Fwd: {{ruralcarriers@rootsweb.com}} NJ Postal and Rural News, Issue 37-NJ, V. 1, Dec. 16, 2007 (List 22)
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From: <hier...@comcast.net>
Date: Sun, Dec 16, 2007 at 1:03 AM
Subject: {{ruralc...@rootsweb.com}} NJ Postal and Rural News, Issue 37-NJ, V. 1, Dec. 16, 2007 (List 22)
To: Hier...@comcast.net
Cc: Ruralc...@rootsweb.com
NEW JERSEY POSTAL AND RURAL NEWS
Issue 37-NJ Vol. 1 December 16, 2007 Sunday Hier...@comcast.net
Issues of the New Jersey Postal and NRLCA News are now posted and available on the following website: http://groups.google.com/group/rlc_onliners_pub?hl=en
I want to express my gratitude for all the comments, submissions and feedback and the tremendous interest in this newsletter. PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER WITH ALL RURAL CARRIER CRAFT EMPLOYEES!
_________________________________________________________________________
Issue Codes = Issue A(A is not usually used and constitutes just the issue #)-E are news and human interest stories; Issue NJ are New Jersey related issues; Issues SP are special issues with important news; Issues ST are steward related articles and Issues-X are breaking news articles of importance. _________________________________________________________________________
Ooooh that smell! Can’t you smell that smell
Lynyrd Skynyrd [Allen Collins/Ronnie Vanzant]
This is not an easy story to do, especially at this time of the year. It is something I have been working on for about 8 days now. I have vetted this story thoroughly, checking and rechecking sources. The story is solid and confirmed by unidentified official high level sources who asked to remain unidentified and who also asked me not to run the story (not becasue it isn't true, but becasue this is not information that is generally available).
It is my habit to cogitate and ruminate after important decisions or milestone events. Oftentimes, I will read and re-read the words and sure enough some very obvious things tend to pop out. Items that escape the cursory glance or things that seem to fit like a jigsaw with puzzle pieces from other puzzles.
Two of those events have stuck in my mind because there are several items that alone seem innocent enough; but, together are very, very troubling. The events that have caused me to pause are as follows:
· The recent interest arbitration award seemed to devote a lot of attention to rural route consolidations, retreat rights, determination of excess carriers and general downsizing.
· Recent trends of employees on the rolls clearly show a downsizing in all crafts except rural delivery which has steadily increased over the last twenty years (see NJ Postal and Rural News Issue 8, November 19, 2007). The twenty year old delivery plan of reducing delivery employee office time to less than 20% of total time and making road time 80 % of total time is still ongoing.
· The Fletters arbitration highlighted a curious anomaly that clearly indicated problems with specific flat sorting equipment that was messing up USPS plans to automate flat sortation. Yes, they managed to escape a financial penalty for requiring rural carriers to do extra work, but the inherent problem is that the flat sorting machines were not working properly and it was endangering USPS automation plans. This is something USPS managed to camouflage from Arbitrator Eischen.
· USPS is proceeding with protocols for extreme reductions in processing hours both in the processing plants and also within local office units.
· USPS plans to actively support expanded contract delivery services much like they aggressively planned contract retail units in local supermarkets and retail outlets using non-postal employees. (see German Postal story with replacement minimum wage workers)
· USPS plans for consolidating processing operations and mail acceptance units and new aggressive pricing and marketing strategies with deep discounts for mailers who autmate the mail for USPS distribution.
· USPS has taken an aggressive approach initially, backed off and then maintained a two steps forward, 1 step back approach to introducing alternative retail, processing and delivery functions. What they did with the contract retail units, they are now following the same plan for contract delivery and post office and facility closings and consolidations.
· USPS has suspended plans for new vehicle purchases and is severely cutting back on replacing over-crowded facilities. An awful lot of money is going into the flat sortation deployments and it is being diverted from other programs that USPS has basically put on hold (much like the bettor at a casino who has been repeatedly losing and decides to pull the kids college funds, the Christmas club and vacation savings for one last desperation blowout play at the tables or in the slots).
All of these items have been on my mind and it seemed like they were adding up to something really big. So I made some telephone calls and touched bases with sources throughout USPS and I’ve stumbled onto something.
The USPS plans for flat sortation are much more elaborate and detailed then they have generally let on. There are some truly draconian measures coming down the pike that will affect every employee in a major way. USPS is gradually removing all management responsibility from local managers and even district level managers and staff and installing software protocols that based on volume, projected or actual, detail number of hours available for distribution among employees in each work unit. This is really bad news for managers who are gradually being transformed into glorified clerks, with the area and headquarters calling the shots on nearly every decision. Managers are required to fill out dozens of reports that generate specific instructions that they must follow relative to staffing and control of employee complement. Management flexibility is being made obsolete so that nameless , faceless people who never carried mail or sorted mail in their lives will make all the deci!
sions a
bout sorting and delivering mail from a sterile, isolated location far away.
NOTE: Managers have as much to fear from an aggressive consolidation campaign as do craft employees. If all management functions are removed from local units, why should USPS continue to staff each local unit with managers? The answer; they won't. Through consolidations and changing units into branches, the number of postmasters and supervisors is going to be drastically reduced and "satelite" managers will be the new concept. USPS is not being completely candid even with their managers. The new Postal Service is going to be very lean, very lean and very mean and service will be a meaningless and obsolete anachronism.
The FSS deployment plans are so far advanced, much more so than unions and employees are being told, so that USPS has projections for how many routes will be consolidated, eliminated and downsized over an extended period of years into the future as more offices are scheduled for FSS deployment. USPS is aggressively planning on consolidations that will significantly impact both city and rural delivery. Very few people are talking about these plans and it is really difficult to piece them together, but the areas and districts are diligently working on physically reducing the number of routes through consolidations.
I am sure that when the officers of the NJRLCA sat down to pig out with USPS officials at the district and area levels, they were so intent on chewing their food that no one thought to ask how many routes USPS projected to consolidate when FSS deployment was underway and what the final projections were when FSS deployment was fully implemented. How many city carriers and how many rural carriers would lose their jobs as excess employees. They had the figures! Surely USPS officials at the districts and the areas who were so generous in feeding the starving union people, that they must have been equally candid and forthcoming in telling our Union people how many carriers would lose their jobs while our union representatives pigged out.
Enjoy the lump sums and maybe younger, less senior people should put some of it away for a rainy day.
How many routes are going to disappear? Will it be every fourth route? Will it be every fifth route? Will it be every third route? There are a lot of lean years coming and rural carriers will be expected to do much more, but there will be less of us to do it. But don’t worry, at least our union representatives here in New Jersey will be well fed! Maybe if they hadn’t had their mouths full, they would have seen through the masquerade that USPS played for them. WE ARE JUST SO SCREWED! OUR UNION OFFICERS ARE EATING WHILE USPS IS PLANNING TO GET RID OF SO MANY OF OUR MEMBERS! It’s like they trampled us to get to the troughs to pig out.
Remember what I said on December 15, 2007 when the route consolidations start a year from now and employees are excessed. Remember also what your Union officers and stewards were doing while USPS was busy planning this all out. A year from now when it starts and three years or five years from now when a lot of people are getting hurt, remember that your union officers and stewards at least were well fed.
Even in South Jersey District with no FSS deployments scheduled in Phase 1, plans are already developed that forecast a number of route consolidations and the district people have a ball park figure of the number of routes they expect to be affected over the next several years. The pain comes first in Northern NJ and then in Central NJ Districts. No one will be spared a significant impact. Forever gone will be the images of Nero fiddling while Rome burned; ever after it will be New Jersey union officials pigging out on USPS food while employees lose their jobs.
I urge each of you to ask questions. Ask the bigwigs that are trooping through your office saying "No overtime", "No auxiliary assistance". Ask them about the plans for route consolidations. Ask them how many routes? You will do far more than your union did.
Central New Jersey District EAP Committee
The Central New Jersey District just announced the EAP committee that is a joint effort between USPS management representatives and Union Representatives for Postal Unions. The committee members are as follows:
Hank Anderson, APWU Central Jersey Local; JAYA Bhambhwani, USPS District Coordinator; Francis Carney, USPS Manager, Human Resources; Arnie Endick, USPS Workplace Improvement Analyst; Thadilla James APWU Central Jersey Local; Joe Mooney, NALC Branch 380; Joseph Palmerson, President, NALC Branch 2128; Hank Rauer, Vice President, NJ State APWU; Sharon Sorenson, APWU NJ Mid State Area Local; Bruce Stallworth, President, NALC Branch 924; Dan Szucs, NALC Branch 38 and Robert Towler, USPS Plant Manager, Trenton P&DC.
12 committee members are on the Central New Jersey EAP Advisory Committee. I am sure that the important work that the EAP committee is doing figured prominently in the USPS meeting between officers and stewards of the NR RLCA and USPS District Manager Vito Cetta and members of his staff. I wonder if anyone thought to ask (in between bites of USPS food) why there is no union representation by the NJ RLCA? Is it perhaps because rural carriers have no EAP problems because they are so well taken care of by their union? I have an EAP issue. MY UNION REPRESENTATIVES MET AND DIDN’T TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANT THINGS; THEY ATE USPS FOOD AND THEY DID NOT BRING ME A DOGGY BAG! WHERE'S MY DOGGY BAG?
Hey! EAP committee, where’s my doggy bag from the USPS food that my union officers and stewards ate but did not share. I’d talk to my union representative on the committee, but apparently the NJ RLCA doesn’t care if my union isn’t represented on the EAP committee.
HOW MANY OTHER JOINT USPS-UNION committees do we have no representation on? How many other things has my union failed to have input into or to participate in. IS it true that we are the official USPS mushrooms or at least the NJ RLCA is: USPS keeps the NJ RLCA completely in the dark and feeds them BS (I can see them scurrying to the trough now) now and again. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW ALL OF THE THINGS MY UNION IS NOT DOING AND ALL OF THE WAYS THEY ARE FASILING TO REPRESENT ME.
DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation with USPS or the NRLCA and as such any information that I pass on is unofficial and constitutes advice and/or suggestions for your consideration. You may be advised to double-check with official sources before depending on its use and while you are doing that ask why is it that someone without official contacts has this information and is passing it on and its not coming from official sources. I do not speak for any Postal or Union entity and have no authority to serve as spokesman for, against or otherwise in Postal or Union matters.
Note: These email messages are being sent to the entire NJ State Board and almost all of the senior stewards in New Jersey. There should be no concerns about this being done secretly or behind anyone's backs without their knowledge.
**If you know any rural craft employee who would like to receive this dissemination, please send email address, and office of employment to Hier...@comcast.net.
**If you do not wish to receive these disseminations, please notify Hier...@comcast.net and request removal from dissemination list.
**Please address all comments, feedback, submissions, stories to Hier...@comcast.net and be sure to mark it OK to share or if you want the submission to be confidential and anonymous, please indicate that it is CONFIDENTIAL and I will never disclose authorship, content or any other identifying detail. Absent express authority to share, I will strictly maintain confidentiality per my legal obligations and responsibilities.
RURALC...@ROOTSWEB.COM MAIL LIST.
FOR DISCUSSION OF POSTAL AND RURAL CARRIER RELATED SUBJECTS.
STEWARD CONTACTS
http://www.nrlca.org/stewards.html
NRLCA CONTACT INFO.
National Rural Letter Carriers' Association
Fourth Floor
1630 Duke Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22314-3465
Phone: 703-684-5545
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to RURALCARRI...@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
From: <hier...@comcast.net>
Date: Sun, Dec 16, 2007 at 1:03 AM
Subject: {{ruralc...@rootsweb.com}} NJ Postal and Rural News, Issue 37-NJ, V. 1, Dec. 16, 2007 (List 22)
To: Hier...@comcast.net
Cc: Ruralc...@rootsweb.com
NEW JERSEY POSTAL AND RURAL NEWS
Issue 37-NJ Vol. 1 December 16, 2007 Sunday Hier...@comcast.net
Issues of the New Jersey Postal and NRLCA News are now posted and available on the following website: http://groups.google.com/group/rlc_onliners_pub?hl=en
I want to express my gratitude for all the comments, submissions and feedback and the tremendous interest in this newsletter. PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER WITH ALL RURAL CARRIER CRAFT EMPLOYEES!
_________________________________________________________________________
Issue Codes = Issue A(A is not usually used and constitutes just the issue #)-E are news and human interest stories; Issue NJ are New Jersey related issues; Issues SP are special issues with important news; Issues ST are steward related articles and Issues-X are breaking news articles of importance. _________________________________________________________________________
Ooooh that smell! Can’t you smell that smell
Lynyrd Skynyrd [Allen Collins/Ronnie Vanzant]
This is not an easy story to do, especially at this time of the year. It is something I have been working on for about 8 days now. I have vetted this story thoroughly, checking and rechecking sources. The story is solid and confirmed by unidentified official high level sources who asked to remain unidentified and who also asked me not to run the story (not becasue it isn't true, but becasue this is not information that is generally available).
It is my habit to cogitate and ruminate after important decisions or milestone events. Oftentimes, I will read and re-read the words and sure enough some very obvious things tend to pop out. Items that escape the cursory glance or things that seem to fit like a jigsaw with puzzle pieces from other puzzles.
Two of those events have stuck in my mind because there are several items that alone seem innocent enough; but, together are very, very troubling. The events that have caused me to pause are as follows:
· The recent interest arbitration award seemed to devote a lot of attention to rural route consolidations, retreat rights, determination of excess carriers and general downsizing.
· Recent trends of employees on the rolls clearly show a downsizing in all crafts except rural delivery which has steadily increased over the last twenty years (see NJ Postal and Rural News Issue 8, November 19, 2007). The twenty year old delivery plan of reducing delivery employee office time to less than 20% of total time and making road time 80 % of total time is still ongoing.
· The Fletters arbitration highlighted a curious anomaly that clearly indicated problems with specific flat sorting equipment that was messing up USPS plans to automate flat sortation. Yes, they managed to escape a financial penalty for requiring rural carriers to do extra work, but the inherent problem is that the flat sorting machines were not working properly and it was endangering USPS automation plans. This is something USPS managed to camouflage from Arbitrator Eischen.
· USPS is proceeding with protocols for extreme reductions in processing hours both in the processing plants and also within local office units.
· USPS plans to actively support expanded contract delivery services much like they aggressively planned contract retail units in local supermarkets and retail outlets using non-postal employees. (see German Postal story with replacement minimum wage workers)
· USPS plans for consolidating processing operations and mail acceptance units and new aggressive pricing and marketing strategies with deep discounts for mailers who autmate the mail for USPS distribution.
· USPS has taken an aggressive approach initially, backed off and then maintained a two steps forward, 1 step back approach to introducing alternative retail, processing and delivery functions. What they did with the contract retail units, they are now following the same plan for contract delivery and post office and facility closings and consolidations.
· USPS has suspended plans for new vehicle purchases and is severely cutting back on replacing over-crowded facilities. An awful lot of money is going into the flat sortation deployments and it is being diverted from other programs that USPS has basically put on hold (much like the bettor at a casino who has been repeatedly losing and decides to pull the kids college funds, the Christmas club and vacation savings for one last desperation blowout play at the tables or in the slots).
All of these items have been on my mind and it seemed like they were adding up to something really big. So I made some telephone calls and touched bases with sources throughout USPS and I’ve stumbled onto something.
The USPS plans for flat sortation are much more elaborate and detailed then they have generally let on. There are some truly draconian measures coming down the pike that will affect every employee in a major way. USPS is gradually removing all management responsibility from local managers and even district level managers and staff and installing software protocols that based on volume, projected or actual, detail number of hours available for distribution among employees in each work unit. This is really bad news for managers who are gradually being transformed into glorified clerks, with the area and headquarters calling the shots on nearly every decision. Managers are required to fill out dozens of reports that generate specific instructions that they must follow relative to staffing and control of employee complement. Management flexibility is being made obsolete so that nameless , faceless people who never carried mail or sorted mail in their lives will make all the deci!
sions a
bout sorting and delivering mail from a sterile, isolated location far away.
NOTE: Managers have as much to fear from an aggressive consolidation campaign as do craft employees. If all management functions are removed from local units, why should USPS continue to staff each local unit with managers? The answer; they won't. Through consolidations and changing units into branches, the number of postmasters and supervisors is going to be drastically reduced and "satelite" managers will be the new concept. USPS is not being completely candid even with their managers. The new Postal Service is going to be very lean, very lean and very mean and service will be a meaningless and obsolete anachronism.
The FSS deployment plans are so far advanced, much more so than unions and employees are being told, so that USPS has projections for how many routes will be consolidated, eliminated and downsized over an extended period of years into the future as more offices are scheduled for FSS deployment. USPS is aggressively planning on consolidations that will significantly impact both city and rural delivery. Very few people are talking about these plans and it is really difficult to piece them together, but the areas and districts are diligently working on physically reducing the number of routes through consolidations.
I am sure that when the officers of the NJRLCA sat down to pig out with USPS officials at the district and area levels, they were so intent on chewing their food that no one thought to ask how many routes USPS projected to consolidate when FSS deployment was underway and what the final projections were when FSS deployment was fully implemented. How many city carriers and how many rural carriers would lose their jobs as excess employees. They had the figures! Surely USPS officials at the districts and the areas who were so generous in feeding the starving union people, that they must have been equally candid and forthcoming in telling our Union people how many carriers would lose their jobs while our union representatives pigged out.
Enjoy the lump sums and maybe younger, less senior people should put some of it away for a rainy day.
How many routes are going to disappear? Will it be every fourth route? Will it be every fifth route? Will it be every third route? There are a lot of lean years coming and rural carriers will be expected to do much more, but there will be less of us to do it. But don’t worry, at least our union representatives here in New Jersey will be well fed! Maybe if they hadn’t had their mouths full, they would have seen through the masquerade that USPS played for them. WE ARE JUST SO SCREWED! OUR UNION OFFICERS ARE EATING WHILE USPS IS PLANNING TO GET RID OF SO MANY OF OUR MEMBERS! It’s like they trampled us to get to the troughs to pig out.
Remember what I said on December 15, 2007 when the route consolidations start a year from now and employees are excessed. Remember also what your Union officers and stewards were doing while USPS was busy planning this all out. A year from now when it starts and three years or five years from now when a lot of people are getting hurt, remember that your union officers and stewards at least were well fed.
Even in South Jersey District with no FSS deployments scheduled in Phase 1, plans are already developed that forecast a number of route consolidations and the district people have a ball park figure of the number of routes they expect to be affected over the next several years. The pain comes first in Northern NJ and then in Central NJ Districts. No one will be spared a significant impact. Forever gone will be the images of Nero fiddling while Rome burned; ever after it will be New Jersey union officials pigging out on USPS food while employees lose their jobs.
I urge each of you to ask questions. Ask the bigwigs that are trooping through your office saying "No overtime", "No auxiliary assistance". Ask them about the plans for route consolidations. Ask them how many routes? You will do far more than your union did.
Central New Jersey District EAP Committee
The Central New Jersey District just announced the EAP committee that is a joint effort between USPS management representatives and Union Representatives for Postal Unions. The committee members are as follows:
Hank Anderson, APWU Central Jersey Local; JAYA Bhambhwani, USPS District Coordinator; Francis Carney, USPS Manager, Human Resources; Arnie Endick, USPS Workplace Improvement Analyst; Thadilla James APWU Central Jersey Local; Joe Mooney, NALC Branch 380; Joseph Palmerson, President, NALC Branch 2128; Hank Rauer, Vice President, NJ State APWU; Sharon Sorenson, APWU NJ Mid State Area Local; Bruce Stallworth, President, NALC Branch 924; Dan Szucs, NALC Branch 38 and Robert Towler, USPS Plant Manager, Trenton P&DC.
12 committee members are on the Central New Jersey EAP Advisory Committee. I am sure that the important work that the EAP committee is doing figured prominently in the USPS meeting between officers and stewards of the NR RLCA and USPS District Manager Vito Cetta and members of his staff. I wonder if anyone thought to ask (in between bites of USPS food) why there is no union representation by the NJ RLCA? Is it perhaps because rural carriers have no EAP problems because they are so well taken care of by their union? I have an EAP issue. MY UNION REPRESENTATIVES MET AND DIDN’T TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANT THINGS; THEY ATE USPS FOOD AND THEY DID NOT BRING ME A DOGGY BAG! WHERE'S MY DOGGY BAG?
Hey! EAP committee, where’s my doggy bag from the USPS food that my union officers and stewards ate but did not share. I’d talk to my union representative on the committee, but apparently the NJ RLCA doesn’t care if my union isn’t represented on the EAP committee.
HOW MANY OTHER JOINT USPS-UNION committees do we have no representation on? How many other things has my union failed to have input into or to participate in. IS it true that we are the official USPS mushrooms or at least the NJ RLCA is: USPS keeps the NJ RLCA completely in the dark and feeds them BS (I can see them scurrying to the trough now) now and again. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW ALL OF THE THINGS MY UNION IS NOT DOING AND ALL OF THE WAYS THEY ARE FASILING TO REPRESENT ME.
DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation with USPS or the NRLCA and as such any information that I pass on is unofficial and constitutes advice and/or suggestions for your consideration. You may be advised to double-check with official sources before depending on its use and while you are doing that ask why is it that someone without official contacts has this information and is passing it on and its not coming from official sources. I do not speak for any Postal or Union entity and have no authority to serve as spokesman for, against or otherwise in Postal or Union matters.
Note: These email messages are being sent to the entire NJ State Board and almost all of the senior stewards in New Jersey. There should be no concerns about this being done secretly or behind anyone's backs without their knowledge.
**If you know any rural craft employee who would like to receive this dissemination, please send email address, and office of employment to Hier...@comcast.net.
**If you do not wish to receive these disseminations, please notify Hier...@comcast.net and request removal from dissemination list.
**Please address all comments, feedback, submissions, stories to Hier...@comcast.net and be sure to mark it OK to share or if you want the submission to be confidential and anonymous, please indicate that it is CONFIDENTIAL and I will never disclose authorship, content or any other identifying detail. Absent express authority to share, I will strictly maintain confidentiality per my legal obligations and responsibilities.
RURALC...@ROOTSWEB.COM MAIL LIST.
FOR DISCUSSION OF POSTAL AND RURAL CARRIER RELATED SUBJECTS.
STEWARD CONTACTS
http://www.nrlca.org/stewards.html
NRLCA CONTACT INFO.
National Rural Letter Carriers' Association
Fourth Floor
1630 Duke Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22314-3465
Phone: 703-684-5545
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to RURALCARRI...@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
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