The following is an editorial by postal employee Ronald Williams, Jr.

Excessing Means…

According to published data on the USPS.com website in the year 2008 more than 40 postal executives received pay-for-performance packages as an annual pay raise ranging from $59 to $73,000 paying out more than 1.2 million dollars on the backs of employees who work extremely hard every day to keep them successful. We get hot dogs, and hamburger incentives which contribute to higher cholesterol, obesity, and unscheduled sick leave paid for by the company. They get the BBQ and enough loot in most cases to fully pay for a luxurious sport utility vehicle. This gives new meaning to rank has its privileges (R.H.I.P.) Meanwhile, Whiskey, Oscar, Romeo, Kilo, Echo, Ringo, Sierra (W.O.R.K.E.R.S) have to involuntarily get out of town.

Excessing often seems like a fancy word used by the agency which signifies effective business management. I can excess you inside the building, or I can excess you outside my facility. Although you are an assigned regular, we need to juggle your hours, and unscheduled days to make my budget. Your labor contract gives you the title Full Time Regular; the management can make you a Full Time Irregular. Senior managers walk around with a thought bubble over their head that reads; believe me, I am going to do whatever it takes to make budget. That means “I do the greatest good by moving the greatest number.” This is similar to the theme of medical triage in a mass casualty situation. In the facility where I work there are so many rumors about the number of employees that will be impacted with this handy little tool designed to circumvent union contracts, and no layoff clauses. The thinking implies let’s see who can take a transfer beating, and who can help drive my facility costs down. If I nudge workers the right way they just might decide on their own to improve our attrition rate by quitting in turn keeping down the unemployment figures, and costs for the labor department.

One day forty-five people will get the excess axe, the next month the number is sixty, and a few months later the talk is one-hundred plus. Scuttlebutt has it that more negotiations are being verbalized throughout the country. Facility alpha better get their people moved before facility bravo because the slowest turtle could land their selectees thousands of miles away. Meanwhile, if you are junior, and I don’t mean by your last name, you are sweating bullets and beginning to get stressed out because having to relocate is emotionally and physically stressful. These days we often hear that the average age of an employee at the Postal Service is fifty years old. That would lead me to believe that the most junior folks are in their forties and whether you are generation X or baby boomer the latest buzzword that sounds like “X-cess” represents the unknown. We know this is the age group when folks are trying to raise children, assist parents, paying lots of bills, dealing with declining health, and associated expenses, etc. Now the company wants to drop the stress induced relocation bombshell on individuals because the budget looks bleak, and they feel we got too many employees with a yielding attrition rate that is dropping slower than the declining mail volumes. Junior employees in one facility will continue to be junior when moved to the next facility, and as one senior manager said “I have no control over what happens to you when you are involuntarily assigned to another facility.” He couldn’t sympathize or empathize either! Bosses are so worried about pay for performance packages and incentives that they are unable to focus on people initiatives. They forget that people are the most important asset that we have and focus on the human aspect like they do counting numbers. It is funny how when our executives get to a certain level on the ladder they drift further away from the employees. Anytime they want to communicate it has got to be one way through a webcast, bulletin board, or flyer talking about service scores or productivity. An area vice president or district postmaster could be in the same building as thousands of employees and will not come out to hold town hall meetings as a courtesy to talk about the state of the business. They are too large to visit with the same employees that put them in their jobs, or is something else wrong? That behavior sends the message “I did dirt to get here, now you are in charge, and it’s your turn to do dirt.” Then they slip into secluded isolation and only get their reality checks from their direct reports who only tell them what they think they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. That paves the way to some nasty blind-side surprises. I once heard one senior manager asking a junior manager “How come this is the first time I’m hearing about this.” The true answer is because he is barricaded in the penthouse by yes men, women, secretaries, and assistants. Might as well get a bobble-head! They won’t tell you when the building is on fire either.

If you ever watch the television show the Undercover Boss, bosses truly find out how much they are left out of the loop when they are on the deck plate for more than five minutes. Being around and taking the time to experience life on the front line can be a wake-up call for those who have forgotten where they come from but currently holding the flag on mahogany row. A Marine Corps general sleeps two tents over from the troops on the battlefield, a Navy admiral enters the ship the same way everyone else does, the New York City Mayor takes the subway to work every day, and I notice postal executives arrive through a side entrance (even if they have to make one) and leave the same way minimizing any contact with the little people. This gives new meaning to the thinking that the higher a leader climbs, the smaller their ears look, and the bigger the mouth gets about policies, procedures, and corporate regulations. If we could just get our leaders to empathize! That is truly the one quality that is needed as a mentor if one wants to change the world, the company, the organization.

For the future we can only hope that labor unions and management personnel are diligently working out front and behind the scenes to come up with beneficial ideas and incentives to entice the most senior, highest paid, and oldest workers to voluntarily move on with their lives. Recent news articles have written stories about retiring and deceased postal employees in their nineties. Since there is no mandatory retirement age, and we are shifting people around like chess pieces one day the youngest employee in a facility might be seventy years old. What’s wrong with that? Just a lot of young people out of work and unable to raise a family. When all the elder states-people do retire they will probably do it all at the same time. I believe that incentive packages allow people to retire or resign on their own and the longer we wait the more we have to pay. The younger generations can now move up with their postal knowledge and if more employees are needed we can build the part time workforce with workers who know what to expect about a career in the Postal Service. With this technique lives won’t be disrupted, and this action would probably be more cost efficient than paying families to relocate, and it’s guaranteed to minimize collateral damage or associated workplace stress. We need good happy people to continue to bring in the numbers. Leaders! Please prove that people are more important than numbers. We have to make good decisions today in order to remain efficient tomorrow. See you on the workroom floor.

Postal Employee Ronald Williams, Jr.