You Don’t Do My Job – I Won’t Do Your Job! – reprinted from the March 2008 Postmark

 

          When a maintenance employee performs higher level work that is outside of their Standard Position Description (SPD) they are taking work away from another employee. They in effect are allowing management to have work performed at a lower level of pay. When a Maintenance Mechanic (MM) is performing predictive maintenance (PDM), the MM employee is taking work away from the Mail Processing Equipment (MPE) mechanic. When the Mail Processing Equipment (MPE) mechanic is loading software into an IDR scanner, the MPE employee is taking work away from the Electronic Technician (ET).  When an Electronic Technician (ET) is performing maintenance on any type of building equipment, the ET employee is taking work away from the Building Equipment Mechanics (BEM).  When a Maintenance Operations Support (MOS) employee mops the MOS office floor, the MOS employee is taking work away from the Laborer Custodian (CUST).  Management would love to have operational maintenance performed y an MM-07 rather than an ET-10.  Think of the labor cost savings if all the maintenance on automated and mechanized equipment was performed by nothing but level 7 employees.  Maintenance management would save the USPS a fortune.  This is the heart of this article and an issue that needs to be addressed here at the St. Paul P&DC.  Not just maintenance employees performing higher level work, but clerks and mailhandlers performing maintenance craft work.  Clerks performing maintenance work on automated equipment by opening panels to clear jams or re-install belts.  Mailhandlers performing maintenance work when they open electrical panels to reset circuit breakers.

 

Article 7.2 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is very clear in that management must prove Article 7.2B and Article 7.2.C are met prior to assigning work across Occupational Group Lines. Article 7.2.B provides for assigning employees to work in another occupational group due to insufficient work in their own occupation group.  Article 7.2.C permits the assignment of employees to perform work in another occupational group where there is an exceptionally heavy workload in another occupational group and a light workload in the employee’s own occupational group.  The JCIM states that “Inherent in Article 7.2.B and 7.2.C is the assumption that the qualifying conditions are reasonably unforeseeable or somehow unavoidable.   While management retains the right to schedule tasks to suit its needs on a given day, the right to do this may not fairly be equated with the opportunity to, in essence, to create “insufficient” work through intentionally inadequate staffing.”

 

          What does this mean?  This means that if management wants an ET to perform BEM work, then the BEM occupational group needs to be experiencing a heavy workload, i.e. working 12 hours a day or 60 hours a week, AND the ET occupational group is experiencing a light workload, i.e. doesn’t have enough work to keep them busy for eight hours a day.  Also with this is the “intentionally inadequate staffing” – if management chooses to staff a tour short on BEM’s (due to leave or training) and not work any BEM’s overtime to cover the short staffing, then management cannot claim that the “qualifying conditions” for Article 7.2 were met.  The maintenance department has a certain authorized level for staffing.  A certain number of authorized ET’s, MPE’s, BEM’s, etc.  If the staffing level for a tour is 12 ETs and 5 BEMs and the tour is short 2 BEMs then management cannot claim that the BEMs are overworked and therefore the ETs can perform the BEM work.  Management cannot cross occupational group lines and levels just to avoid the payment of overtime.  Management cannot assign an employee to a higher level occupational group just to avoid the payment of overtime.  What is the overtime desired list for?  There is a determined level of staffing.  If management chooses not to meet that staffing level(s) and the qualifying conditions of Article 7.2 are not justified, then management cannot cross occupational group lines.  The overtime desired list is to be used to cover “foreseeable and avoidable” times of “inadequate staffing”.  Not for management to state that they did not see this coming.  The problem with management is that the light at the end of the tunnel that they are hoping for turns out to be a train.

 

          The issue of cross occupational group lines only applies to employees performing higher level work, work outside of their SPD.  It does not apply to ET’s performing items listed in the SPD for MPE or MM.  It does not apply to MPE’s or BEM’s performing items listed in the SPD for an MM.  When the facility is staffed with MPE’s and BEMs, management cannot cross occupational group lines without the qualifying conditions of Article 7.2.  This means that MPE’s do not work on building equipment and BEM’s do not work mechanized equipment.  Although the SPD for an ET does state “performs other tasks as assigned” – this does not mean that management can violate Article 7.2 at will.  ET’s cannot work on building equipment without the qualifying conditions of Article 7.2.

 

          Fight for your work before we are all lower level  employees.  Before our pay levels are reduced and management’s bonus is increased for saving the USPS in labor costs, you don’t perform my work and I will not perform yours.

 

          Another issue along this same line is Article 1.6 violations that employees allow to occur in the St. Paul P&DC amazes me.  Do not allow management to perform your bargaining unit work.  Management’s job is to manage the bargaining unit (and I wish they would).  It is not the job of the APWU to manage the bargaining unit.  The APWU defends your CBA rights.  When you see management performing bargaining unit work – YOUR WORK – request a steward.  Management likes to claim that it’s only “de minimus” work.  That it only takes them a minute to perform your work. Well, if it only takes a minute to perform the de minimum task, then how much de minimus work can management do in 60 minutes? They can do an hour of your work and still call it de minimus???

 

Remember that light at the end of the tunnel!

 

Roderick Renner

Maintenance Craft Director

 

Remember - If you don’t know your rights – you don’t have any rights!

                   You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

 

 

 

 

We Are Our Own Worst Enemies

 

 

          The EAWS sheet (Employee Assignment Work Sheet) that we are asked to complete every day is a very important document.  Here is a critical fact to remember, it is your first line of defense when it comes to safeguarding your job.  Without becoming overly technical and boring you with a lot of data, you need to be aware that whether you performed preventative maintenance or corrective maintenance; it is imperative that this document accurately reflect your daily activities.  If all of your activity is being credited to a standing work order you may in effect by contributing to the staffing deficits that we often experience here at the St. Paul, MN P&DC.  One needs to start with the awareness that EMARS (Electronic Maintenance Accounting and Reporting Services) and TACS have been available for several years now:  This means that the peanut counters at the Western Area can (and do) look at the data which we submit daily in EMARS.  And, where do they obtain said data? YOU GUESSED IT: from the data which the MOS techs entered into EMARS, using your worksheet as their guiding light. Why?  Well, simply put, a MOS tech is not responsible for interpreting your data.  They are there to input data, and they do this based on what you tell them!

 

          By looking at this data, the statisticians can compare the data provided through EMARS and TACS and develop spreadsheets and charts which they can use to justify decreasing the staffing levels at this or any other post facility.  Consider the following scenario… If an employee works or is paid for 7.4 hours of work and his work sheet shows that he completed only 4.2 hours of maintenance related activity, then the hierarchy will come to the conclusion that they can justifiably cut positions, or at the very least assume that once attrition has brought an employee to the end of his career, there is no real need to replace him!  Considered from another vantage point, if the TACS reports show that the St. Paul P&DC spent what amounts to 34 man hours per year, and yet EMARS reflects only 30 hours per year of actual work completed, then Western Area will come to the conclusion that they can effectively cut 4 positions from the maintenance department and still get the job done.  YOUR EAWS MUST JUSTIFY YOUR JOB!  If you did eight hours of work, then your worksheet needs to accurately reflect that.

 

          Standing work orders are killing us.  Standing work orders are those work orders in any given register numbered from 1 to 100.  In the custodial occupational group all we have, with very few exceptions, are standing work orders.  This situation is unlikely to change until management re-implements the 1983 MS-47 and we return to cleaning routes and frequencies.  For all other occupational groups in maintenance; if the majority of your work is being charged to standing work orders and you are using an action code of WRP or YLU, you are not only harming yourself, but ultimately all maintenance employees.  Standing work orders are only supposed to be used when the activity is less than 18 minutes.  Any reactive maintenance (code 21), operational maintenance (code 09) or other repairs or adjustments requiring more than 18 minutes for completion must go on a work order.

 

          Work order codes most frequently used are 07, planned corrective maintenance, or 08 for breakdowns, although a code 23 may be used for non-impact breakdown situations.  Management does not like using code 08 because it will send a red flag to the district and impact their performance review, they also dislike using work code 18 (safety corrections) because it raises a “red flag” which will negatively affect the PEG audits.  The employee must correctly record all work with the correct work code per MMO-149-98.  Any work not recorded with the proper work codes can become lost staffing hours.

 

          For more information on work codes and usage, refer to MMO 149-98.

 

          Another group hurting all of us is those employees who help management out by completing PM routes without using either actual or estimated time; I refer to those people as “the super 8s and 11s.”  What this does it clean up the preventative maintenance (PM) backlog thereby maintaining the PM completion in the ranger of 96-98%.  This entitles management to their performance review/bonus at the end of the fiscal year.  You’re doing management a favor while harming the bargaining unit employees.  If you take .8 hours to complete a 3.2 hour route, the bean counters at Western Area will use this to justify further staff reduction.  As an example, if one of the AFCS machines has an estimated PM time of 1203 hours, and the “super 8s and 11s” use only 940 hours, then the bean counters feel justified in cutting two positions from the staffing levels.  The time it takes to complete a preventative maintenance route is the time it takes – period!  If management loads your EAWS with PM routes and you end up working on several machine problems or work orders, make sure that the information on your worksheet accurately reflects your activity.  If management gives you six hours of PM routes and four hours of operational or corrective maintenance work orders develop during the tour, do not be a “super” 8 or 11 and short change the PM’s.  Remember eight hours of work for eight hours of pay… it isn’t 12 hours work for eight hours pay.

 

          Management is getting blood out of a turnip.  The fewer man hours it takes to keep this facility up and running the better they look to the District and Western Area.  Why does management refuse to implement operations maintenance routes?  The operations maintenance (09) checklists are in the MMO’s for the equipment.  Management has us performing some of the procedures in the checklists, yet they refuse to provide the routes for operational maintenance.  Their argument is that “the MMO’s” are only a recommendation”.  Yet they hand us their locally developed sheets for vac and goes, for unplanned events, for MPE watch, for bar code checks on DBCS/OSS DIOSS, AFCS ID Tags and cancellations, checking feeders for missing or broken parts, yet they refuse to provide us with the routes necessary to annotate the actual time spent performing these “sheets”.  How much time is actually required to complete these “sheets”? Does management know if they are asking us to perform eight hours of work for eight hours of pay?  Incidentally, this issue regarding operation maintenance, code 09 is currently in the grievance procedure.

 

          What determines the staffing levels for the different occupational groups?  For the Custodians it is the MS-47, 1983 handbook with the cleaning/policing routes and frequencies.  For the BEM’s it is the MS-1 handbook along with locally developed checklist, and for the MPE/ET/MM’s it is the automated and mechanized equipment and the MMO’s associated with the equipment using guidelines containing nationally developed checklists.  For the MOS/Stockroom it’s the number of maintenance employees that they need to support.  The fewer maintenance employees on staff, the fewer MOS clerks are needed.

 

          It should be noted that mail volume has nothing to do with maintenance staffing.  Here is the bottom line:  we, the bargaining unit employees, need to make sure that our EAWS are accurate since this is the only true indicator of the staffing level needed to keep this facility running.  Eight hours of work for eight hours of pay – no more, no less.

 

Roderick Renner

Maintenance Craft Director

 

Remember:

 

If you don’t know your rights, you don’t have any rights.  You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

 

 

 

*******************************************************

SO YOU WANT TO BE A CUSTODIAN? - from the October 2007 Postmark

            Well, now is the time!  The USPS issued a letter suspending examination requirements for Custodial jobs.  The letter states:

“In support of our efforts to reassign bargaining-unit employees (due to the continuing impact of automation and changes in the postal business environment), we are suspending the examination requirement for custodial jobs from the date of this notice (August 8, 2007) until September 30, 2008.

 

Career employees reassigned in accordance with Article 12 and/or moving voluntarily to custodial positions should not be given examination 916 or be required to qualify on it during this suspension.  These employees must meet any requirement not pertaining to examination 916 listed on the qualification standard for the position to which they are being reassigned, including satisfactory completion of any prescribed training.  Where needed, districts may continue to use previously established in-service custodial registers.

 

This suspension simplifies the placement of employees into custodial positions to more  rapidly respond to staffing changes in our work place.

 

APWU issued a letter (dated September 12, 2007) on the suspension of Test 916 that stated the following:

The Test 916 is suspended for all employees for all purposes from August 8, 2007 through September 30, 2008

There will be one in-service register which merges the current register with new requests to reassign to custodian.

The In-Service Custodial Register selection process, due to the suspension of the Test 916 will be as follows:

1.         Current Maintenance Craft employees who previously passed the 916 in score order.

2.         Current Maintenance Craft employees who have not passed the 916 in Maintenance installation seniority order.

3.         Other APWU Craft employees who previously passed the 916 in score order.

4.         Other APWU Craft employees who have not passed the 916 in their respective craft installation seniority order.

5.         Other Craft employees who previously passed the 916 in score order.

6.         Other Craft employees who have not passed the 916 in installation seniority order.

The Service will not offer the Test 916, except for entrance registers, during the suspension period.

The order of filling maintenance vacancies as listed in the JCIM is unaffected.

This does not apply the Article 12 excessing situations where impacted employees may be moved without the Test 916.  The parties regain their respective positions on excessing into or out of APWU represented crafts.

Voluntary transfers from other installations are still handled under the transfer memo, except the Test 916 is not required.  The transfer in lieu of excessing MOU is still applicable but the employee will not need to pass the 916.

The parties will meet prior to the expiration of the suspension to discuss renewal or lifting of the suspension.

If the decision is to again require Test 916 as the minimum qualification, employees who have obtained a custodial duty assignment during the period of suspension will continue to be considered as qualified on the Test 916.

 

            The writing is on the wall.  If you want to reassign into the Maintenance Craft – submit a letter to the Personnel Office requesting to become a Custodian – no test required.

 

                        Remember,

                                    If you don’t know your rights – you don’t have any rights.”

                                    “You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.”

 

Rod  Renner

Maintenance Craft Director

St. Paul Local APWU