My support of the Members First Team of APWU national officer candidates goes beyond trying to undo what I consider the worst negotiated setbacks of any Union contract in the history of the Labor Movement, our 2010 “Watershed” contract. The many wholesale contractual changes negotiated by APWU President Guffey and his Leadership Team of incumbents in the 2010 “Watershed” contract appear to be little more than a collection of bad horse trades on the surface, and something far more sinister when taken as a whole. Among these: - The loss of the well-established long-standing pay scale that was replaced with the lower tier capped pay scale for future APWU new hire career workers. - The loss of the 40 hour work week and two consecutive days off with the APWU Non-Traditional Full Time (NTFT) positions. - The loss of a large percentage of career positions when 6% casual workers were replaced with 20% non-career lower cost fewer benefits Postal Support Employees (PSE’s). - The loss of the ability to negotiate the remaining Part Time Flexibles (PTF’s) to ever be converted to Full Time Regulars (FTR). This is because the remedy for grievances filed for new positions based on exceeding work hour thresholds is the creation of additional NTFT positions and not PTF conversion to FTR. Neither PTF’s nor PSE’s can bid on NTFT positions and both will see their work hours cut by such grievance awards that create new NTFT positions that benefit existing FTR’s. This places the Shop Steward in the precarious position of enforcing the contract at the financial expense of the PSE and PTF APWU Members she or he represents. I don’t know what you call that, but I call it a betrayal of dues paying Members by their own Union. These and the other permanent solution “setbacks” for APWU represented workers negotiated by President Guffey and his Leadership Team of incumbents in the 2010 “Watershed” contract, according to the USPS, will save over $3.8 Billion dollars over the course of the four and a half year contract. APWU Members were told these permanent solutions were needed because the economy was so bad in 2010 and 2011 and the $5 Billion per year PAEA payment from 2006 to 2016 was crushing the USPS financially. While partially true, (this leaves out the excessive $14 to $18 billion in commercial mailing discounts) those are temporary problems. The economy runs in cycles from booming good times to hard times busts and back again. At some point our economy will recover. The PAEA was scheduled to end in 2016, if it is not forgiven sooner. Now President Guffey and his Leadership Team of incumbents are saying the USPS’s financial crisis is manufactured. Really? They are admitting to have negotiated permanent concessions for a temporary financial crisis that is also a false manufactured crisis? That’s rich. In any case, when these financial issues are finally behind us, the USPS will be set to make record profits. Unfortunately, the APWU represented workers on the workroom floor will be unable to participate in that recovery because the permanent “Watershed” contract solutions will still be binding as there are no sunset clauses or contingency agreements to recover any of those give backs after the USPS turns the corner to profitability. Just whose side are they on? Yet all of those tactical negotiated losses are only pieces to a larger puzzle. One must ask what President Guffey and his Leadership Team of incumbents has done to save even one facility consolidation or closure? APWU TV commercials? Encouraging Members to write and call congress? How many consolidations or closures did that save? Not one. So why isn’t President Guffey and his Leadership Team of incumbents doing more to fight to preserve the Post Office as our Founding Fathers established it and intended for it to be a SEVICE for the American People? Look at the 2010 “Watershed” contract again. Notice how each new provision gives USPS management’s greater ability and “flexibility” to downsize by consolidation and facility closures? Rather than fighting to preserve the USPS, President Guffey and his Leadership Team negotiated a contract to make the downsizing easier on the USPS management and easier on the APWU old timer FTR’s who already have a career job. All other APWU Members and future Members were thrown under the bus. I simply cannot in good conscious vote to elect any Union officers who would willingly collaborate with those who are deliberately working to dismantle and destroy the very business we work for, that our Founding Fathers intended to serve the American People. We must vote out these incumbent collaborators and elect a new set of officers to begin fighting the fight that we should have been fighting in 2010. Otherwise, we must expect our next contract in 2015 to be even worse. The choice is yours, but only if you VOTE!!!
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 08:04:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015