Dan's Tool Box

February 2007

Dan's Tool Box

by Dan Van Minnen

Over the past several months there have been continual violations of Article 1.6 "Supervisors Performing Bargaining Unit Work" and Article 7 "the Crossing of Crafts or Occupational Codes". As a result management has accepted responsibility and voluntarily admitted that the violations are occurring on a continual basis. It may be daily or even hourly in some instances as it has all come down to inadequate staffing. With a career full time work force, Aurora Supervisors are now the new PTF's of the city. Just pay attention and you can see those supervisors and station managers performing lobby sweeps, spreading DPS, answering phones, unloading trucks and even doing breakdowns and that is just a start. They are so busy doing Clerk work that they can't even do their own work in a timely fashion. Too bad that they are not protected as you and I with a 12 hour a day work / 60 a week work rule. Too bad that they been in a position that leaves them working the mail long after we have gone home. Sometimes I think that we should call our facilities Flop Houses because our supervisors are at work before we arrive and there long after we go home. It leaves me with the impression that they are sleeping at their desks with too little time to attend to their lives at home. Maybe they should get a life? Maybe they need a Union? Too much work to do, too many tasks to perform, oh so many questions to answer and so many complaints from the customers. Not to mention all of those grievances to answer. What can they do? ADD MORE CLERKS!!!!!

This inadequate staffing has directly resulted from Management's Transformation Plan! I know many of you want to work as many hours as you can even exceeding the explicit work rules that are outlined in Article 8 of the contract. The bottom line is that it is not only unproductive and our bodies can't take it over long periods of time but it is also against the law. Remember, it was unions that brought us the 40 hour week and the thing that is called weekends. Our workforce is aging but Management doesn't care. Our mail is getting delayed but Management doesn't care. Our workers are getting less respect, less dignity and even less appreciation day after day but Management doesn't care. Even though they give you a burrito and a chance to fill out your VOE Survey to tell them nothing that they will ever use in making a business decision that is good for the workers. This by the way is why we boycott those VOE Surveys.

You can ask the District but they will only change the subject to inquire about overtime usage. Since management has gone on a pay for performance system they have become the underpaid worker in the workplace based on an hourly rate. If you look at your last pay stub and compare it to what an EAS -17 and even EAS-20's & 21's make then you can begin to connect the dots. Just remember they never ever gave any of that to us - our UNION NEGOTIATED IT! No matter what you think about the contract, by the time 2010 gets here it's all about THOSE GUARANTEES: eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, forty hours a week with a weekend, the protection of a no layoff clause, just cause protections and many other benefits that lead to over $70,000 a year before all that overtime and all those grievance settlements that are down the road even begin to kick in. Just in 2006 alone before our newly negotiated contract was ratified some of our clerks were well over 70K in wages this year alone. Don't worry they are only catching up to some of those custodians from their 2004 payouts that have all resulted from our right to collectively bargain. Do you remember that $101,000 settlement of 2004? It wasn't quite as large as the recent Casual in Lieu of settlement but we should never forget our good fortune that resulted from our ability to collectively bargain.

So here do we go from here? They want us replaced by cheaper labor. They know that there are unorganized workers that do what we do for less. They continually break the rules because they are too busy doing your work instead of supervising. They want you to make a mistake in order to initiate discipline or even possibly remove you from the floor. The future will be driven by our relationships not only with one another but with those supervisors and managers that can not think outside the box or inside the flop house. Remember it is not their fault; they are to busy doing our work because of the short staffing problem that exists in Aurora. This problem exists nationwide.

Who knows - maybe Jack Potter is exploring a career after the Postal Service as a retail clerk in a contract station. So if you happen to see the Post Master Les Caruthers or possibly the District Manager Dean Granholm, (I think he was seen delivering express mail at the Main during the Holidays), or even Jack himself on his Postal Reform Tour please ask them nicely to give us back our 204B's that they refuse to certify. Paying them as bargaining unit employees in an EAS role is not cost effective anyway. This will allow us to fill our vacancies that exist and then the overtime and penalty pay being paid to them for the bargaining unit work that they are performing as a supervisor anyhow is something that the union will not have to file on in the future. Then management can hire some more people who will help us better serve the community that we live in and are a part of. Just maybe we can get those complaining customers back out there removing all of that snow that the City can't afford to remove. This might also allow management to send some detailed employees back to their jobs so we can finally get back to the business of delivering the mail without delay and then we can concentrate on trying to get along and have a safe day.

Dan’s Tool Box