Question:

I would much more prefer that your letter read: “Congratulations! After working 40 hours a week for the past 12 years as a PTF, we have finally forced the USPS to give you your title of ‘regular,’ which should have been yours all along. In addition, the USPS will have to pay you for all the overtime they have denied you all these years.”

That’s the kind of letter I want to receive from you! At which time I will gladly join the union again. Until then — don’t insult me!

Awilda, Non-Member, Florida Keys Area Local

President Burrus:

Thank you for your response to my letter [PDF] requesting that you join the union and assist your fellow workers in making postal employment better. You responded that you would have preferred a letter from my office congratulating you on being converted to full-time status and that your interest in joining the union is dependent on this conversion.

I find your promise to be unbelievable, based upon your past history. Over the 12 years of your career, you have received pay increases of $1,300 per year, step increases, no-layoff protection, health benefits, and a host of other contractual protections negotiated by the union on your behalf. But while receiving these union-negotiated benefits, you cite conversion to full-time status as more important and your single litmus test for union membership.

This is obviously not true, because if full-time status was the most important aspect of your employment, I am certain that other employers in your area offer full-time opportunities — albeit at lower wages, fewer benefits and less job protection than that negotiated by APWU. You have made an obvious choice to continue postal employment as a part-time employee and I suspect that given your education and skills and the job market in your area, you will continue as a postal employee while criticizing the union for not achieving your objectives without your help.

You create an endless circle of expectations demanding that the vehicle for achieving your objective accomplish your goal prior to your participation. The postal union movement is 100 years old; imagine if the members in 1906 had demanded that we achieve the benefits we now receive prior to forming the union and engaging in the struggle. We would have forfeited each accomplishment along the way — and there have been many. There would be no union and as postal employees we would have yet to achieve those positives that continue to attract you to postal employment. Can you imagine clerks in 1906 demanding a salary of $42,000 per year and withholding their membership until it was achieved? Such logic is seriously flawed.

The union does not convert employees from part time to full time, postal management does. We negotiate the contractual provisions requiring such conversions. These provisions include a guarantee that in offices with 200 or more employees 80 percent of the employees will be full time; PTFs working 40 hours or more per week for six consecutive months require the conversion of the senior PTF to full time; and if a PTF works eight hours within 10 on the same five days each week for a six-month period, the assignment must be converted to full time.

We have also negotiated provisions permitting PTFs in offices where conversion opportunities are limited to transfer to other offices where conversions are more frequent.

These provisions are intended to maximize the opportunities for PTFs to convert to full-time status. Even though we have made every effort, we have failed to achieve agreement with management that all PTFs will convert to full-time status regardless of the office in which they work. Until we achieve such an agreement, conversion opportunities will depend on the office in which individual PTFs are employed and aggressive union contract enforcement.

As you recall, I enclosed a membership form in the previous letter. I assume that you discarded it, but enclosed is a different form for your completion [PDF], verifying that you do not wish to benefit from the union’s efforts while you withhold membership. If conversion to full time is your test, I challenge you to confirm that you do not wish to be represented by the union until that is achieved.

May 25, 2006