{"id":4672,"date":"2012-07-02T22:27:08","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T03:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=4672"},"modified":"2012-07-02T22:27:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T03:27:08","slug":"postplan-in-direct-conflict-with-apwu-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2012\/07\/02\/postplan-in-direct-conflict-with-apwu-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"POStPlan in Direct Conflict With APWU Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the USPS Vice President of Labor Relations<\/a> [PDF], APWU President Cliff Guffey wrote: \u201cSome of the details of the plan raise serious questions about how the Postal Service intends to reconcile POStPlan with the Postal Service\u2019s commitments in the APWU National Agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cPOStPlan violates and conflicts with some of the most critical terms and assumptions of the APWU National Agreement,\u201d Guffey wrote.<\/p>\n

POStPlan also conflicts with the Postal Service\u2019s own rules, policies, arbitration awards, and settlement agreements that require:<\/p>\n