23fa8 Maintenance Craft

Maintenance Craft

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Dave Geissigner, Maintenance Craft Director
Gary Keicker, Maintenance Craft Director

My Fellow Maintenance Employees

 Dave Geissinger  Maintenance Craft Director I would like to thank all of you who voted for me and Gary Keicker. You can tell by the vote totals that obviously some of you were hoping to change the way you perceive that things are done and I would like to talk with you about that if you could stop by some time. I also would like to commend those who stepped up to run for office. It's easy to just sit back and complain, but some feel moved enough to do something about it and we should all be thankful that there are people like that among us. And finally I would like to say, we still need stewards on the run tours and we are hoping that some of you, especially if you’re one of those who hopes to glean another ten or twenty years out of the Post Office, will step up.There is a lot to learn and prepare yourself for so that you will be the one to lead in the future.

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Several people have asked if all the sub-contracting that is going on in the building has been grieved. Yes it has, and for as many aspects of the contract as Management has violated, it should be a grievance with substantial merit and be very lucrative.Another question that keeps coming up is what about custodial staffing for all the bids that people  retired from? The answer for that is mixed. Many custodial bids were posted at the beginning of the month, and hopefully the senior people that preferrenced them are now enjoying their new bids.

The negative side of these retirements is the ink was barely dry on the posting of all these bids and Management laid on us the new staffing package and the overall amount of custodian bids went from 66 down to 57. It's a shame that the charade of MS-47 measurements and frequencies is going to an even more ridiculous level, but it is. If there is one positive note to all this it is with this new staffing package, management now considers us to be at maximum staffing which will leave no room for any excessed employees from other plants. E-reassign and the in-service registers will be basically irrelevant.

Another thing that could change work place conditions for many of us will be the implementation of 5 day delivery sometime in August. Management is just beginning to ponder the realities of that. If our PD&C continues to take mail from La Crosse and Eau Claire as we did from Rochester and have that coupled with 5 day delivery, it is conceivable that we will not have enough maintenance employees with weekends off.
 
Management believes that mail volume will be huge on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and once again bids may have to be realigned.
Change will continue to plague us the remainder of our postal careers as the post office races toward a very uncertain future. Are we a public service or a candidate for privatization?  The answer to that question is in the not too distant future. 

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I wanted to express my concerns to you about what I consider to be a growing problem, lack of respect shown towards your union stewards.  Many times some of our maintenance brothers and sisters will launch on a steward in the hall way or in the lunch room with an accusatory tone as if the Union steward is somehow complicit in the perceived complaint.

The steward will politely stand there and just take this chewing out. When you start out the conversation with something  like "What are you doing about Vadnais Heights?" in a derogatory tone as the steward happens to be walking down the hall,  perhaps not even on steward time, you can probably expect less than a professional reply. They have to be thick skinned, that's true, but not someone's whipping boy.

The stewards are volunteers who have chosen to help serve you, not be served up by you.  Stewards are the back bone of this organization, the true worker bees in this giant national organization.  We will all need a steward some day and let's be appreciative that someone around here wanted to step up.  Stewards don't need to be coddled as much as they need to be supported and appreciated and a little civility will go a long way in helping you, and the steward, achieve a positive outcome.

Dave Geissinger
Mnt Craft Director

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It seems every couple of years some individuals will try  to distort the reality of what is in the National Contract, Handbooks, and agreed to Memorandum, and what isn't. 

Many of us took a jolt by bids being realigned. After 10 or 15 years some of us finally got the days off that we wanted only to once again be sent back to square one. I have always hated the phrase "It's Management's right to mismanage" and I have attempted to stay engaged and ahead of  the curve to minimize the "mismanagement", but sometimes management is determined to shoot itself in the foot. 

The bid realignment was contractual, but it definitely is not solving the overtime problem or gotten  the machines to run any better, but they will be the last ones to admit that.

The year 2013 is going to make the changes of 2012 look like a walk in the park. For starters, management is now under a directive by Drew Aliperto  to keep overtime to 1% of payroll, which literally means zero. They also are under the directive to reduce staffing by 8%, which coincidentally is about the attrition rate from the early retirements. They also want to utilize PSE's to the full 10% capacity as rapidly as possible foregoing in-service registers and e-reassign to fill vacancies.

Four years ago we were talking about  date stamping sandwiches in the vending machines and where to park tractor trailers in the parking lot.  Now every conversation is about staffing, hours of work, and terms of employment with training cutbacks, travel expenses slashed, prescription eyewear reimbursement eliminated, and overtime becoming very scarce.Now we are currently left with fighting for each and every job we currently enjoy and a continuing paranoia that when these PD&F's in the Northland District are closed, will the excessing limits of 50 miles be changed Nationally to accommodate all these people at the expense of the junior people in our own plant?

The Good Old Days are over for many of us who remain, but it isn't because your Union is not doing its job. We have had record Step One's settled, mostly for cash and not language, we have had the largest Step 2 settlement of our Local's history, we have a record amount of very high buck cases sent to Step 3, and we try to engage each of you on a regular basis on the work room floor so that you can voice your concerns and vent your rage because of the constriction of the  Postal business model that is all around us. 

You can delude yourself into thinking someone will wave a magic wand and everything will go back to 2006 but that's not going to happen.

What you can do is step up to the battle at hand. We need several stewards on the run tours and one at the airport.
 


As the Postal Service limps along with the mortal wounds inflicted on it by Congress and management, the battles around here are going to intensify.  Anyone who is telling you that they can just beat their fist on management's desk and file few grievances and make it all better is just lying to you. 
The fight will continue all through your remaining postal career. They would love for your to retire, quit, or die. Labor is not the problem around here, it is management. They really could care less as long as their bar graphs and pie charts are colorful and cute. Many of us with a mechanical background take offense with the whimsical approach they use to tackle the myriad of problems around here.
 
Hang in there and we will win this war of attrition. From the roof top units to the low cost sorter, trained maintenance staff will again be appreciated as we do our jobs for our true bosses, the American Public.
 

Dave Geissinger

Maintenance Craft Director
 

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees

There has been much misinformation spread about the recent bid realignment that was done on Tour 2. The biggest thing that people are confusing is that there was not an intersectional excessing that occurred by realigning the bids, therefore no certified letters had to be sent out. Secondly, since they did not excess out of section, the bidding was open to the entire installation and not just that Tour 2 section. Some people are reading from Article 12 in our contract instead of the Local Memorandum of Understanding which governs this type of realignment. I conferred with multiple people on this and regrettably, this is one time management actually did something the correct way.

 Everyone knows that the staffing is not correct for this building and for this amount of equipment and this has been grieved and appealed to Step 2,  but management is insistent on reducing overtime and they think that realignment of the bids is the way to achieve this. We all know this is just a shell game and now the overtime will move to some other days other than Saturday and Sunday. The penalty for understaffing is overtime and this is a reality that management cannot escape from.

Dave Geissinger

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Maintenance  Tour 2 Staffing         


Management is proceeding with the implementation of “realigning” bids on Tour 2 for ETs, MPEs, and MM-7s.  On Thursday, 9/6/12, notice of intent to fill bids to make this realignment a reality will be posted and all affected maintenance employees will be encouraged to bid on these assignments.  It should be noted that all these bids that will be reposted are open to the entire installation.
        

 
Everyone wishing to bid on these posted jobs will have to fill out a new preferred assignment selection form (PASF). Remember that since these jobs are open to the entire installation in that occupational group, you could be outbid by a senior employee from another tour and ensuing residual bids will be backfilled to include applicable promotional eligibility register applicants.

Dave Geissinger
Maintenance Craft Director

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees 

We just received the signed, official, and long awaited staffing package and once again, it is a management wish list, but this time, it has a more profound implication. To sum up the numbers management's main game plan is to cut the MPE staffing by 17 and to make these numbers up by adding 10 ET's and 7 MM7's. They envision a staff of more ET's on the run tours and more MPE's on Tour 2. They would like to accomplish this by doing intersectional excessing to get MPE's presently on the run tours moved over to Tour 2 and if any MPE's were to retire, that MPE bid would immediately be reverted and replaced with an ET bid or an MM7.

     At first I thought that this all would be slowly accomplished through attrition, but management is hoping that any MPE's that are on the PER for ET will finally opt to become an ET, if not, and a posted ET bid goes residual, it could be filled by some ET from one of these closing PD&C’s desperate to bail out of his closing plant.
  

      So, what does all this mean? It really is management showing their hand to us and they intend to have reduce the MPE's by 17 and they will try to accomplish this by inter- sectional excessing and ultimately, installational excessing. Are you on the ET PER?   Would you accept a MM7 downgrade?   Would you consider going to another tour? These are all questions that will haunt us as this plan unfolds, but the one thing for certain is local management didn't bat an eye when it excessed people  to Iowa, only to bring most of them back, and when they start talking this excess talk, their moves are as clumsy as an elephant on tequila.

   
 I will keep you informed as we continue down this path. The entire staffing package is grieved not only for the above reasons, but also because it essentially reduces MOS staffing by one and gives all our AMT positions to Minneapolis to join their staffing.

   A very important aspect of Maintenance excessing is that we have to be excessed to an existing bid; we just don't get kicked out the door and become unassigned. Management knows that there are very few MPE bids around and probably the largest pool of residual bids for MPE's is next door at the NDC. That aside, we may still have to deal with the clumsy way Management deals with excessing,  and how they have a rich history of disrupting people's lives.
 

Dave Geissinger

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees 

As many of you are now aware, we recently secured a nice settlement for the custodians.   Many thanks to our maintenance stewards Gary Keicker, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jim Czepa,and Jerry Malean for all their efforts which enabled myself to  take the time to hammer out this award.   It really has been a team effort.  Beyond the monetary remedy for this MS-47 grievance, there was an additional aspect which requires the Postal Service to bring the custodial ranks up to the approved staffing level. Because of this you will soon be seeing many familiar clerks  join our cusodial ranks. Please take a minute to welcome them all. We are truly fortunate to be in the only craft that is gaining in numbers. We are also gaining bids at our stations andbranches as we implement the new contract and abandon contract cleaners.  By the time this Postmark article reaches you, our  US Senate should be in the throws of the Postal Reform debate. It was regrettable that a minority of Senators can continue to obstruct and be the party of NO as vital services such as the Postal Service hang in the balance. No one will be able to put the genie back in the bottle as far as first classmail volume is concerned, but transformation does not have to be a choice between the past and the future. The Postal Service is the only proven way to reach tens of millions of people each day, and because of our efforts,  everyone in our great country benefits.  

Dave Geissinger

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My Fellow Maintenance  Employees:                 I appreciate our local giving me the chance to attend Arbitration Training in Washington D.C. last week. The daily classes were excellent and it is always insightful to meet people from all over the country that are dealing with very similar issues.  One day before class we were addressed by one of the National Officers, Industrial Relations Director Mike Morris. I thought his comments were probably the most profound I've heard in some time. He said, "There's only one fight left for this Union and it is at the ballot box this fall. If Republicans prevail, we're all done."Some will dismiss this as just more election year rhetoric. Some will say that we all heard this before from the Union when Ronald Reagan got elected, but never before has there been so many Republican sponsored bills, spawned from a hatred of organized labor, intent on dismantling the Postal Service.  The 2006 Republican controlled Senate injected a poison pill into the Postal Service with the mandate to pre-fund retiree health care and as the Postal Service staggers under the weight of that mandate, Congressman Issa demands we continue to go to 132 million homes per day, 6 days per week, with no increase in postage, and if we are unable to; it's because of that lazy Union labor force, not the destructive nature of past congressional control.  So, is Mike Morris right? Is this fall's election our last fight?  I have been hard pressed to find any Republican sponsored legislation that is postal friendly. If anyone you work with could point out even a couple of Republicans that are sympathetic to our cause, I would like to know about them so we can support them in their re-election bid.We are not against Republicans because of some "save the whales" liberal ideology; we are supporting people who support us. This upcoming election will be your opportunity to cast a vote for yourself. You can make hay about some social issue like gay marriage or you can vote for yourself. You can blame high gasoline prices on the lack of drilling in the Caribbean or you can vote for yourself. You can insist that you need to guard your constitutional rights to bear arms, an issue that was never challenged by Obama or you can vote for yourself.In the final analysis, you can vote for yourself and keep making a living wage and worry about various social issues at some future date, or you can back a social conservative and watch your job be privatized. It really isn't being selfish to at least this one time, bite the bullet, and vote for yourself.
Dave Geissinger - Maintenance Craft Director

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Our Maintenance Craft Officers are Director David Geissinger and Trustee Gary Keicker

My Fellow Maintenance Employees

 As we embark on another year it seems the priorities will continue to be the same. Try to grow staffing to adequate numbers, make sure management continues to pay for their lack of staffing with overtime and grievance settlements, and try to keep the subcontractors at bay.

Step 2 discussions continue to be slow and are being appealed to step 3 at a very high rate. Even cases where management knows they will ultimately lose, they think they can do better with the business agent than dealing with me. I will continue to bring the difficult cases to the forefront rather than letting them languish in a file cabinet, but all the talk of settling grievances at the lowest possible level remains to be just that, all talk.

The merits of the cases like the MS-47 and the FSS overtime by-pass are fairly bullet proof and it would be in the best interest of the Postal Service to settle these and keep the liability to a minimum, but Postal Labor representative’s strategy seems to be just kicking the can down the road and just see what happens.
 The big news for the coming year will continue to be the Postal Service's attempt to close the Duluth, Rochester, Eau Claire, LaCrosse, and Mankato mail processing facilities.

If this unfolds like the Postal Service envisions, it could swell our ranks with transferees from these plants and greatly curtail our overtime. It would also greatly congest our work room areas with empty equipment and more mail and make our work place a more helter skelter environment. It also would probably mean the end of E-Reassigns as thousands of maintenance employees would swell the ranks of those wishing to transfer.
 
 As part of this installation, we have been the lucky ones, but the days ahead will be tumultuous. I have depended on many of you for your advice and input and I hope we will stick together as we run towards a goal line that keeps moving further away. Being part of this installation probably will bring many of us security for the near 3 to 5 year term, but the rapidly changing environment will make the distant future anyone's guess. 

Dave Geissinger  

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees.          
As we quickly proceed towards the final days of another calendar year, many of us have a natural propensity to take stock of things and that includes thoughts of retirement.  At present, I and another MPE, Don Riley, are compiling some interesting materials and hope to have an informational workshop on retirement and its many implications sometime after the first of the year.  Naturally, this would not be a counseling or guidance seminar so much as it would be an informational sharing of the many known and less known facts.
          

Stay tuned and we will keep you posted on how this is shaping up. 

Also, if you have any resources you would like to share with us, we would be more than happy to talk with you.
          

Have a great holiday season.  We all have very much to be thankful for. 

 Dave Geissinger

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees

By the time you receive this issue we should be well on the way towards our impending default to the US Treasury. What that means remains unclear, but what is crystal clear is it is a Republican ambition to cause this default in order to further an agenda against the middle class worker.

Several members have quit the Union because of our involvement in the Wisconsin protests in Madison. Others have expressed their dislike of Union talk of "class warfare" or "corporate greed". Still others think that the only role a Union should have is to file grievances and nothing more. Which role your Union takes in the near future will depend on you and your involvement at the local general membership meeting.

What role do you think a Union should take at the Crystal Sugar Plant in northern Minnesota?  Workers have been locked out of their plant for over a month and replacement workers are now working there instead.

What role do you think the Unions of Wisconsin should take when the Governor decides to no longer honor any signed labor agreements?

What role should APWU workers take when their processing plant is targeted for closure or consolidation?

These questions and concerns are no longer abstract hypotheticals. Fate has given us the task of once again having to fight the same battles that were fought for worker rights over 80 years ago. Our success in these upcoming days and months will usher in a new era for the American dream. Our failure will send us back to the dark days where working men and women knelt before the Barons of industry.

 

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees

Staffing continues to be our number one concern as we head into a new fiscal year.  Although there are nearly 200 of us in the maintenance craft, when you spread us out over three tours, three different buildings, and 17 stations and branches, it feels pretty sparse. Although management looks at labor as a liability, it is management's mismanagement that is the real liability. We have the luxury now of having mostly new equipment, but as this honeymoon  period ends, we in maintenance will be asked to do more with even less.

 I requested over a year a go to have a National Staffing Advocate come into our plant and help us define what are realistic staffing levels for a plant this size. This advocate will be assessing mech side, building side, and MS-47 issues.

My thanks to our National Director Steve Raymer for finally facilitating our request. Hopefully we will get a tangible result that we can articulate in the grievance process.
 Many of you might have met our two new PSE custodians and hopefully you have welcomed them into the fold. This PSE avenue is the only way anyone will ever get a full time career position with the Post Office and with the amount of retirements anticipated over the next several years, these PSE's should be in the drivers seat for a long career with this flag ship of the district operation. 

By the time this goes to print we should have the newest MS-47 grievance for both the LDC and the St. Paul PD&C with it's stations and branches.
Many thanks to our Maintenace stewards Gary, Jerry, Kim, William, and Elizabeth for their hard work on this project. We have identified hundreds of thousands of dollars in by passed routes and hopefully we will be successful in our Step 3 appeal.

Also, some of you might be aware that we are presently in local negotiations. I will keep you updated on the progress of these. Local negotiations happen every time we enter a new contract and it is our opportunity and management's to tweak certain understandings.

Wow, where did the summer go?

Dave Geissinger
Maintenance Craft Director 

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My Fellow Maintenance Employees - from the January 2011 Postmark Over the past 20 some months that I have been craft director we have experienced some of the largest changes of our postal careers. Excessing, moving, and a new building all come to mind. The future will probably hold even more challenges as mail operations continue to consolidate and technical advances evolve to newer and higher levels.  As I contemplate these future challenges I just have to admit to myself that I no longer have the energy or drive that it takes to continue to be of service to you. Each day the issues of checklists for equipment, routes, inventories, along with MS-47 and MS-63 considerations get more complex and more difficult to nail down. The tasks before us continue to change and the energy levels needed are more than I care to give. I will not accept a nomination for craft director for this next term. Many of you have come to expect a level of service from your union stewards and it is my sincere hope that some of you will step up and be stewards yourselves. The realities of what is looming on the horizon are more daunting than ever and your union local needs new energy and vitality to deal with these. I will continue the tasks at hand until my term expires and I would like to thank all of you for your support. Sincerely Dave Geissinger   
 
 

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 reprinted from the November 2010 Postmark

Everyone who has walked through the North end of the Eagan Plant has looked on in awe at the assembly of the FSS machines. These massive machines will be what I think is the tipping point for our understaffed situation in Maintenance. We endured 60 hour weeks because of the move and the de-postalization of the Kellogg building, but these machines, because they are so intricate, because they are expected to do so much, because they are not perfected, will probably be the straw that breaks the camel's back. If management is expecting it can pull  ET's off each run tour to "man" these monstrosities, who will be left to do DB's? Only a handful of people will be trained by the acceptance date of these machines. How many hours per week will these few people be expected to put in? It just seems like the house of cards is about to collapse, but maybe that is a good thing. The entire Northland District will be looking at the FSS productivity numbers and this will bear heavily on management and their stress levels. They in turn will try to unload on us craft employees. Once again, if being on the OT list is too much, get off. If you are in a situation where management is really leaning on you, ask for a steward. We don't want to lash out at all this insanity and find ourselves getting walked out or terminated. We need a lot more people trained on this equipment than the current level of training billets provide, we need to work safely and not hurriedly in response to stressed out managers, and most of all, we need to stay united and supportive of each other in a calm and rational manner.

 

Dave Geissinger

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APWU                                                   APWU     

Dawn Ecker,  President     St. Paul, MN Area Local                       November 18, 2010__

www.stpaulapwu.org                                                                                   651-778-1637__

 

 

 

MAINTENANCE CUSTODIAN BULLETIN

 

MS-47 GRIEVANCE SETTLEMENT

 

          As some of you are already aware, the MS-47 grievance of 2008-2009 has been settled and each of the Custodians that worked at the St. Paul P & DC and its Stations and Branches during that 2008 and 2009 period should be getting part of this settlement on the November 26th or the December 10th pay day.

 

          This settlement was for custodial routes that were not completed at the St. Paul P & DC and its Stations and Branches only.  It does not include the LDC or any Associate Offices. 

 

If you do not see this settlement on your paycheck by December 10th, let me know.

 

Remember, you must have worked as a Custodian during this 2008 and 2009 time frame at the St. Paul P & DC or its Stations and Branches to be eligible for this award.

 

Yours in solidarity,

 

Dave Geissinger

Maintenance Craft Director

St. Paul, MN Area Local

American Postal Workers Union

 

My fellow Maintenance employees:
 
To date, the new plant here in Eagan is unfolding pretty much as we had anticipated. The
                                             staffing package is grossly inadequate, route sheets do not exist, equipment inventories are incomplete and missing, and areas
                                             that were recently open space are now turf wars between crafts. The only thing that has gone right with this entire move has
                                             been Maintenance and their moving of the many machines, everything else has been a borderline fiasco.
 
I have requested that our local president request that our National
                                             Staffing Advocate come in to St. Paul and do a staffing analysis of this new building both mech side and building side along
                                             with the stations, branches, AO's. They will also analyze our MS-47 measurements and frequencies for their own inadequacies.
                                             I need indisputable data to fight and win in these many areas of battle. If we prevail in these grievances, not only will
                                             we enjoy more overtime pay, we will ensure staffing and jobs for future Maintenance employees. Remember, the penalty for understaffing
                                             is overtime. Don't sign off on a route sheet that you know is incomplete. Don't work on a standing work order. Do your job
                                             safely and don't sell yourself or your future replacement short. 
 

Dave Geissinger

My fellow maintenance employees

 

As I write this in early August it is still the calm before the storm. As you read this however, we should be in the throes of the move and we are finding out first hand how well the plan is going. At this early date, I already know that we have a new maintenance manager, a new MOS manager, and new Labor representatives meeting with us on Step 2 grievances. With all the overtime that some of us are enjoying and others are dreading, it is easy for many of us to be overwhelmed. The EAP counselors are keenly aware that

For some, the change to this big factory environment, the overtime, the different commute, coupled with back to school, the end of summer, and spending weeks down at Norman training on new equipment is going to be just too much. If the grind is getting to be too much, do yourself a favor and get off the overtime list and talk to your doctor and EAP on what will be the best strategy for you to get through this most difficult period. We are all getting older and this move will take a toll on us only if we let it.

 

Dave Geissinger

 

My Fellow Maintenance Employees

 

Many thanks to the Rochester APWU local for hosting us for the Minnesota State APWU convention. It is important for our own purposes to meet with the many small locals we have across the state and make them aware of our concerns about moving to a new mega plant. Also I think that when all is said and done, we are moved, and everything shakes out, we are going to be the lucky ones who are assigned to this brand new flag ship of a plant. It is this message that all these other locals are starting to comprehend.

 

 

Dave Geissinger

Maintenance Craft Director

My Fellow Maintenance Employees (reprinted from the April 2010 Postmark)

 

As the months pass by and we near our move to the new plant in Eagan, it is becoming more apparent that not only will some equipment at that plant not be inventoried, but there will not be checklists, routes, or even lockout/tag out procedures in place. It takes a substantial commitment of time to implement all that will be required to come up with the necessary checklists so that we can all do our jobs safely, but management apparently has decided that this commitment of time will not be expended and they will probably fashion our assignments much like they have done at the new Oklahoma plant with standing work orders and routines.

 

Another job eroding tactic that management intends to implement is basing daily maintenance on the amount of mail that a particular machine ran the night before. If the machine ran very little mail, you might only have a ten minute daily, if it ran a lot, you will probably get a little more time. In theory this seems practical, but it assumes that the machine isn't 28 years old to begin with and that most of the components should be replaced. One of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal is your ability to diagnose. If we are going to be ham strung in with electronic route sheets that give little or no time to work on a machine, then we must generate work orders and protect our work. Your job description details how much predictive and preventive maintenance you can engage in and not some electronic format management has endeared itself to.

 

As management continues its march towards cutting more jobs, we as maintenance employees have to look at our jobs differently. We used to argue with management about various duties that are not in our job description, now we need to argue for all the duties that ARE in our job descriptions.

 

Dave Geissinger

                                           

APWU            St. Paul, MN Area Local               APWU

Tom Edwards, President                                                          3/23/10

www.StPaulAPWU.org                                                   651-778-1637

 

Maintenance Flash Bulletin

 

          As we continue to wait and see what exactly management is talking about with their letters of excessing and staffing packages, some of our junior members, and even some senior members, should consider what we all know as certain.  We are an impacted plant.

 

          Did you know that as an employee of an impacted plant, your name goes to the top of the list for assignments as a transferee?  Your sick leave usage, safety, or disciplinary record are not taken into consideration.  You don’t have to be a member of one of the occupational groups that has been identified for excessing; you qualify because you are from this impacted plant.

 

          If you ever thought about transferring to a warmer climate or maybe going back to an area you came from, now might be your chance.  You won’t be able to take your seniority with you, but if something has been stopping you from going and living where you would rather be, you should check out “e-reassign” today.

 

          Some of you who are junior BEM’s, ET’s, or MPE’s might want to grab the bull by the horns and consider assignments elsewhere as a transferee.  No one is going to lose their job with excessing, but some people are going to be displaced.

 

          Your union is working hard on getting the number of people impacted down to a minimum, and it is your decision if you want to wait and see what management offers you, but if you ever thought about going to a sunnier locale, the next 30 to 90 days might be your golden window of opportunity.

 

Dave Geissinger

Maintenance Craft Director 

 

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My Fellow Maintenance Workers:

 

As you all know by now, the Maintenance staffing package from Western Area has been submitted to the APWU. Besides the usual tactics of down playing the amount of time for a route on a piece of equipment, this time they have reinvented basic arithmetic. Somehow a larger building, with more complex machinery, more tray mail, and more dock doors for trucks more MOPE equipment equals fewer maintenance positions. The cover page of the staffing package lists 18 maintenance positions to be cut via excessing, but management informed the APWU that any maintenance excessing will not occur until October or November of this year. We move everything into the new building expeditiously, get everything up and running, and then they thank us by cutting our positions.

 

I recently attended the regional Labor Management meeting and the master of ceremonies was Tony Williams. Tony went on and on about how we are losing money, how we must change, how we must attract as much new business as possible, and as I looked around the room it occurred to me, the same management team that drove the Post Office into the ground is now being put in charge of saving it. They have cluster groups and leadership teams. They have presentations and charts. They have the whole thing figured out, but where is the input from craft employees. There is a wealth of knowledge and common sense amongst our senior employees. They have seen much of this before and have achieved certain wisdom, but management is placing its trust in the same bean counters that misplaced 75 billion over the past 3 decades. This point seems to escape management, but when their lofty goals of move in target dates and equipment productivity go unrealized, they will blame it all on someone's sick leave usage, and never their flawed vision.

 

We know our jobs and we are going to insist that our work be performed correctly, safely, and in accordance with manufacturer’s recommendations. We might not be able to influence the folly that is occurring at the top, but we will enforce every sentence of the contract. Try to attend as many union meetings as possible so you personally become well versed on what your rights and obligations are.

 

Dave Geissinger

 

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APWU                                           APWU

Tom Edwards, President      St. Paul, MN Area Local           February 11,  2010

 

 

Attention: Maintenance Members

 

The St. Paul Area Local has received the maintenance staffing package for the new Eagan facility.  The following is management’s projected impact to the rank and file of the maintenance craft.  These numbers are FLUID, as management changes their plans, i.e. machinery, equipment, etc, the numbers too may changes.

 

        5 level 10 Electronic Technicians

        3 level 9 Maintenance Mechanics (MPE)

        7 level 9 Building Equipment Mechanics

        3 level 4 Elevator Operators

 

        Management has notified the local that as of 2/4/10, management anticipates excessing 18 maintenance employees from the installation.  The National Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article 38.3.k.5 #1 states: Installation seniority governs in identifying excess employees within an occupational group and level.

 

        The Local Memorandum of Understanding, Article 38 further defines excessing by tour and section.

 

        As of now, management has not informed the local of how and when they intend to start excessing.  We will continue to meet regularly with management.  We will keep you informed as details become available.

 

My Fellow Maintenance Workers

 

          Now that we have perhaps one of the most turbulent and game changing decades many of us have ever experiences behind us, it would do well for all of us to contemplate the near future and do whatever we can to become players and not just casual observers of what will be the defining moments for our local and for our St. Paul P&DC.

 

          As we move closer to our move date to Eagan, it would behoove even the most apathetic of our members to start attending the General Membership meetings.  These meetings are your lifeline in finding out how other members feel about the issues, observe debate and argument over these issues, and ultimately vote on what could be some of the most important memorandums of understanding and constitutional questions our local has ever faced.  Your dues are your ticket to put yourself at the center of these debates.  If you know a fellow employee who is a non-member, tell him or her that these are important times to be a member and we could use their understanding and support as well.

 

          As maintenance employees, we will have an up close look at new machinery that will shape our future.  We must start fresh and call management on phony route sheets and bogus time allotments for work orders.  We must do the route in its entirety and if that means calling it incomplete because of time constraints, then so be it.  We need to protect the work, not only for ourselves, but for the many who will come after us.  The Eagan plant will let us put to rest much of the counter productive culture that has plagued the relationship of labor and management in St. Paul.  The Postal Service is spending millions on the latest technology and we need to protect these capital assets.  We cannot allow apathetic managers to run everything into the ground again.  Just doing our job, in an orderly fashion, will help the Postal Service be viable and help future postal employees enjoy the rewards of gainful employment.

 

Dave Geissinger

Maintenance Craft Director

Maintenance Report

 

 

          I would like to thank the Wausau Wisconsin APWU for putting on a very successful John Akey seminar this past August.  The Maintenance Round Table discussions were chaired by our National Maintenance Director Steve Raymer and Business Agent Troy Rorman and much insight was gained by all the new maintenance stewards who were in attendance.  It was invaluable for all of us to sit around a table with National Officers and hopefully it will focus our future efforts in the grievance process.

 

          Our maintenance step 2 grievance caseload has dropped by 27% thanks in part to the tireless efforts of your trustee and step 2 designee Karen Volkman.  We hope to continue this pace and hope that most of the step 2 cases will be resolved or moved forward before we move to the new building.

 

          Hopefully by the time you are reading this, some of your new building questions will start to be answered.  Naturally staffing is foremost on everyone’s mind and as things become available, I will make certain that you are the first to know.

 

Your fellow maintenance employee,

 

Dave Geissinger

My Fellow Maintenance Employees:

          Congratulations to all of you for having the highest percentage of votes cast of the APWU crafts.  It was a close election and I hope all of you will take some time and thank Rod Renner for his hard work and diligence these past two years.  We are united more than ever and we have had numerous excellent candidates step up to the plate desiring to become stewards. In the weeks to come we will be forming an excellent team which we hope will be of service to you for years to come. It may be a little cumbersome in the beginning, but I assure you, all of the stewards that are certified will have YOUR best interests in mind.

          As I see it, the battle lines are being drawn and it’s going to come down to these three focal points: Staffing, subcontracting, and the Eagan move.  I do not intend to reinvent the wheel as we bring the fight to management.  These battles are being fount at numerous locals across the country and I intend to find out the successful strategies others are using.

          Maintenance is the craft that is absorbing other crafts that have too many employees for the future of the Post Office.  Maintenance is the craft that has been told that MPE’s and ET’s are not eligible for VERA retirements.  Maintenance is the craft that has a very high percentage of veterans in its ranks because Veteran’s Preference made openings for custodians.  To be the craft that grows in the face of more complex automation is something we should all be proud of.  We will forever be united with our clerks and MVS members in our American Postal Workers Union and welcome them whenever possible into our ranks, and know the complexion of the APWU is changing.

Thanks to all of you,

Dave Geissinger

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