Dear Brothers and Sisters,
My apologies for not having an article on the web site. For some reason I couldn't access it.
Management has kept us very busy. As usual, they insist on violating the terms of the national agreement and federal law. The local won the NLRB hearing that was held in June of this year. The administrative law judge decided in favor of the union on every charge (a number of consolidated charges of failure of management to produce requested information to Curtis and myself).
I want the membership to know, if they do not already, that USPS wants your job to go away. I'm sure you notice the attrition rate here locally; a lot of people have left for one reason or another and are being replaced by casual employees. I have filed several more casual-in-lieu-of grievances lately and several are pending arbitration. Good news finally on more PTF conversions, it appears that management is going to have to comply with a Step 2 settlement reached last year. There should be seven more conversions in the very near future. The union has, also, filed numerous grievances on residual vacancies not properly indentified as withheld pusuant to article 12, also, on vacancies that were not reverted or posted. Grienances have been filed under RI-399 issues where the union contends that the mailhandler craft is improperly performing duties which are clearly the domain of the APWU. Also, grievances have been filed on the improper reversion of duty assignments....several have been won at Step 3 and were reposted and hopefully more to come. Grievances have been filed to post new jobs on work being performed but no bid, such as the heavy table at the annex and dispatch at the main office and many other article 37 issues. I suggest that every time you can ask you immeadiate supervisor, MDO, and Plant Manager "When are you going to post such and such?", "Why are casuals working vacant duty assignments?", "When are PTF"s gong to convert into residual vacancies because there are no unassigned?", and "Why are mailhandlers performing distribution functions?" Drive 'em crazy with questions and complaints. We must all stay very aggressive in protecting APWU work.
I would like to thank Brother Reed for all his personal time spent working to make Waco a better local and for the support he has given me.
If I can be of any assistance to anyone, feel free to contact me or call the annex office, 399-9495.
IN SOLIDARITY,
John Baker
Vice President
