KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The U.S. Department of Labor has entered into a settlement agreement with Knoxville-based Heartland Transportation Inc., a contract mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, to resolve findings by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration alleging that an employee was terminated for complaining about defective vehicles, in violation of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act.

“OSHA will continue to ensure that the whistleblower protection provisions of the STAA are properly and thoroughly enforced, while always keeping open the opportunity for settlement negotiations,” said Cindy A. Coe, OSHA’s regional administrator in Atlanta. “In this case, we are pleased to enter into a settlement agreement that solidifies this commitment.”

In August 2009, the employee was assigned to deliver a truckload of U.S. mail to a customer in Pontiac, Mich., when he found that his assigned trailer had a nonworking light. After he complained, the light was repaired and the delivery made. The employee had complained about such mechanical failures on a number of previous occasions, but the problems recurred. Accordingly, he informed his employer that he would not drive trucks with such failures in the future. Upon returning to the company’s facility from Michigan, the driver found that his name had been removed from the driving schedule. He inquired about this development and was informed during a meeting to discuss the issue that his employment had been terminated. The employee then submitted a whistleblower complaint to OSHA, which conducted an investigation.

According to the settlement agreement, the company will pay the complainant $31,200, including $9,895 in back wages. Additionally, the company agreed to purge any personnel records regarding the involuntary discharge of the employee and provide a neutral reference to any prospective employers. The company also agreed to post a notice informing all employees of their right to raise safety concerns or conduct any other protected activity under the STAA without suffering retaliation.

OSHA enforces the whistleblower provisions of the STAA and 20 other statutes protecting employees who report violations of various airline, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health care reform, nuclear, pipeline, public transportation agency, railroad, maritime and securities laws. Employers are prohibited from retaliating against employees who raise various protected concerns or provide protected information to the employer or to the government. Employees who believe they have been retaliated against for engaging in protected conduct may file a complaint with the secretary of labor for an investigation by OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program. More information is available online at http://www.whistleblowers.gov.

HOUSTON—A neighborhood postman was being hailed as a hero Tuesday night after he helped save two young people from a burning home.

The kids, ages 12 and 14, were asleep inside the Watts family’s home in the 2800 block of Tidewater near West Orem around 9 a.m. when the fire started near an air-conditioning unit.

But right as that happened, the postman, Danny Thompson, happened to be delivering the mail.

via Mailman helps kids escape burning home | khou.com Houston.

The APWU has put the Postal Service on notice that their plan to replace Postmasters at small, rural post offices with Postmaster Reliefs (PMRs) is a direct violation of our 2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The USPS announced their POStPlan (Post Office Structure Plan) on May 9, 2012. The plan calls for reduced staffing and work hours at 13,900 small post offices, moving the Postmasters in these offices to an Administrative Post Office to manage their former post office remotely, and replacing the postmasters in those reduced-hour offices with PMRs.

In a letter to the USPS Vice President of Labor Relations [PDF], APWU President Cliff Guffey wrote: “Some of the details of the plan raise serious questions about how the Postal Service intends to reconcile POStPlan with the Postal Service’s commitments in the APWU National Agreement.”

The APWU notified management that we expect them to adhere to provisions of the National Agreement that eliminate PMRs in Level 15, -16, and -18 post offices (including rural offices that were at those levels on Nov. 10, 2010) and limit the amount of bargaining unit work that Postmasters in those offices perform.

“POStPlan violates and conflicts with some of the most critical terms and assumptions of the APWU National Agreement,” Guffey wrote.

POStPlan also conflicts with the Postal Service’s own rules, policies, arbitration awards, and settlement agreements that require:

• That the Postal Service maintain a one-to-one ratio of PMRs to Postmasters;
• That PMRs relieve Postmasters on a temporary basis to do the Postmaster’s work while the Postmaster is not at work.
• That PMRs are not to be utilized in the absence of clerical employees.

Of particular concern, the POStPlan has multiple PMRs covering for one Postmaster; has the PMRs working as permanent replacements rather than temporarily filling in for the Postmaster; and has the PMRs doing work that is neither supervisory nor managerial.

“This plan to cover window hours in solely retail operations at the impacted rural post offices with non-bargaining unit, non-supervisory and non-managerial PMRs is a blatant rejection of key underpinnings of the National Agreement, as well as the law,” Guffey said.

The plan violates our agreement in a number of ways, including:

that “when non-managerial or non-supervisory work, not otherwise excluded by Article 1.2, which was being performed by supervisors, is not longer performed by supervisors, then it must be assigned to clerk craft employees (MOU re: Clerical Work [PDF])

that all new positions and new work that is non-supervisory and non-managerial “shall be assigned to the most appropriate bargaining unit position” under Article 1.5 (MOU re: New Positions and New Work).

That there are specific limits on the number of hours of work a postmaster can perform in the Postal Service’s smaller offices (GLOBAL SETTLEMENT – [PDF]).

And that whether or not non-supervisory and non-managerial work performed by a supervisor “seeped” out of an APWU craft, the Postal Service would assign such work to a bargaining unit craft and NOT an EAS position (MOU re: Job Audits [PDF]).

“This effort to undercut the APWU must be revised before the POStPlan goes any further,” Guffey wrote.

In an award issued June 29 [PDF], Arbitrator Shyam Das sustained the APWU’s grievance over the denial of excessed employees’ retreat rights, but denied it in a dispute over the assignment of unassigned regulars to non-traditional full-time (NTFT) schedules.

The issue in the first case (Case#Q11C-4Q-C11322494) was the USPS’ refusal to permit excessed employees to retreat into NTFT duty assignments posted for bid subsequent to the conversion of part-time regulars (PTRs) and part-time flexibles (PTFs) in August 2011.

Arbitrator Das rejected all of the Employer’s arguments, finding that “[t]here is no contractual provision that supports the Postal Service’s action in precluding employees from exercising [their] retreat right until initial local placement of converted part-time employees was completed.”

Noting that the Postal Service failed to raise, let alone obtain the Union’s agreement to, such a restriction on the right of excessed employees to exercise their acknowledged retreat rights during negotiations, Arbitrator Das determined that the Postal Service’s unilateral determination to disallow the exercise of retreat right under these circumstances violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The issue of remedy was remanded to the parties and the arbitrator retained jurisdiction to resolve any remedial disputes.

The issue in the second case (Case #Q11C-4Q-C11322481) was the USPS conversion of PTRs and PTFs in August 2011 to unassigned regular status with temporary NTFT schedules.

Noting that this case raises complex issues, Arbitrator Das concluded that in the particular context of the “unique circumstances” of the August 27 th, 2011 conversion of some 9,000 affected converted PTRs and PTFs to full-time status pending initial establishment of a significant number of NTFT duty assignments, those converted employees had “no significant basis for complaint since they could be assigned under the NTFT MOU to residual NTFT duty assignments with equivalent schedules and had no reasonable expectation that they would, or would not, be placed in traditional schedules upon their conversion.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bill McAllister reports in Linn’s Stamp News that members of the USPS Board of Governors aren’t really happy about the Postmaster General’s plan to honor living persons on postage stamps. PMG Pat Donahoe announced the change in policy last September, and the USPS expected the first stamp featuring a living individual would be available sometime this year.

Linn’s says Board Chairman Thurgood Marshall wants to know more about the proposal, and notes that recently re-appointed Board member James Miller expressed opposition to the plan at his confirmation hearing. Governor James Bilbray told the magazine “Many of us have reservations about this”.

More: U.S. living person stamp plans stall