The agreement that veterans must accept appointment to all PSE vacancies to maintain their veteran status is a travesty that will remove postal employment as a reward for service in defense of our country. For years, postal regulations have afforded veterans preference for career positions without requiring that the veterans accept appointment to temporary positions but the decision to place them in the bargaining unit requires a commitment to jobs that pay as little as $12.00 per hour or the danger of forfeiting their veteran’s status. After serving our country, risking life and limb, if they seek employment within the APWU bargaining unit, veterans are exposed to a labor agreement requiring that they either forfeit their veteran status or accept employment that pays near the poverty level.
Let us assume that a veteran is married with two children and after serving a tour in Afghanistan returns to civilian life and is seeking career opportunities. His/her brother- in-law is a letter carrier and shares with the veteran the benefits and starting salary of $44,000 annually with the opportunity to transfer between crafts after employed. The veteran qualifies on the entrance examinations and awaits notification of hiring opportunity. The Postal Service notifies that vacancies are available as a custodian, Grade 3 PSE with no hourly guarantee and no guarantee or time frame for conversion to career status. The position will pay $12 per hour with no work hour guarantee and failure to accept the appointment will nullify veteran’s status for future career vacancies. What would you do?
Assuming the veteran accepts the appointment and adjusts his/her lifestyle to accommodate the meager income based on reduced hours, the antipathy of the coworkers and hostile supervision that is not restrained by contractual restrictions. At the end of each appointment, the PSE employee must run the gauntlet of reappointment for an additional term with the hope that there will be a distinct possibility of conversion to career status in the midst of massive reassignments of excessed career employees, plant consolidations, USPS financial Armageddon and Congressional inaction on legislative remedies, etc.
If the PSE employee can survive the newly negotiated initiation requirements, they then learn that the starting salary is not the $44,000 achieved by the relative who has purchased a home, a car and is living well. Even after qualifying for transfer as a mail processing clerk, the beginning salary is instead $35,000 for 40 hours but the schedule may be reduced to 30 hours at the discretion of management, no overtime after 8 hours or 40. So after serving our country with exposure to permanent disfigurement or death, the veteran is rewarded with a career opportunity that pays $26,000 per year. Yes, that’s it $26,000 a year and the union calls it a Watershed. You can’t make this stuff up!
Post Office district in SLC, UT will ONLY interview Vets for hire……the people who apply for positions and are not veterans are completely bypassed. Doesn’t that go against “equal opportunity act”? I know veterans get preference when hiring, but to only release the names of veteran applicants to be interviewed is wrong.
I feel everyone’s pain. I am a PSE and we don’t know if we will ever be converted.We have career positions open now in maintenance and management is holding them for accessed employee’s, know they have qualified vet PSE’s doing the job right now.
Stop all the whining! You have to do for yourself, I am sick of people talking about JOBS JOBS JOBS, from the President to the Presidential Candidates. Can’t you all see, you must start your own JOB, just like the Postal Stakeholders from the beginning its (USPS) a business folks, the Government is a Business. Be creative and stop asking congress and your stupid Management and Unions for help. The Union has sold out everyone, that’s why I had to get out and start my own Job or business while I am employed, they excess me SO WHAT, thanks for the extra paychecks but NO THANKS to excessing if I don’t want to go somewhere else. Starting your own business gives you that option. Look! There are enough people at the Postal Service that have enough money in their TSP or Retirement to start a Franchise etc. If you all would Unionize in a different manner you could be free overnight. We all have the money we are just too divided and complain too much because we have become like Lazarus or Lazy Us in the Bible, begging the Master for crumbs from his table. Just quit it and Unionize amongst yourselves, WE DID IT. I will go home and work for myself and won’t beg management or the unions to save my family, THEY DON’T CARE about you. NopaVita.com
What’s really sad is the Post Office is suffering with Pre-funding 75 Billion dollars while the Obama Administration spends “Trillions” adding to the deficit, but nothing for the Post Offfice…
You attempt to blame the Obama Presidency for the USPS financial when the Post Office has been self-sustained with revenues coming from postage which has been given back to the mass-mailers in the form of discounts. The pre-funding requirements on the USPS were imposed by the Bush gang in a lame duck session. STOP blaming all the world ills on Obama PLEASE.
Mr Burrus I put in Idea to the postal service that would hire 280000 VETS to full time work. The Postal service had to do is offer early retirement to FERS and CSRS employees. For FERS offer them the same retirement that congress gives themselfs. CSRS employees would get $500.00 for ever year served. These employees would be phase In and Out over 90 days incerments. The Postal Service could also stop saturday delivery except for parcel, priority mail, express mail and continue to deliver to and pick-up from local business. Stop prefunding Health and Retirement at the current levels. Bottom line is hiring the VETS into good Paying JOBS.
The pse program is just a rehash of the old TE program. A way for management to bypass the public list and hire whomever they want. I was a casual almost 5 years and had to be in the top 10 percent of the last test to be a casual. Yet management hired TE’s off the street then gave them the test and hired them as career employees bypassing the list. I was never able to buy back that time either. Nothing has changed except now it is the veterans who are being bypassed. Veterans have been placed at the top of the list for many years now and maby if enough flack comes of this all PSE’s and casuals from way back will be able to buy back their non career time. Would be nice. APWU gave this up for us back in late 80′s.
Jason Trier
Not true. Prior to this agreement a veteran did not exhaust his/her preference when temporary positions became available.
Bill
Rikki Tikki
Thanks for your support. As a veteran you have rights under the Veterans’ Protection Act and you should famiarize yourself with those protections. When serving as Vice President I wrote a book on veterans’ rights that is available from union headquarters.
Thanks for serving our country and being a union member.
Bill
Mr.Burrus I thank you for your time, effort & dedication. Also for shedding light on many different subjects & for shedding light on how “contractual” decisions have many layered impacts, intended & otherwise. I also do not hold anything against you for excersizing your earned benefits/rights, like any of us may do here soon. I am a veteran myself in the custiodial craft for the last 8 years. I believe vets still have some protections in the area of discipline(a separate board I think), nor can be downgraded in level against their will. Please elaborate. Also do vet PSE’S custodians still have the ability to test for the other maintenance craft positions like regular vet custodians do(like myself)? Thank you for any info. Please keep up the good work & don’t change! Warmest regards. Yours in solidarity. Yes, I still believe.
Let’s all be for real. The only preference any veteran has ever received from the USPS or Post Office has been the five or ten point spread on the entrance examinations. The regulations and laws required custodial positions to be set-aside for preference eligible veterans but as you can see, management wormed their way around that factor also. Veterans have been royally screwed by the United States Government since the beginning and the trend continues.
Mr. Burrus,
I am glad you are still informing the people. I understand you offered to help the APWU’s new leadership your help at no charge. I am not sure there is ever a good time to retire, but that was certainly your decision to make. I agree with the previous post. That I also thought someone other then my union would be the one to hurt the APWU members. I have 1 year and 1o months left, I will most likely leave if there is another early-out in 10 months.
Tony Diana,
Negotiations have always been difficult and it will always be difficult. If I had stayed until it was easier I would never have retired. I stayed until I was 74. If you had a choice, which you don’t – what do you think would be the right time? 2014 will be more difficult than 2010, in your opinion should I have stayed for that one also? It was my time, my life and my decision. You have no influence over my timing.
Not commenting on the good or bad of the contract. Just pointing out that the NLRCA has had non-career replacement carriers for many, many years. I know personally many who worked as non-career RCA’s for 5-6 years without benefits and no time in service credit, but who are now full-time and who now earn more than we as APWU career employees. I even know those who have retired after 30+ years of time in service credit. So, while this may not be the “best” scenario, I believe that it is not the sky is falling mantra of many on this website.
Ken,
That’s nonsensical. Because Rural Carriers do it it is OK for us. You suggest that working with no benefits and not accruing any seniority towards retirement is a good thing? I also know rural carriers that have to work till they are 75 to make up for the years they were a sub. Bad argument……… It is no secret that most managers do not like veterans as employees, they now have an easier way to keep them out of the USPS.
What a CROCK Of Bull. Vetrans have been getting SCREWED at the Ole PO for years. Being a Vet don`t mean Dog Doo any more.. Private employers are doing a better job of hiring Vets… Signed, greasynick USMC 1969-1973
The way I see it, the actual chances of anyone receiving a career appointment anymore are slim to none under this contract. Even the veterans will have to work with no benefits from year to year under the watchful eyes of supervisors who they are reliant on to “recommend” them for rehire or a supposed career hire. This is a recipe for disaster and will end the union as we know it. Thanks for speaking up!
My question to you Mr. Burrus.. Why did you retire 2 or 3 months before the contract expired. You definitely knew the up coming contract would be a very difficult one. With all your years of experience and knowledge, why did you retire??? We needed YOU!!! And secondly. Over 30,000 union members didn’t even vote on the contract!! They threw it right in the trash. Where’s our union solidarity???? We must blame ourselves for this mess!!! I hope every clerk, mail handlers, maintenance and letter carrier votes for Obama. If we vote for Romney, we’re definitely slicing our own throats. And that’s no joke!!!!!!
What has been assured by this contract is that the jobs will not be considered a career anymore. Postal work in APWU crafts will be just a temporary thing until the person finishes college or learns a trade and can find a real job with a future and benefits. I used to hear stories from the old timers about the post office being like this in the before time. How on earth could the negotiators have thought that was a good idea? I always thought it was the Republicans that would destroy us. I never once considered that we would preempt them and destroy ourselves.
Thanks Bill! You either responded to my post without haste, or my timing is impecible. LOL! Additionally, my final point on the matter is that local managemers will most certainly be able to use this new provision to hire their family and friends as career appointments without Veterans getting in their way; since I don’t believe very many veterans would agree to such unreasonable terms at such sorry pay. I know when I submitted my application in 1990, there was no way I was going to agree to be Casual, and accordingly did not mark the box indicating such. Thanks again!
Thanks Bill! You read my post and immediately responded.
Another gem in the new ”labor agreement” the APWU gave to it’s members. It even screws veterans who aren’t even hired yet………………………….
This demonstrates the mentality of a society that has lost the concept of value of public goods. Gene Del Polito, a prominent lobbyist for the direct mail industry, recently made the point that the Postal Service should not serve as the employer of last resort. This despite the fact that for generations the Postal Service has provided an entryway into the middle-class for not only veterans but people of color and others who simply needed a chance. The result has been of great public benefit and has advanced our economy and our social capital.
Yet the management of the Postal Service no longer sees any value in its role as a public entity. From their attempts to undermine the universal service obligation to their acceptance of industry views that postal rates are akin to taxes and that a narrow segment of “stakeholder” interests is their only obligation, the Board of Governors and senior management have constructed a narrative that is destructive, discriminating, and fundamentally dishonest.
It is time that the employee organizations particularly and the American public generally stop accepting this cynical approach to a public institution and reject the premises of a floundering organization that now seems licensed to abandon its obligations as both infrastructure and unique public good.
Our PSEs in Maintenance are getting the 40 hours per week. PSEs in the clerk craft are lucky to get 24 hours a weeek. They are all looking for other jobs outside the PO. What bothers me the most is no health benefits as soon as they start. That was one of the major reasons I accepted a job with the PO over 22 years ago. I doubt we will ever get back what was lost in this last contract.