Interest Arbitration: APWU Presents Final Witness Testimony With Clerk and Custodial Evidence

Today at Interest Arbitration, APWU presented evidence from the Clerk and Maintenance Craft Divisions.

In the morning session, Clerk Craft Director Lamont Brooks addressed USPS management’s attacks on union postal clerks’ work and our demand for better staffing in the Clerk Craft.

He raised our objections to Postmasters doing bargaining unit work in Level 18 offices. He outlined how management is has continuously skirted the 2010 global settlement, which limited Level 18 office postmasters to doing no more than 15 hours of bargaining unit work in USPS’s 8,660 small Post Offices.

Director Brooks also outlined the impact of major understaffing on clerks’ work. He tackled the USPS proposals to introduce a universal PSE, forcing PSEs to work extremely varied duties from window duty to mail processing and argued for greater staffing of the Delivery Barcode Sorters (DBCS) machines.

In the afternoon, the Maintenance Division’s Director Idowu Balogun and Assistant Director Jimmie Waldon gave evidence on custodial issues. Director Balogun rebutted Postal Management’s attempts to carve out more exceptions to Line H and to introduce temporary subcontracting and PSEs for custodial work. He showed how the system already contains plenty of flexibility and he proposed that custodial work be returned to the 1983 MS-47 TL 3 standards.

Assistant Director Waldon described settling several hundreds of Line H grievances across the Country for failing to staff to the 90 percent level, in line with Line H MOU. He testified that Article 12 withholding, Long Term absences, Military leave, FMLA were not raised as a defense by the Postal services in 99 percent of Line H meetings with the Postal Service.

Interest Arbitration witness testimony and evidentiary hearings will conclude tomorrow as both sides present their final documentation.