Contract Negotiations Begin Between U.S. Postal Service and American Postal Workers Union

Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement between the U.S. Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union began Sept. 1. The current contract expires Nov. 20, 2010.

“Every contract negotiation brings special challenges, and this will be no different,” APWU President William Burrus said at the opening session. “Mail volume is depressed and revenue is down, but we have faced similar circumstances before.

“The history of the Postal Service is replete with forecasts of doom and gloom, but such dire predictions have not prevented us from exploring every opportunity to achieve agreement.”

“Once again naysayers warn of the imminent demise of the Postal Service,” he said. “They demand wholesale changes to the foundation we have built over our 40-year history, ignoring the fact that each provision in the expiring contract has a history of give-and-take, the basic element of contract negotiations.”

“The road will be difficult and the outcome uncertain, but there are components of an agreement awaiting our discovery. I pledge the best efforts of the American Postal Workers Union to find a way to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.”

The grievance protests the June 11, 2008, denial of grievant’s request to transfer from West Palm Beach to the Miami P&DC, due to an unacceptable attendance record. The Union claimed that the denial was arbitrary and capricious, in violation of Article 12.6 and the Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Transfers.

The Union contended that the Service’s denial of grievant’s transfer request was arbitrary and capricious in violation of Article 12.6 and the Transfer MOU, which requires the Service to give full and fair consideration to transfer requests such as grievant’s. The Union emphasized that there is no evidence to support the Service’s consideration of any factor other than grievant’s attendance, and that even that factor was insufficiently considered in light of Suarez’s admitted failure to consider anything beyond the raw numbers on the Form 3972?s.

The arbitrator sustained the Union’s grievance; in so doing he noted:

Given the facts of this case, the language of the Transfer MOU provides a natural starting point for the analysis to follow. As the MOU provides at Section D, Suarez, as the gaining installation head, was required to give full and fair consideration to grievant’s work, safety, and attendance records. While Suarez obviously is entitled to conduct his own evaluation of those records, the provision of the MOU requiring the losing installation head to be fair in his evaluation, effectively requires the conclusion that the record on which Suarez’s “full and fair consideration” is to be based, must include consideration of the losing installation’s evaluation, which itself must be “full and fair.” . . . . the Service’s inability to demonstrate any consideration of grievant’s work and safety records would require judgment in favor of the Union. As the Transfer MOU and both parties’ citation to arbitral precedent makes clear, the Service is required to consider all three factors – work, safety, and attendance – even if its decision ultimately is based on only one. As the Transfer MOU and related cases make clear, perfection is not the standard for consideration of transfer requests.

Gary Kloepfer
Assistant Director
American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO

Burrus Update 10-2010, July 9, 2010

The Postal Service has filed a request to increase postage rates effective Jan. 2, 2011, and is proposing to raise the price of first-class, single-piece letters from 44 cents to 46 cents. Increases for other mail classes would range from 5.4 to 8 percent.

As anticipated, large mailers have gone ballistic. They have formed a new organization, the Affordable Mail Alliance, dedicated to stopping the rate hike.

The next step is a review by the Postal Regulatory Commission, which may accept, reject, or modify the proposed rates. This is the first rate request submitted under the “exigency provision” of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), and it faces stiff opposition because it would increase postage rates above the rate of inflation. The exigency provision allows the USPS to do so.

The APWU will intervene in the PRC proceedings to contest the absolute refusal by postal officials to comply with another provision of the law, which stipulates that postage discounts may be no greater than “postal costs avoided.”

Despite the Postal Service’s admission in previous rate requests that discounts exceed the costs avoided, this request would reduce the discount on five-digit pre-sorted mail by just 1/10 of 1 cent. This is preposterous!

Mailers Try to Make Employees Pay

Early indications are that the Affordable Mail Alliance will attempt to make employees the scapegoat, by claiming that postal workers — who have the benefit of collective bargaining — are paid substantially more than employees in comparable private-sector jobs.

They hope to make postal employees pay for the legislation that requires the USPS to pre-fund $56 billion in future retiree healthcare obligations over a 10-year period.

The 2010 exigency rate request is a direct response to the requirement that the Postal Service assume this cost in 10 successive annual payments ranging from $5.4 to $5.8 billion. Absent this payment, a rate increase in 2010 would have been unnecessary.

Can you guess who the principal supporters of the legislation that requires the onerous payments were? Yes, the large mailers. Now the same mailers who supported the requirement cry that the payments should be made from the wages and benefits of postal employees.

When postal employees retire, they assume responsibility for approximately 30 percent of health insurance premiums, which is a significant increase from what they paid when they were active employees covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement. For example, an employee who is enrolled in the Blue Cross Standard Family Option pays $132.83 biweekly or $287.80 monthly during active employment; upon retirement, this payment escalates to $400.97 monthly. The balance of the premium is paid by the government, which is reimbursed by the USPS.

The PAEA requires the Postal Service to pre-fund the USPS share of this future payment, and now the mailers want to force postal employees to pay the USPS share through wage-and-benefit reductions equal to the PAEA-required payments. This would result in postal retirees paying 100 percent of their retirement healthcare premiums — by shifting the pre-funding requirement to employees through cuts in their pay and benefits.

Exigency Case Was Inevitable

The simple truth is that the exigency rate case was inevitable. The 17 percent decline in mail volume, coupled with the pre-funding requirement, has left the USPS on the brink of insolvency.

Because the Postal Service does not earn or set aside profits, any USPS deficit bears a direct relationship to the cost of postal operations – including mail collection, processing, transportation, delivery, retail services, and support. By law, the postage that funds these operations must equal the costs.

The mailers comprising the Affordable Mail Alliance want mail service, but they do not want to pay the actual cost of those services. Instead, they are seeking to shift attention to the employees. They are suggesting a renewed focus on closing stations and branches, consolidating mail processing facilities, and demanding concessions from workers.

The 2010 rate adjustments proposed by the Postal Service are not a response to declining mail volume caused by the recession, or the diversion of hard-copy mail to electronic forms. This adjustment is to pay the future healthcare bill, aggressively lobbied for by the mailers who now cry foul when payment is due.

I feel compelled to tell them: “You wanted the PAEA and its payment schedule, but now you want to avoid paying for it through higher postage rates.”

William Burrus
President

apwu.org

WASHINGTON – NALC President Fredric V. Rolando issued the following statement today in response to proposed measures to solve the USPS’ budget deficit, including rate increases and cutting Saturday delivery:

“What is at stake here is finding a long-term, common sense solution to the financial problems plaguing the Postal Service. The answer does not reside with penny-wise, pound-foolish service cuts, as proposed by the USPS. Neither is it to be found by making false and misleading claims about postal labor costs to avoid a postage rate increase, as some mailers are now doing. Of the options under consideration to solve the Postal Service’s financial crisis, the smartest solution is to reform the congressional mandate to massively pre-fund future retiree health benefits.

“The Postal Service is mandated by law to meet an aggressive pre-funding payment schedule of future health benefits for retirees. No other American entity in the public or private sector is required to pre-fund retiree health benefits. The Postal Service has already set aside more than $35 billion, enough to cover retiree health benefits for 15-20 years.

“Additionally, the Postal Service has been overcharged by $50-$75 billion for benefits Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) benefits, according to the findings of both the USPS Office of the Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission. Without these burdens, the Postal Service would have been profitable in three of the past four years. If these burdens were eliminated altogether, the Postal Service would be able to pay down its outstanding operational debt and focus on strengthening and adapting its business model.

“The Postal Service has reviewed its operations repeatedly over the past three years and has reacted quickly to the changing economic landscape. Jointly with the NALC, it has evaluated and adjusted letter carrier routes four times in the past 18 months. These hard-nosed reviews have saved the Postal Service over a billion dollars and have significantly reduced its workforce while it reached record levels of productivity. Indeed, the Postal Service now employs nearly 100,000 fewer career employees than it did before the recession began.

“To make this a labor issue ignores the larger financial issues at play. We are committed to making changes that are in the best interest of consumers. But to address the problem, we should not resort to knee-jerk reactions and criticisms. The long-term solution is to urge Congress to lift the inequitable pre-funding obligation and refunding CSRS over-payment burdening the Postal Service so it can operate profitably.”

 NALC.org

Despite a modest improvement in the economy, advertising mail has not yet rebounded. Coupled with the diversion to electronic messages, the recession has reduced mail volume to 1994 levels.

The geniuses who supported the provision of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund future health care liabilities ignored the gyrations of business cycles. During this period of low mail volume, the pre-funding obligation threatens the solvency of the Postal Service. Efforts are underway to provide relief from the payments, which exceed $5 billion annually for 10 years.

A recent independent actuarial report [PDF] released by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) concluded that the Postal Service has overpaid the Civil Service Retirement System in the amount of $50 to $55 billion, and suggested an “adjustment” in favor of the USPS. If approved by OPM, this adjustment could relieve most of the financial pressure on the Postal Service.

The APWU Legislative and Political Department, in concert with other postal unions and the mailing industry, is making the case that this overpayment should be used to offset the pre-funding obligation and relieve the Postal Service from the annual payment.

In the meantime, postal management’s response to the financial challenges has been facility consolidations, the closure of stations and branches, excessing, and computerized scheduling — all causing major disruptions in the lives of employees. Tens of thousands of employees have been excessed from their installations and crafts, and any semblance of job stability is a distant memory.

Despite the protection against layoffs and the 8-hour guarantee found in the Collective Bargaining Agreement [PDF], the impact on APWU members has been devastating. Employees have been faced with a most difficult choice: They must decide whether or not to continue employment when doing so would mean uprooting their families and disrupting their lives.

In years past, when we were confronted with changes of this magnitude, there were opportunities to mitigate the effect on employees through union-management cooperation. Unfortunately, it seems those opportunities no longer exist: The Postal Service’s Labor Relations Department has been relegated into a forum for preparing cases for arbitration — not settlement.

It seems management has no interest in reaching agreements on contract interpretation and application, so the union’s only option has been to initiate grievances for a growing list of disputes. Postal management appears to have made a conscious decision to apply the most draconian interpretation of contractual terms and to await the decision of an arbitrator years in the future.

An example of management’s policy is the dispute that arose over the Annual Leave Exchange program that was negotiated in the 1998 National Agreement. Management interpreted the agreement as excluding PTFs; the union grieved the exclusion, and in 2009 we prevailed in arbitration. The arbitrator referred the remedy to the parties, and after discussions failed to result in a settlement, the remedy has been sent back to the arbitrator. Eleven years after the contract was violated, affected employees will receive a remedy when an arbitrator rules later this year. In anticipation that the arbitrator will provide monetary relief, locals are requested to research their records to identify employees who were affected.

The scheduling of national interpretive cases for arbitration will be an important issue in upcoming contract negotiations. The union will demand modifications of the process so that when the Postal Service initiates major changes, disputes can be adjudicated in a timely manner.

Unlike most workers in the public and private sectors, APWU-represented employees have access to a grievance-arbitration procedure, which mean an arbitrator can be called upon to interpret the contract. This right is undermined, however, by the Postal Service’s strategy of “defer and delay” — deferring all important issues to arbitration, and delaying the day of reckoning. Management is making no serious attempt to limit the traumatic impact of life-changing events on employees.

Notwithstanding the frustration caused by USPS stonewalling, the union continues to challenge improper management decisions, and is awaiting final decisions on a number of issues that are important to our members. A partial list of issues awaiting final decision is as follows:

• Severance Pay for employees who retired through early-outs in 2008 and 2009 – The contract requires that “Before implementation of reassignment under this Article or, if necessary, layoff and reduction in force of excess employees …the Employer shall solicit volunteers from among employees in the same craft within the installation to terminate their employment with the Employer. Employees who elect to terminate their employment will receive a lump sum severance payment in the amount provided by Part 435 of the Employee and Labor Relations Manual…”
• Tour 2 Initiative – Management eliminated Tour 2 in all mail processing facilities without satisfying its obligation to bargain in good faith.
• Pitney Bowes – Management violated its obligation to meet, discuss, and consider union proposals on the transfer of bargaining unit work to Pitney Bowes from the New Jersey International Mail Distribution Center.
• 90-Day Notice – The Postal Service failed to give the union at the Regional level proper notice prior to excessing employees from the craft or installation as required by Article 12 of the National Agreement, the Joint Contract Interpretation Manual, and numerous memoranda on excessing.
• 60-Day Notice – The Postal Service has failed to give proper notice to employees of its intent to reassign them outside their craft or installation. (The notice must include the office to which the employees are reassigned.)
• Restrictions on the Increase of Casual and Part-Time Flexible Employees and Hours – Management has violated the prohibition against increasing casual/PTF hours before excessed employees have exhausted their retreat rights.
• Obligation to Reduce Part-Time Flexible Hours – Management has failed to limit PTF hours in order to minimize the impact on the regular workforce when it is intended to excess employees from their craft or installation.
• Obligation to Separate All Casuals – Management has failed to maximize the available hours — by limiting the hours worked by casuals — in order to minimize the impact on full-time employees who elect to convert to PTR and remain within the installation in lieu of reassignment outside the installation.

These disputes await final disposition through the grievance-arbitration procedure. In each case, the union’s claim is supported by clear contractual language. In the past, circumstances such as these would have led to serious discussions and possible settlements. With the change in management philosophy, however, each issue will now be deferred to arbitration, requiring the passage of time before final disposition. We shall remain resolute for however long it takes to prevail.

William Burrus
President

NALC: Stop USPS from Making ‘Big Mistake’

NALC is taking its campaign to preserve the long-term viability of the Postal Service to the streets this summer.

President Fred Rolando launched the “Save Saturday Delivery” campaign with a national mailing to branch leaders and state-level legislative activists. Included in the mailing is a comprehensive toolkit designed to help local leaders weigh in with Congress on the need to keep Saturday delivery and mobilize support for our position with the Postal Regulatory Commission.

“This fight cannot be won in Washington alone,” Rolando said. “We need every member to help us prevail – giving up Saturday delivery to competitors is the most short-sighted idea imaginable. We must stop the Postal Service from making such a big mistake.”

The “Save Saturday Delivery” toolkit contains fact sheets, talking points and instructions for activists.

NALC congressional district liaisons and state legislative chairs will organize in-district visits with House and Senate members and organize letter-writing campaigns aimed at key legislators.

Branch leaders will conduct community outreach to encourage opposition to the elimination of Saturday delivery, both in Congress and within the PRC, which is conducting a formal review of the USPS proposal for weekday-only collections and delivery. Its advisory opinion, which will be released by the end of the year, could be influential in Congress – the only body with the power to approve the USPS plan.

The NALC believes that eliminating Saturday delivery would do more harm than good – it will simply push more mailers out of the postal system by making it less valuable.

“Slower service and higher rates is not a business strategy,” Rolando said. “Congress must reform the retiree health pre-funding provisions of the law. And we must do our part to preserve the excellent level of service we provide, six days a week, and seek to add new services that will generate new revenue for the USPS.”

Through the “Save Saturday Delivery” campaign, NALC aims to educate members of Congress, as well as the general public, about what it’s really going to take to fix the Postal Service.

“The Postal Service is a vital national service and we have a responsibility to fight for its future,” Rolando said.

Source: NALC

Postal employees and customers are approaching an important milestone in the fight to save Saturday service, as a House resolution supporting six-day mail delivery continues to gain momentum.

Close to 200 U.S. Representatives have signed on to co-sponsor House Resolution 173, which says “the U.S. Postal Service should take all appropriate measures to ensure the continuation of its six-day mail delivery service.” A total of 218 votes are needed to adopt the “sense of the House resolution,” which was introduced in February 2009 by Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO).

Although adoption of the measure would not create new law, it would send a strong signal that lawmakers oppose the elimination of Saturday delivery. The USPS is seeking authority to reduce the number of delivery days from six to five, and has launched an aggressive public-relations campaign to achieve that goal. The APWU vehemently opposes the elimination of Saturday delivery, which President William Burrus has said “would lead to the demise of the Postal Service.”

The 2010 federal appropriations bill requires the Postal Service to maintain six-day delivery; before the USPS could abolish Saturday delivery, the requirement would have to be eliminated from the 2011 appropriations bill.

“I urge APWU members to contact their U.S. representatives and ask them to Save Saturday Service,” Burrus said. “If they are already co-sponsors of H. Res. 173, thank them. If they have not yet signed on, please encourage them to do so.”

Source: APWU

Good morning Commissioners Acton and Hammond. Thank you for inviting me to testify. My name is John Beaumont and I am the President of the California State Association of Letter Carriers, which is comprised of 40,000 city letter carriers. As State President my role is to represent letter carriers in policy making debates affecting their jobs and the United States Postal Service. But I also consider it my responsibility to defend the interests of the Postal Service’s customers. On both grounds, the Postal Service proposal to eliminate Saturday services would be disastrous.

Cutting collection and delivery service by one-sixth (or 17%) for a small and uncertain level of savings makes no sense. Worse, we think it would be counterproductive. Slower service will simply drive customers away to new businesses that will offer Saturday service. Slower, less frequent collections and deliveries are also likely to accelerate the shift to electronic invoicing and electronic bill paying. Specifically, consumers are likely to find their late fees going up and the credit ratings going down as a result to this change. The speed and efficiency that many customers now take for granted would be undermined. Indeed, most Americans consider a bill paid when they drop it in the mail box. But if you pay your bills on Friday night or Saturday morning, this assumption would be tested and bill payers would be given one more reason to leave the mail for electronic alternatives.

The Postal Service is essential to all Californians, but six-day delivery and collection service is especially important to our seniors, small and home-based businesses and rural communities that rely on the Postal Service as a crucial public service. Please don’t let the Postal Service fool you – this proposal will result in slower service. Letters mailed on Friday nights and during the day on Saturdays will not be picked up until Monday morning. Rural communities would be particularly affected as those same letters might not be picked up and begin their journey until at least Monday afternoon.

This creates underserved communities and multi-tiers of service, depending upon where you live. Delivering mail out in communities such as Clovis, Kingsburg, and Marysville, which are probably similar to rural Kentucky or Southern Missouri, the nearest post office might be several miles away. The opportunity to walk to the corner post office is not a luxury for consumers in these areas. Elderly and disabled residents in these communities rely on the Postal Service to delivery their mail, parcels, and even prescription drugs out to them, because it is difficult for them to travel out to their nearest Post Office. This is unacceptable and is not consistent with the Postal Service’s mission of equitable universal service.

By downgrading service we risk losing the types of mail that are actually growing – even during the current recession. Booming businesses like home based e-Bay merchants would face much higher costs from private couriers. Small scale and specialty merchants targeted by the NALC-USPS Customer Connect program, which has generated nearly a billion dollars a year in new postage revenues, would see the six-day advantage offered by the Postal Service disappear. Even the large competitors like UPS and FedEx who have tapped the Postal Service’s unmatchable last mile network in residential areas through the Parcel Select program might reconsider their partnership with the USPS if the Saturday delivery option were eliminated. In fact, we think some customers are already beginning to make the change to alternate delivery methods simply based on the Postal Service’s “PLANS” to eliminate Saturday delivery. We hold the Postal Service responsible for this. We think it has used its website and p.r. operations to mislead the mailing public into thinking that this change is inevitable while barely mentioning the decisive roles of this Commission and the U.S. Congress in this matter.

In addition to the cost savings, which are modest at best, it is important to consider the broader implications of the USPS proposal. For example, the United States Postal Service is one of the largest employers of veterans in the nation, second only to the Department of Defense. Currently more than 25% of our workforce is made up of veterans, and over 9% are disabled veterans. At a time when our nation has deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East, who will provide decent jobs and benefits to these brave servicemen and women when they return home to their country if we allow the Postal Service to reduce its workforce by eliminating a day of delivery?

Letter carriers understand the heavy toll the current recession has had on both the Postal Service and the state of California. We have seen it in the number of letter carrier jobs eliminated by a special labor-management process to aggressively adjust routes in response to falling mail volume. We have seen it in the struggles of our small business customers who are trying to survive. And, most recently, we have seen it in the gratitude of food bank workers who helped us unload the food donations we collected in the NALC-USPS national food drive just this past weekend. But we also know that unfair policies adopted in recent years to force the USPS to overpay for retiree health benefits and pensions are the main causes of the Postal Service’s recent deficits. It would be a shame to destroy more good jobs to overcome a recession made on Wall Street and policy mistakes made in Washington – and leave the Postal Service worse off in the end – by ending Saturday collections and delivery. Simply put, cutting back service is more likely to cost the USPS millions of customers than provide a long- term solution to the Postal Service’s financial problems.

We therefore respectfully urge this Commission to reject the Postal Service’s proposal. In the meantime, we sincerely hope that Congress will take action on the severely flawed policy to require the USPS to massively pre-fund future retiree health benefits adopted back in 2006. That action alone would save the Postal Service two or three times more per year than even the most optimistic estimates of the savings that might result from a change to weekday delivery.

I am thankful for this opportunity to appear before this very important hearing today and I am happy to answer any questions. Thanks again.

Testifying at a Las Vegas field hearing, APWU Western Region Coordinator Omar Gonzalez urged the Postal Regulatory Commission to reject the USPS proposal to end Saturday delivery. The plan will “hasten the call for elimination of the private express statutes and legal monopolies, which ensure quality postal services at affordable prices,” he said.

Addressing the commission on May 10, Gonzalez said that eliminating Saturday delivery would lead to an erosion in the public’s confidence in the Postal Service, and an even greater reduction in mail volume and declining revenue.

“We do not agree nor support the USPS Board of Governor’s action approving the Postmaster General’s plan to end six day delivery,” Gonzalez testified [PDF]. “The estimated savings of $3.1 billion per year will not offset the billions of dollars in revenues that will be diverted from postal coffers by millions of Americans seeking alternatives.”

Gonzalez said that the Postal Service’s projected loss of $238 billion over the next 10 years is spurious, and noted that while mail volume may never return to 2006 levels, the economy is showing signs of rebounding — including signs of growth in parcel delivery for the Postal Service.

Lawmakers should strongly consider ending the Postal Service’s obligation to pre-fund retiree healthcare liabilities, a requirement included in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, he said. Modest but steady increases in mail volume, coupled with repeals of “unreasonable requirements to pre-fund retiree health benefits will go a long way to stabilizing the Postal Service,” Gonzalez said.

“At a time when the USPS should be exploring every available means to increase volume and revenue, including compliance with contracts, regulations and statutes, the seriously flawed effort to cut services will only undermine the viability of postal services in this country.”

The Las Vegas hearing was the first of seven scheduled field hearings, where the PRC hopes to receive public input on the USPS initiative to eliminate Saturday delivery. Other witnesses included Yul Melonson, the Las Vegas District Manager for the USPS; Rich Griffin, Vice President of the Nevada State Association of Letter Carriers; as well as representatives from Postal Solutions, Inc., Southwest Gas Corporation, and Medco Health Solutions.

“The commission has developed a disciplined schedule to ensure a timely, thorough review of the Postal Service’s proposal,” PRC Chairman Ruth Y. Goldway said in an April 28 press release. “Our process will provide multiple opportunities for the public to be heard and for all the facts to be considered before the Commission issues its Advisory Opinion.”

Additional field hearings will take place in Sacramento, Dallas, Memphis, Chicago, Rapid City (SD), and will conclude on June 28 in Buffalo, NY.

AMERICAN POSTAL WORKER’S UNION (APWU) OFFICER CHARGED
WITH EMBEZZLEMENT OF UNION FUNDS AND WIRE FRAUD

(HOUSTON) – The former Southern Region Coordinator of the American Postal Worker’s Union (APWU) has been charged with embezzlement of union funds and wire fraud, United States Attorney José Angel Moreno announced today. The two count indictment was returned on Wednesday, March 17, 2010.

Frankie L. Sanders, 46, of Houston, Texas, who held various offices with the APWU between 1992 and 2006 including the office of Southern Region Coordinator, surrendered to federal authorities this morning and is expected to make his initial appearance before a U. S. Magistrate Judge this afternoon.

According to the indictment, the American Postal Worker’s Union (APWU) is a national labor organization based in Washington, D.C. serving 262,000 mail service employees with five regional offices. The office for the Southern Region is located in Houston, Texas. Sanders served as the APWU Southern Region Coordinator from Feb. 4, 2004 through October 2006 and supervised a trusteeship of APWU Local 83 in New Orleans from December 2005 to March 2006.

The indictment alleges that Sanders embezzled more than $10,000 in union funds between July 2003 and through May 2006 by creating and submitting more than 20 false hotel receipts to the APWU national headquarters for reimbursement. The allegedly false reimbursement claims submitted by Sanders were paid by the APWU via wire transfer of funds and totaled approximately $13,145.

Sanders is currently employed as a postal clerk in downtown Houston.