Facts Sheet
On Monday, March 23, 2009, management announced its intention to abolish and repost almost every mail-handler job.
On Monday, June 8, the union filed a court injunction to stop management's plans. It also filed an unfair labor practice with the National Labor Relations Board. The union took these extraordinary steps because all efforts to find a diplomatic solution have failed.
Management is reducing the number of mail-handler jobs in South Jersey from 286 to 275.
No mail handlers are being excessed from the facility.
Tour 1 is gaining five jobs. Tour 2 is losing nine jobs and Tour 3 is losing four jobs.
The Local Memorandum of Understanding in South Jersey specifies that the entire tour is a section. Previous union leaders wrote that into the LMOU to make sure overtime was shared equally among all mail handlers on a tour and that only the most-junior employees would be forced to work a holiday. Management is now using section-is-a-tour against us by claiming that enables it to create 65 mail-handler relief jobs, i.e., they can work anywhere on the tour because the section is the tour.
Management says it is doing this because the current bids are out of alignment with the mail volume. It says no operation in the plant has sufficient workload for seven days and that the mail volume and scheduled days off don't match up.
The union says management has promised to uphold the National Agreement. That agreement is clear about the need to minimize the effect of job changes. The union also contends that management cannot create a job that is essentially a full-time regular PTF. The contract is clear about the need to post specific duty assignments for every job.
The National Agreement governs the way mail handlers bid on new jobs when their old jobs have been abolished or reposted. This is not a management decision.
Article 12.6 of the National Agreement states that the senior employee will be able to select the job he or she desires. Once the senior employee selects a job, the next most-senior employee will select from the remaining jobs. And so on, until all the jobs are chosen.
Employees on any tour can bid on any posted job. But jobs on shrinking tours will be awarded first to employees that are currently on those tours.
If a senior employee decides to bid off-tour, that opens up the senior's job to any employee who was excessed off the tour. Employees who were excessed off their tour have retreat rights back to their original tour as long as they bid on every single job that becomes available. Otherwise, they lose their retreat rights.
Preference-eligible Vets have special privileges when jobs are being abolished and reposted. If a preference-eligible Vet is holding a Level 5 job, he or she cannot be involuntarily demoted. In other words, the Service must find another Level 5 job for that Vet even if it means looking outside the facility.
