BOSTON METRO AREA LOCAL 100

Third Quarter 2011 Bostonian

We’re Under Attack

By now I am sure you are all aware of the bombshell the USPS dropped on us with that Congressional white paper. The Postal Services thinks what cannot be won at the bargaining table could be changed on Capitol Hill. They are looking to lay off 120,000 USPS employees, remove USPS employees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits program (FEHBP) and withdraw from both CSRS and FERS retirement programs.

This BULL$H!T has resulted in "Mandatory Stand-Up Talks", "uspsnewsbreaks", and numerous news articles, in which they love to claim: "The Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. " . . . If the Postal Service was a private sector business, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality."

They sat down at the bargaining table with the APWU and sang the same song, but negotiated an agreement to which they NEED to be forced to honor. In the last round of contract negotiations with the APWU, sacrifices were made in order for members to continue to have the "No Layoff" provision in our contract. Our negotiated protection from layoffs, our retirement, and our healthcare should not be altered by Congress. The USPS has asked Congress to allow them to screw us in order to help alleviate their money problems and circumvent the bargaining table.

Less than three months after signing our new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), Postmaster General Donohoe is urging Congress to restructure our Agreement by getting involved. If nothing else comes of this atrocious act, it should make it very clear to us exactly who we are dealing with.

Remember, when Donahoe and APWU President Guffey testified together before Darrell Issa’s committee, Donahoe was asked what the USPS needed from Congress. The PMG responded that there were only three things he needed - an end to the prefunding, return of the FERS overpayment, and five day delivery. "Get those things out of the way and you will never see us again!"

The way things look now, I don’t believe they had any thoughts of honoring the agreement from day one. I think the Postal Service probably showed their greed when they hired the new Deputy Postmaster General mostly for his Congressional experience. Now, they want to go for the jugular because they believe the timing is right in America.

As of now, there have been eight Step 4 grievances filed at the national level because management chooses not to follow what they agreed to within the contract. There seems to be no end in sight as management just selectively reads what they want within the CBA and violate the rest of it on a daily basis.

It has become quite clear that management doesn’t care one bit about the employees. They’re leaving employees by themselves (they simply don’t care about the safety concern) in Post Offices, in violation of their own financial rules and regulations. They encourage violating established SOP’s daily because of staffing concerns and thus putting employee safety at risk.

They establish NTFT assignments scheduling people for six days a week because some schmuck told them they could. Never mind the fact that most of these employees have twenty-five years of service or more. Now there’s some gratitude for you, but unfortunately members get mad at the wrong people. It’s time to redirect that anger and time to address the real problem, which is management !!

We need every member, along with their family members, co-workers, friends and neighbors, to tell their congressional representatives that this attack on working families in America needs to stop immediately and to please support collective bargaining.

Tell them, closing profitable offices doesn’t make sense. Tell them, you want them to stop this postal privatization. Tell them, Congress should send in a team of accountants and auditors to find out what’s really going on within this Postal company before any changes are implemented. They really need to find out the truth and should be investigated because management lacks integrity and credibility.

To protect our careers, we are asking everyone to get involved and the easiest way to accomplish this would be to follow the link on our website (bostonmetroapwu.com), or go to the Congressional Information Center on the National APWU's website (APWU.org). You can send an email, print letters to mail, and get telephone numbers to call. Please sign up for the e-Team News Updates on the national’s Legislative & Political Department page to stay on top of the issues and pending legislation.

Now more than ever we need you to get involved because our futures depend upon it!
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Second Quarter 2011 Bostonian

- - Time to Move Forward - -

On June 1^st, I’ll be returning to the VP/Treasurer position to continthirdwith the financial and administrative duties of the local as our new terms of office begin. I would like to once again thank everyone for allowing the local to save the expense of an election as all officers went unopposed (February Membership Meeting) for the upcoming term. Paul will be moving into the President’s position as a result, and it’s nice to have the Clerk Craft President’s vacancy finally filled with Scott Hoffman. This will alleviate some of the double duty we’ve been doing and give us a good foundation as we move forward with our restructuring and transitioning of officer duties.

In an effort to continue financial transparency, you’ll find in this issue copies of our 2010 annual report prepared by the accounting firm of Rutfield and Hassey, LLP. Hopefully, you’ll notice the results as we returned to the black for the year by $40,323. I would like to thank the outgoing executive board of officers for helping make this possible. I welcome the incoming executive board of officers. Our challenges certainly await now that the new tentative agreement has been ratified and it’s time for the implementation, administration and enforcement.

This new agreement certainly created a buzz within the local and lots of debate around the country. In this day and age of social networking, emails, websites and, last but not least, the "Postal rumor mill", negativity and mistruths were abundant everywhere; but our local was sandwiched with it by two neighboring locals trying to get people to vote against the tentative agreement.

As I reported in a bulletin, we had 200 members in attendance at the membership meeting/seminar on Sunday, April 17^th. After the officers gave their reports at the membership meeting, a seminar commenced for both stewards and members. I attribute the high attendance to the above created buzz.

There were many questions asked regarding the status of part time regulars going to full time. Other areas of concern were the new nontraditional (NTFT) duty assignments, excessing and the limitation of 40/50 miles, and relief and pool clerks. I, along with VP/Treasurer Paul Kilduff and DIR Bob Keough answered the questions. NBA Steve Lukosus was also in attendance and assisted with answering members’ concerns.

We couldn’t stress enough that: No current full-time employee can be involuntarily assigned to an assignment of less than 40 hours or more than 44 hours in a service week.

I was confident that the questions were answered to the best of our knowledge and hopefully alleviated a number of concerns. I’m not that naive to believe that all part time regulars left satisfied. We know there are part time regulars who do not want to work 30 or more hours for their personal reasons.

However, there are PTRs that do want more hours and will now be able to bid those duty assignments and not be restricted because they are not currently qualified. The threshhold of a minimum of 30 hours will now entitle these employees to be eligible for FMLA coverage, which 20 hour PTRs do not currently have. PTRs are now GUARANTEED a minimum of 30 hours per week – NOT the 4 hours per pay period currently.

The only questions we could not answer were in the hypothetical, and I’m not going to pretend to be a psychic. We can’t answer what management is going to do and at what time frame. Those discussions will begin now that the contract has been ratified. Change is difficult to some and resisted by many but now that the vote is in, it’s time to move forward.

We need to come together by supporting our national officers and our new agreement. Hopefully, the division over this agreement will be repairable . I, for one, cannot believe some of the BULL$H!T that has been said over the past couple of months by the naysayers. I also cannot believe how former president Burrus came out so publicly and aggressively against this tentative agreement. I’ll admit his actions, motives, distortions and mistruths have caused me to lose some of the respect I had for him.

I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion and I have no problem with people who didn’t like or vote for the agreement. I do however have a problem with people distorting the truth in an effort to persuade or in some cases scare people. Some of these naysayers crossed the line with their attempts and I hope we can move forward in unity. I’ll admit I was disappointed with the outcome of the vote here in the local but believe that was a reflection of the above "buzz" and our own division on the executive board. Regardless of how anyone voted, I wish to thank those members who took the time to vote.

President Guffey’s theme for contract negotiations was "WE WANT OUR WORK BACK" and he also wanted to protect the current workforce. I believe he has achieved both objectives with this new agreement. Now, let’s hope what was agreed to in DC actually makes its way into the field.

Here is an example of why I’m glad we have a contract that will take us into 2015. Lately there have been a number of news reports concerning the Postal Service’s prefunding requirements and I get nervous when I read stories like:

1.　"Dennis Ross subcommittee quietly corrects USPS financial numbers after the hearing".

2.　"Congressman Dennis Ross says that the US Postal Service hasn’t overpaid any obligations. Ross says the prefunding requirement is appropriate because, well, because Congress said it was appropriate".

3.　When Congressman Dennis Ross isn’t busy overseeing the US Postal Service, he’s working on solutions to the debt "crisis" he and his colleagues have created: Dennis Ross, a House Republican and a member of the Tea Party caucus, told Reuters: "I don’t think Treasury has been up front with us. I am not convinced the sky will fall in on August 3." Ross added: "I’m not an economist, but I have maintained a household. The federal government owns 70 per cent of Utah, for example. There are federal buildings. If you need cash, let’s start liquidating."

This guy is dangerous and exactly the reason why we need APWU members to contact their members of Congress and urge them to support H.R. 1351(introduced on April 4, 2011, by Congressman Stephen Lynch), an important measure that would restore financial stability to the Postal Service.

In closing, I would like to say that it has been an honor to serve the membership as the General President our great local. I look forward to continuing the strong fiduciary mindset I have brought to the local’s finances.

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I’m happy to report that at our membership meeting on May 24^th, the members voted unanimously to accept the Foxboro local to merge with us.

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First Quarter 2011 Bostonian

I’m currently in Washington, DC, as a member of the Rank and File Committee sitting in front of my laptop once again trying to finish up my article. I’ve been holding off sending this to the publisher, hoping I would have something new to report other than "we’re close" and "they’re still talking". There are grounds for optimism but for one reason or another, a tentative agreement has yet to be reached.

This weekend is also a National Presidents Conference and Legislative Rally so there will be plenty of APWU representatives in town. As a matter of fact Paul Kilduff, Bob Keough and Bill Weaver are scheduled to come down on Saturday to participate. Mike McDonald (Vice-President - APWU of Mass.) has been working with Steve Albanese (Assistant Director - National Legislative & Political Department), who has been setting up appointments with our Congressional Representatives next week for the Massachusetts delegation that is coming down. It sure is nice to have someone like Steve !!

Now more than ever we need to convince our elected officials that something has to be done about this pre-funding requirement. Without relieving pressure from the USPS pension and future retiree healthcare obligations, the Postal Service will only be a memory. In Massachusetts we are fortunate that the majority of our representatives understand the Postal Service’s dilemma and that relief is needed, unlike some of their counterparts. I’m still trying to figure out who’s worse – Issa or Ross?

All of these right-wing budget balancers want to attack the working people as the problem instead of dealing with the real reasons behind most problems. Look at the extremes they’ll go to - such as what is happening in Madison, Wisconsin. This, in my opinion, is ground zero for middle class working families. Governor Walker’s plan to strip public workers of their right to collective bargaining is as extreme as it gets. Claims by the governor that his proposal was necessary due to budget problems were shattered when public worker unions agreed to meet the governor’s demand for an increase in pension and health benefit contributions in exchange for dropping the union busting portion of the bill. The governor has continued his refusal to compromise. Besides ending collective bargaining, other provisions in this measure would end union dues deductions from payroll and require public sector unions to be re-certified by their members each year. When the governor took office in January, Wisconsin had a surplus that he quickly turned into a deficit by enacting tax breaks for companies at a cost of $117 million.　 It’s now starting in Ohio and Indiana, two states whose governors have agendas terrifyingly similar to Governor Scott Walker's. What's worse: it won't stop there if this ever materializes, so we need to stop this before it gains any traction. Governors across the country, and probably some members of congress, have their eyes on these states (to see what happens) and we cannot afford any more of these proposals, so we need this massive public uproar to continue and please do what you can to show your support.

It was nice to see President Barack Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis speak out this week because I’ve been reading a lot lately about the pledge made by candidate Barack Obama in Spartanburg, S.C. on November 3, 2007, when he declared: "Understand this. If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States because Americans deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner." He’s also being criticized for not using his appointive powers to help labor’s (especially us) cause.

I’m going to try and keep this article short to free up a little space to publish a couple of pictures from the Solidarity rallies held here in Boston, but want to thank our members for showing some confidence in us and what we are trying to do going forward. At the February meeting (nominations) all officer positions went unopposed which, from my understanding, is a first in our local’s history. This is allowing us to save the expense of an election and a nice way to start the year off.

Last year, I’m happy to report we finished in the black as the result of cutting expenses wherever we could and I would like to thank all for that endeavor and the end result. In the next issue we will once again publish the annual report after it’s completed.

Once again, thank you and I promise I will continue to work hard to accomplish our (APWU) agenda and try to better the lives of our members !!

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Fourth Quarter 2010 Bostonian

Change

I would like to first of all thank everyone who took the time to vote in our recent APWU National elections and the mid-term elections. Change was the theme of our last National Convention and change is what we have coming.

Some of this change will not be in the best interest of working families if Darrell Issa, (Republican from California, who is set to become chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the next Congress) gets his way, and he is going to be a challenge for our recently elected National officers. This guy sounds like he is going to be a nightmare to all Federal employees’ families and not just Postal families, but it seems like he has a special interest in trying to "fix" the Postal Service.

Unfortunately, his idea of fixing would be actually destroying the Postal Service as we now know it. This California congressman caught my attention in a guest editorial in the Washington Times. In an article about the Postal Service and contract negotiations, Rep. Darrell Issa declares: "No union has or ever will lobby for a layoff, so it’s up to USPS management and Congress to demand concessions." Yes, Rep. Issa wants Congress to demand layoffs and other concessions from postal workers.

Following his victory in the mid-terms, in an interview with Congressional Quarterly, Issa vowed "to clamp down on government agencies he sees as wasting taxpayers’ money." He outlined an agenda that includes cutting postal facilities and creating a commission to decide which facilities should be shut down. "There are too many distribution centers, too many postal workers, too many post offices, and there’s a reluctance to make those changes," Rep. Issa told CQ magazine.

This guy is scary because it was also reported that he believed the CSRS overpayment was a "myth" and that relieving the US Postal Service of its crippling $5.5 billion annual "prefunding" requirement would be a "bailout".

I hope he read the article is the Washington Times that wrote about how the Postal Service echoes Enron abuses and how this Postal Company keeps blaming outside factors for its financial woes while repeatedly ignoring or excusing revealed mismanagement and major scandals. He needs to address the belief in management which was confirmed by top USPS attorney that there are two sets of rules, one rule for hourly employees and another for executive employees.

The bonuses, selling of homes at inflated prices, recently an IG report that found stunning evidence of contract mismanagement, ethical lapses, financial waste, excessive executive perks and the hiring back former executives at nearly twice their former pay to advise new executives who were placed in their position is where he should be focusing his attention. I’m willing to bet that this is only the "tip of the iceberg" and I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it; Congress needs to send in a team of accountants and auditors to find out what’s really going on within this Postal Company. I think it’s time for a full scale Congressional investigation before it’s too late. Could this be helping Potter’s recent decision to retire?

As I try to finish this article before heading down to Washington, DC, as member of the Rank and File Committee for the final week of contract negotiations, I would like to wish outgoing President Burrus the best in his retirement. I also wish incoming President Cliff Guffey the best of luck because he’ll surely have his hands full with a contract set to expire, Postmaster retiring, Issa and company etc.

President Guffey leads a team that unfortunately has no time to transition into this time of change and needs to "hit the ground running". Over the past few weeks while talking with some of these members on various issues, I’m quite sure they’ll do just fine and believe they all have our best interests at heart. Some of their ideas of change are positive and hopefully implemented to help save our futures. This Postal implosion needs to stop, and hopefully the Postal Service will listen.

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Speaking of our best interests at heart, we locally were forced into making a tough decision after Moe’s retirement and my condolences go out to Moe after losing his quest in the national elections.

At the beginning of the year we were facing a projected deficit of roughly 139k dollars for the year 2010, so in order to try and balance the budget we needed to reduce our expenses and this included a full-time officer position rather than be forced into a dues increase scenario.

We recently completed the restructuring at the October 17, 2010 meeting by making the required constitutional changes to the Clerk Craft President’s position. This was not an easy decision but done out of necessity. It has been a grueling task to accomplish this and time to move forward.

I would like to thank everyone for their patience while we explored different options to get where we needed to go. A special thank you goes to Paul and Bob because we’ve all had to do "double-duty" during this restructuring and some days it has been a little trying to say the least.

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As much as would like to comment on the Braintree/Sokolski farce and the fact that there are two sets of rules, one rule for hourly employees and another for executive employees as described above but I need to cut this short since my article is now overdue. I’ve been sitting here in DC trying to finish this up on breaks and I think it’s time to just wish everyone Happy Holidays and hopefully Santa will have a contract to deliver for us. Happy & Safe Holidays to all !!

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