Clerkervisors? 204Bizzy Bees? Superclerks?

          Many of the station clerks are seeing a new breed of clerks. As jobs are being cut to ridiculously low levels a new work pool is being tapped into.  Supervisors are taking up the extra work loads at our stations.

          It is nice to know that as we clerks wait to see when, how many, and where jobs are being reverted, the management of the USPS can find their job security in the work clerks should be contractually performing. 

          We recently had a station manager who was injured as she worked as a clerk.  Another supervisor worked as a clerk for a full tour on a Saturday instead of brining in the ODL. There are stations where the last clerk leaves at 2 p.m. and all the dispatching “magically” is prepared for the 6 p.m. truck by no one?

          Management has caused the clerk shortage at stations.  Clerks want to get the carriers to the street and our customers served.  Now the only way to achieve these goals is by using this new work source. 

          No! In recent years we have seen 3 major waves of jobs cut at our stations.  Each time someone in management gets promoted, the stations suffer.  There are longer lines at the window, improper shortcuts in the backrooms, and the “new workforce” grows.

          I’m asking, no, I’m begging, the few clerks left at the stations to help in ending this new workforce.  If you see management doing clerk craft work, tell us. Fax us a statement.  Help protect jobs, real clerk jobs.

          The job you save could be your own.

Billie Dunn, Steward T-2

Where’s the Pickle?

          Billie Dunn

          Several years ago, the window clerks in St. Paul were treated to a special training session.  All window clerks who attended, on the clock, were given a green writing pen.  It was bent at the top to look like a pickle!  The pen was to remind us of the important message we were given concerning customer service.

          A video was played where an energetic restaurant owner retold his personal views on customer service.  The customers in his restaurant were accustomed to getting a free pickle with their meals.  One day, for some legitimate reason, a customer was not given a pickle.  This caused bad feelings and the restaurant could have lost a good customer forever.  The restaurant owner’s final point was, if it comes down to giving a customer a pickle, or losing them for good… GIVE THEM THE PICKLE!

          Now, remember, this was a USPS authorized and paid for class.  I remembered this class the other day when I returned to work a new bid as a SSA (Window clerk).

          A customer came up to my window with a package.  She was concerned that one of the seams might not be securely fastened.  She asked if I could run a piece of tape across the area.  I reached for my roll of packing tape and did not see one.  I asked the clerk next to me if I could borrow her tape.  “No”, she said, “we can’t give away any packing tape because we sell it.”  The new policy has our customers paying $3.29 for a roll of tape if they need one 8 inch piece to run across a seal.

          Imagine being a window clerk (the face of the USPS) and telling your customers an 8 inch piece of tape across their package is going to plunge the company into further debt.  If used correctly, an 8 inch piece of packing tape can be a better promotional tool than dozens of posters, TV ads, and mass mailings.

          On the subject of tools, I wish the new crop of management would go back into our dusty archives and dig out the “Pickle Video”.  Maybe they could learn customer service is achieved one person at a time, one day at a time.

          As the USPS’ service, business and morale continue to deteriorate, I’ll keep asking, “WHERE’S THE PICKLE?”

Second Class Clerks

          Judy Fricke, IRD

          As a clerk at the station, do you feel like you’re treated like a second class citizen?  Well, you probably have good reason to feel this way.  At the stations, management has always put the carriers first and any consideration for the clerks came later.  For example, Elway and Industrial are in the process of huge route adjustments.  Along with these adjustments came scheme changes.  These scheme changes wee significant, the entire scheme changed to the point that “formal” training needed to be done.  However, was there any thought of this by management prior to the effective date of the change?  You guessed it, the date of the change or after. The handbooks on scheme training, along with the contract, state that for the number of changes that have occurred with these schemes the clerks should be getting 38 deferment days to complete 36 hours of training.  This training is required to be on the clock.  However, management never took this into consideration when making the changes and now these two stations are a mess and mail is all over the place. Just think how smooth a transition this could have been had management taken into consideration that they had clerks at the station that needed to learn the new scheme and provided the training prior to the changes.  What a concept, don’t you think??  Because of no foresight, they now have clerks trying to throw the mail without knowing the scheme, which delays the mail getting to the carriers. Because it takes longer to throw the scheme, management does not want to release the clerks to put in the study time to learn the changes, which delays the clerks learning the scheme.  The longer the clerks are required to throw a scheme they are not getting training for, the more mail piles up! Sound familiar?  This all means that what could have been an easy transition was made more difficult because management put all their focus on changing the way the carriers deliver their route with no consideration that the mail had to be sorted by the clerks before the carrier received it.  And for this, management will get a big bonus, just wait and see!  If you want to know how to handle these types of situations, attend a General Membership meeting, much more information is shared and we welcome questions and/or ideas.