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Ask President Burrus

Question:

Why weren’t window clerks upgraded in the contract extension?

Joe, Greater Los Angeles Area Local

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President Burrus:

A number of members have asked why Retail Sales Associate positions — and others — were not upgraded in the proposed contract extension. The premise of the question seems to be that APWU could upgrade the positions if we wanted to.

I preface my response by stating that an upgrade for the Retail Sales position (and several others) was and is one of my highest priorities. The APWU is convinced that the skill, knowledge, and work content of these positions justify the upgrade to a higher level. The problem is that postal management does not agree.

In discussions about the contract extension, management officials cited several reasons for their refusal to upgrade Retail Sales Associates. I will not list their reasons, because I do not agree with their conclusion and I do not want to be associated with their position. Nevertheless, on each occasion that I advanced the upgrade of Retail Sales positions, management’s spokesman responded that the USPS would not agree to its inclusion in the extension agreement.

I was left with the choice of finalizing the other terms of the tentative contract extension or rejecting those other benefits and pursuing the upgrade in negotiations that were scheduled to begin on Aug. 29, 2005. Because management had already made its position clear on the upgrade of retail clerks, it is certain that if we opted for negotiations instead of the contract extension, the Collective Bargaining Agreement would not be finalized short of arbitration.

More than likely, arbitrating the 2005 agreement would extend into the late summer or early fall of 2006. Throughout that period, as a practical matter, the 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement would be extended. If we chose negotiations instead of the tentative agreement, management would have achieved a one-year contract extension without any upgrades, without any guaranteed pay increase, and without any of the other advancements agreed to in the extension.

The obvious choice was the 1.6 percent pay increase, two cost-of-living adjustments (which are projected to total approximately $1,400), along with 14 upgrades, plus the other positive changes, and to defer to 2006 the dispute over the salary level of retail clerks.

This was an easy decision for me. I had the opportunity to provide wage increases of approximately $1,400 for all APWU-represented employees, including retail clerks, as opposed to no increases at all.

As we prepare to wage the battle for upgrading retail clerks and a host of other positions, I remind APWU members of the ruling by Arbitrator Stephen B. Goldberg in the case of the 2000 Collective Bargaining Agreement, when the APWU sought upgrades for all APWU-represented employees. He wrote the following:

“Initially, I reject the APWU argument that the Panel should consider the wages paid to carriers in determining the appropriate wages for clerks. While internal comparability may be relevant to minimize workplace tensions, the Postal Reorganization Act requires that the Panel focus on external comparability — wages and benefits paid in the private sector – not on internal comparability or internal equity. I also reject the related argument that parity between clerks and carriers must be reestablished as a matter of past practice or of avoiding collective bargaining disruptions….”

This is the conclusion of a respected postal arbitrator whose ruling will be referred to in any future litigation.

To those APWU-represented employees who are disappointed that their positions have not been upgraded, the alternative is rejecting approximately $1,400 in wage increases and the other improvements in exchange for the opportunity to arbitrate the appropriate pay level.

The question is not why the union did not achieve the upgrades, but rather, “What must we sacrifice in order to arbitrate the appropriate pay level?”

July 20, 2005

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