Tri County First Area Local APWU - CRAFT DIRECTORS AND STEWARDS

LETTER TO SANTA CLAUS

Christmas pattern design

I sent a first class letter to the North Pole soon after the first frost in November. My letter needed 17 cents extra postage because my list of wishes is so long. First, I asked for all the things I didn't get last year, such as world peace and an end to poverty. Then I wrote down every toy I want, but as a union person I want all of you to have all the toys you want too, so that made my list even longer. And there are other things I thought Santa could bring to us all, such as a spirit of giving and joy at a time of economic crisis. But I wanted to think of something more original, that would help all of us. So, Santa, what I am asking you for that nobody else is going to ask for is a revival of the idea of workplace democracy. Can you imagine getting to vote for who your boss is? And vote for the business plan your office will follow? And vote to share in the rewards of success? We might start to look forward to coming to work again, and that is a gift we could all use! HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all of you from your Clerk Craft Director and Webmaster, Joanne Brown.

CONTACT INFO

CLERK CRAFT DIRECTOR JOANNE BROWN
Tri-County First Area Local APWU
PO Box 1063
Lansdowne, PA 19050
Phone: (610) 544-6415/16
Fax: (610) 544-6417

Send an e-mail to Clerk Craft Director Brown

TRI COUNTY APWU WEB SITE UNDERGOES MAJOR DEVELOPMENT

Clerk Craft Director Report from the October 2008 Newsletter

by Joanne Brown

There is so much going on now that I hope all of you are keeping in touch with our local’s activities by visiting our web site, www.triapwu.org, at least once a week. I’ve done a lot to develop the site in the past two months.

There’s a new "Quote of the Day" feature on the Home page – each time you visit our web site, you will see a new motivational quote, listed with the author and source.

There are two new features to give you the knowledge that is power in the battle we are facing. "It’s Your Business" is a news watch feature that highlights web-published news stories about lost revenue, corporate corruption, and other news related to our success or failure as a non-profit, self-sufficient public service. “Your Work Environment” is a news watch feature that keeps you informed of the fight of your coworkers and other USPS union locals against the persistent harassment and abuse that has become the strategy of a disempowered lower level management frustrated with the impossibility of implementing the tasks given to them by an upper management seeking to affix a productivity or price tag to every second of every hour you work.

I’ve upgraded the home page so that it is now a source of news stories that are of interest to you and are changed or updated on a weekly basis.

Now there’s a "History Corner" on the home page, and this will be developed into a link to a separate page with more historical items. The "History Corner" was launched with a digital copy of a guide to scheme study issued by the USPS back when it was the Post Office Department.

The most recent newsletter articles written by our Local Officers are now featured at the top of the respective Officer’s web page. These articles contain hyperlinks to take you to source web sites for some of the issues mentioned in the article. I’ve added an "Archive" feature to each Officer’s page to provide links to past newsletter articles and other original written contributions by our local’s Officers, as well as contact information for the Officer.

There’s a new "Training Center" page to help shop stewards with their role in handling Step One and Step Two grievances. The Training Center is available to all those who visit the site. Members ONLY may register and find all grievance handling forms available at the "Forms and Charts" link, as well as submit “Letters to the Editor” with opinions or questions (you’ll get a thoughtful and interesting response from President Hennessy) and find publications available to members only in the "Library" link.

At the May general membership meeting, our local passed two resolutions to send to the national APWU convention in Las Vegas. One resolution was to set regular hours in all offices to eight hours within nine (currently it’s ten) with a limit of 2 hours for PTF lunch breaks. This resolution was passed by the convention and will be presented to management in our next contract negotiations. It will be presented at every negotiating session until it is passed. The second resolution concerned the health plan and proposed changing the current restriction of adding a legal spouse to a family plan to giving the member the option to add any one adult regardless of relationship. This resolution has been tabled for discussion to the next convention. If you would like to read the full text of these resolutions, please visit the “Local Business” page at www.triapwu.org.

I’ve developed an e-mail alert subscription list for members. You are automatically added to the list when you register on the web site. Your email address is kept confidential. I send the alerts weekly or on an as-needed basis, to keep you posted on the most recent developments. Please visit the “Register” page if you would like to subscribe.

In August I took some time to drive around Delaware County and take a few photos to add to the “Photo Gallery” on the web site. There is a photo of the Strath Haven Condominiums, the home of our new union hall.

MYSTERY SHOPPER DISCIPLINE

I received a number of complaints and grievances this summer from clerks being hit with discipline after their office received a poor mystery shopper report or retail observation. As your Clerk Craft Director, I expect that discipline should be the last resort of your supervisor to communicate expectations to you about your sales skills. Is the APWU on board with you being a Sales and Service Associate now instead of just a window clerk? Yes, we are. We want you to be experts in customer service and leaders in bringing in the revenue that funds all of our salaries. Is the APWU going to tolerate management’s continual choice of negative and abusive means to achieve this end? No, we are not. You don’t have to have a business degree to know that modern styles of management emphasize rewards and other positive actions and words to get lasting results, instead of bullying and intimidation that later end up in a stressed employee calling out sick.

Carol Ann Santosusso and I attended the District Manager’s Quarterly Labor Briefing in September, and we raised the issue of clerks being disciplined for the Mystery Shopper. The District Manager stated this is not the policy of the District and was most likely the result of frustration of supervisors when clerks continually ignore instructions for customer service expectations. I proposed that the District Manager initiate training for Supervisors in how to handle their frustration in ways that do not include belittling, verbal abuse, threatening, and harassment of employees.

HEARING VOICES

One of the many service talks you probably didn’t get, but were supposed to, concerned the “Voice of the Employee” results for your office for the quarter. As you are aware, the APWU recommends that members decline to participate in these surveys because they bypass the voice you already have through your contractual union representation. However, even without including APWU members who decline to participate, these scores have been consistently rock bottom in the Philadelphia District for quite awhile now. The poor VOE numbers resulted in the following statement in the service talk mentioned above: “…(P)eople with a negative opinion usually are eager to share it. In contrast, people with a positive opinion are sometimes reluctant to share it…” Sooooooo - those terrible, disgraceful VOE numbers are because the employees are afraid to say anything nice, and not because of the ridiculous working conditions we have been enduring? Seems like no matter how loud, our voices just can’t be heard unless we’re saying what someone wants to hear.

If you haven’t already heard of Union Plus, check out the link on www.triapwu.org. Union Plus offers numerous benefits tailored to union members. I’ve submitted our local web site to the Union Plus award program to be considered for “best web site promotion” of Union Plus. The award is $1000. I will keep you posted on whether or not we win.

I’ve said it umpteen times in this article and I’m going to close by saying it again:
PLEASE VISIT www.triapwu.org. and click those links!!!

CRAFT DIRECTORS