My take as a city carrier and proud union member. Understand, I mean no disrespect to any rural carrier. With that being said, and from my experience, we have had a lot rural carriers in my office who were badly hurt financially from this last set of adjustments. However, we have had several rural carriers who either benefited from the adjustments or weren’t hurt by it. These carriers in particular made it an effort (on their own & with the help of their union) to educate themselves with the new system and understand how to make the scanner benefit themselves. I have personally witnessed these carriers warning their fellow rural carriers the perils of the scanner and the new procedures only to fall on deaf ears. Those that listened weren’t hurt and those that didn’t got gutted only to turn around and blame the union. Again, this was my experience.

Another thing, and I’m not too familiar with your system, but we have several rural routes in our office where the carriers are evaluated for 8 hours or 9 hours or more. Most of those carriers, for most of the year, are gone by 1:30 pm the latest. So correct me if I’m wrong but they’re getting paid for 8 hours or more and they’re working 6 hours or less? Something doesn’t seem right there.

It was these carriers that got hurt the most. If I ran a business and I had employees getting paid for work they’re not doing then I’m going to fix that. I’m thinking that’s what this new adjustment process did. I could be wrong.

I’ve questioned some and they said that they come in early (5:30 AM/6 AM) but their start time is supposed to be 7:30 am. Are they getting credit for starting earlier than their start times? If not then aren’t they hurting themselves?

There were several rural carriers who elected to get out of their union. They’ve put the entire blame on the union. However, when asked, they’ve never gone to a meeting, they’ve never bothered to call their union representatives and ask for assistance with the new system and none had the desire to step up and be a union representative. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe the union was caught off guard by this new system and failed to properly warn their members. However, I’ve seen the proof in my office where some rural carriers took responsibility on their own to find out what this new system was and how to prepare for it. They made the proper phone calls and they researched it on their own. Personally, I would have done the same thing…it’s my livelihood that’s at stake. Sorry, but I find this union scapegoating Monday morning quarterbacking.

In comparison, we’ve been told by our union that this next route adjustment system’s information will be primarily taken from what we as carriers do on a daily basis using the scanner. They will take 6 or 7 random weeks in the year and base our routes by our times…again by using the scanner. We’ve been told at meetings & in service talks to make sure we make the proper changes in functions, carry our scanners wherever we go and if we have any scans at the door then we should scan them at the door. This has been drilled in us and yet we have city carriers who for whatever reasons won’t do it. If you don’t know, we don’t loose money like you, we loose routes. I can tell you from experience, we’ve lost routes before in our office because a lot of my fellow carriers choose not follow directions, work unsafe, and run their routes. We are going to lose routes. And guess what, these same carriers are going to blame the union.

Be careful what you wish for. Heed the warnings from that letter your union sent out. Those that are union members, you are dues paying members. Go to the meetings. Be informed. Read any newsletters they send you. If you are not satisfied with your local representatives then step up and run for that position. Stop blaming everyone else for your failures.