APWU of Florida

From the desk of Mike "Sully" Sullivan

Date: 2/28/2010
The past few months have been full of action for the state of Florida in the clerk craft. AMP meetings in Daytona and in Panama City that were both well attended by the members and the community at large. I had a local union meeting on the date of the Daytona meeting so I could not make it but Local President Carol Amato stated it was a great success and the meeting room was packed. I did attend the meeting in Panama City and was warmly greeted by their new President,  Mark Zediak.  They had great coverage by the media and were interviewed prior to the meeting. The interesting part was that the USPS was not going to let the TV crews in to the meeting and they had to remind them that in a public place the Constitution takes over and sets the rules. There is not much good about these meetings as the whole concept is preordained and dictated by the USPS. They have the Master of Ceremonies who is somewhat animated and then 2 or 3 other concerned looking (or is that bored) management officials that attempt to look like they are worried with how the employees and citizens express their concern over an obvious business and customer service mistake. I have now attended 4 of these public meetings. St. Petersburg was first, than Lakeland, Manasota, and finally Panama City. There was no change in any of them but what was the most encouraging thing to me was the way the Union brought the membership together and then they all went out and rallied the community to the cause. When Management in my local makes a foolish move and ticks everyone off it unionizes the membership and we all come together as one. This is what the Union movement is all about and we rise up and put things back in their right place until Management gets another bright idea.
I also had the opportunity to go to South Florida and Central Florida to see the new FSS machines being put together in the massive facilities that house them along with the APPS operation. While the monstrosity was amazing it also reflected a huge waste of money spent simply to replace a human worker. It was also distressing to see the ratio of mail handlers to clerks when it comes to staffing. I felt the offices were in good Union hands due to President Raul Sierra and President Carolyn Pierce. This is the future of mail processing but there is simply not enough mail to truly make it effective. They will have five (5) of the machines operational this year in South Florida and two (2) in Orlando. While these machines eat up the mail they are limited in the area they can cover due to transportation costs and timeliness. CFS mail is being discussed in Florida and movement of those operations will be forthcoming. Management would like to have only one place in which to have the CFS operation. There was discussion on moving it to Jacksonville, and that may still happen, but for now they are setting up an area to move a good portion to Tampa. This will cause additional excessing within the clerk craft from facilities that currently have CFS operating there. Congrats to all who have overcome excessing, especially Jacksonville that had a projection of over 140 clerks being displaced over a 750 mile radius. Manasota is finalizing their excessing while others, such as Melbourne, are preparing theirs. The excessing will continue as the Suncoast district is preparing to perform another round of function 1 (plant) studies and function 4 (customer service) studies that will lead to further downsizing/excessing. There are only two ways the USPS can downsize and that is via bid reversion and excessing. Well, we should not leave out discipline via letters of removal. Recent OIG studies and memos sent out by district managers call for management to concentrate on tracking employees sick leave and clocking operations. In other words they want to know why the workers are not being disciplined for unscheduled sick leave, clocking in late, taking a short lunch, or clocking our early.
I love my job in the APWU and that also means I love my job in the USPS. It embarrasses me when I see this great institution that has provided such great service to AMERICA simply turn its back on the customer. With the constant elimination of clerks at stations in the customer service side and the closing of Post Offices around the country the writing is on the wall that the USPS wants out of retail services. They would prefer everyone went online, goes to a Contract Postal Unit (CPU), or to a grocery store to conduct retail business. The USPS would simply like to process mail while subcontracting the transportation and delivering it five (5) days a week at most. A perfect example is an office they would like to close in my local. They are locked into a lease agreement for over two more years at a cost of over $30,000.00 per month. They want to close it and force all of the P.O. Box customers to move to another office miles away, discontinue Pass Port Applications, move the clerks to other offices and move the carriers to the plant to deliver from there. This is a loss of money no matter what kind of spin you put on it. There is a CPU nearby that has started making record profits due to all of the new business they are getting as the customer has been scared away from the office that is targeted to be closed. Once closed, it will never re-open but the USPS will simply pick up mail from the CPU and take it to the plant to be processed while no longer paying clerks to operate the window. Security is thrown out as is the up-selling. Ever hear of a mystery shop at a CPU?
The latest move by management is to use a clerk to manage the lobby when the line grows to twice what the staffing is. So if you have 3 clerks and there are 7 customers one of the clerks is to shut down their window and go out into the lobby to see if they can help anyone out there with pickup, mailing paperwork, or to show them how to use the APC. I would rather see a clerk performing these duties (avoid the APC use) rather than a supervisor doing it but it is being used as a form of punishment. If you fail a mystery shop you could be picked to be the lobby clerk. If you call in sick or are late, you could be the lobby clerk. Again, I want the clerks to be doing these duties but I would prefer that it was a principal assignment listed on a bid. Make sure that you punch onto an operation that is different than the operation you are on while working the window and that the hours are tracked to support a bid being posted. In the Postal Manual on Lobby Director there is training involved, equipment to be used, and the clerk used is to be via volunteer and rotated until a bid is posted. Take care of the customer as if you were the customer. This is our livelihood and the competition is intense. Offer the customer every service we have because it might actually be something they want. Smile, thank them, and give them a receipt because we need that customer to want to come back and do business with us rather than  a CPU, a Goin Postal store, or a convenience store. Take some time and hug your loved ones, kiss your children goodnight, and tell your significant other that they mean the world to you.

Yours in Union Solidarity,
Mike “Sully” Sullivan, President