of health and resource management at USPS, argues that reducing costs ultimately boils down to one thing: workplace safety. “When the accidents don’t happen, the injuries don’t occur,” he said. In sheer numbers, the Postal Service has by far the most injuries and workers’ compensation cases. By focusing on safety improvements and training, the agency has cut reported injuries 27 percent since 2000, when workers’ compensation claims were at an all-time high there. Henderson said it’s taken “tremendous effort” from employees, managers and supervisors to make it happen. | |
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October 22, 2005-
