National Alliance Magazine

FROM THE 1st VICE PRESIDENT'S DESK

DEVIL'S DETAILS

The postal service is still waiting for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to make a decision on its request to offer an early out to its employees. It seems that the offer of an early out retirement will not be for everyone. It is apparent that the early out will only be offered to the employees under the umbrella of the American postal workers union. What that means is that in the recent contract extension negotiations there was an agreement between the postal service and the apwu that management would be required to seek authority from OPM to offer retirement opportunities to all apwu covered members. Of course that still covers a lot of employees. However, that still leaves out the Mail handler Craft and the Letter Carrier Craft. And even now that has been delayed because of new recently passed regulations governing the authority of Federal and Postal agencies to offer early retirement. They need to be printed in the Federal Register before anything can be done.

I don't know how if that's fair to everyone else and I really don't know if it's a legal move. I guess it will be for someone to sort that out down the road. But so far it is not a done deal. It doesn't look like OPM is in a great hurry to make up its mind. I still believe, however, that it will happen this year.

The postal service is probably planning the early out to coincide with its plans to consolidate its Bulk Mail Centers and the Mail processing plants. Right now there has been plans to merge certain Mail Processing Plants and eliminate or consolidate the Bulk Mail Centers also. With that plan in the works there will surely be a lot of excess employees to factor into the early out planning.

No one is certain yet how many plants are in the mix to get the ax but it's certainly going to be a good many of them. The postal service has been taking bids on the automation equipment for magazines, periodicals and catalogs. They plan to be able to save in the neighborhood of three billion dollars a year. They are planning to be able to sort magazines and catalogs and other flats. The postal service said they eventually plan to be able to sort them in the same manner as the letter mail is sorted. Further in the works is the plan to be able to bind letter mail and flats in one bundle to speed the delivery by the carrier. All this is planned for the near future is expected to be in the workplace by the year 2006.

The postal service is believed to be close to making a decision on which of two systems to use and will be able to make a decision by the fall of 2004. Of course there is no estimate yet on how much these machines will finally cost the postal service. When the postal service began to automate the sorting of letter mail years ago there was an investment of ten billion dollars to complete the process.

All of this is being put into the hopper to sort out when and how many employees will eventually be displaced by the new age automation. As I have always mentioned in the past that all this will not come about overnight. But beware all of this is within reach of the postal service. As the saying goes the future is here. You must be ready to prepare for the future. It seems like it was just yesterday we were worried about the effects that Y2K was going to have on us and now we are half way through 2003. So time marches on and it is time to get ready for the future so be prepared. One important fact that I have mentioned so many times in the past is the retirement issue coupled with your health benefits.

There is a regulation that provides for an employee to carry with them into retirement their health benefits provided they have been continually covered five years previously before retirement. Not many people are grabbed by this regulation but there are some employees who for whatever reason upon retirement have not met that five-year requirement. When they decide to retire they won't be able to keep their health benefits. And there are those employees who have been included in their spouses health plan from another job or agency. You have to make sure is that health benefit is portable when the spouse retires or even is it is permanent enough to risk not having any insurance at all. Everything must be considered when making that important decision so take this time to be prepared.

AS WE STRUGGLE ALONG IN THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE,
AD MORTEM FIDELIS
cdenson@napfe.org

Editor: Jacquelyn C. Moore

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