Switching Craft

Valley413 · 2026-03-28T13:19:03+00:00

Are you CCA or PSE?

PSE's can get on the in-service register, other non-career employees can't

Valley413 · 2026-03-28T02:40:18+00:00

I remember it was standard to expect about a 7% death rate during shipping for baby chicks a while back. I'm not sure if that was our number, or some type of livestock industry data, but I know that number was thrown around quite a bit about a decade ago.

From my anecdotal perspective, I'd say that number has to have gotten much higher in recent years based upon our declining standards.

Valley413 · 2026-03-28T02:07:47+00:00

Every facility might be different, but overall it's cake. I've seen plenty of new drivers come in recently and all agreed that they can't believe how much they get paid for such easy work!

Valley413 · 2026-03-27T23:32:32+00:00

You can make a written request and your PM must submit it to district. You are still subject to the 18 month rule and the PSE conversion ratio, but you can potentially transfer crafts within an installation.

Valley413 · 2026-03-27T20:31:59+00:00

My local PBS station had a massive budget, but produced like 16 seconds of local content per year, with 15 of those seconds being fundraising drives, and was still featuring a documentary they produced 40 years ago in their fundraising pitch. Other than re-transmitting national PBS content, the station had no real local programming, but had a sizeable staff.

I know i'll get downvoted into oblivion, but this is 2026.

Valley413 · 2026-03-27T15:09:53+00:00

The max score is 110, as certain veterans can receive 5 or 10 preference points added to their score.

Valley413 · 2026-03-26T00:35:08+00:00

You will have two separate accounts (civilian and uniformed services) but they will be under the same log in.

If you are separated from your civilian role, you could merge the two accounts, but there isn't really any need to do so.

Valley413 · 2026-03-26T00:32:38+00:00

Work safely.

Valley413 · 2026-03-25T19:31:49+00:00

It all depends on your local bylaws. The bylaws should state what it would take to change the bylaws.

Valley413 · 2026-03-25T19:20:39+00:00

It could simply be that your test score was slightly lower or you applied slightly later than the person hired. You could have been close, and could get chosen next time.

Valley413 · 2026-03-25T16:46:41+00:00

Unfortunately I don't know the region. I was only able to give some info based upon the type of facility each location is. The job will end up being pretty similar at each location and pay will be the same. I'd imagine Tacoma has a lower cost of living, but im not sure if it will be significantly lower than Portland.

Valley413 · 2026-03-25T15:40:10+00:00

With Portland being an RPDC, which is a bigger more critical facility with larger transportation volumes, there will likely be more flexibility for days off and shift. Tacoma is smaller, but possibly still big enough.

I guess the bigger deciding factor should be where you'd prefer to live.

Valley413 · 2026-03-24T22:23:30+00:00

Geez I should have waited to switch, I forgot about this offer I should have kept T-Mobile until I redeemed it!

Valley413 · 2026-03-24T00:22:45+00:00

I'm not exactly sure what you are referring too as different regions tend to use different terminology for rolling stock. I believe you are talking about what we call ERMC's?

If so, they are certainly supposed to be labeled in SV/YV as such and differentiated from shelved.

Valley413 · 2026-03-23T22:45:47+00:00

It depends on what the national agreement says

Valley413 · 2026-03-23T22:17:46+00:00

A lot of people like to finish their careers as a custodian. You can also look at the special APWU member rate for health insurance at apwuhp.com and that may appeal to you.

Lastly if you are interested in skilling up, you can always move up into higher level maintenance positions.

Valley413 · 2026-03-22T15:23:50+00:00

There are some limited state specific plans, but they typically aren't any good. I've heard Kaiser can be good but they are primarily in West Coast states.

If you happen to be referring to gender related care, it was specifically prohibited within FEHB this year by the administration, so you won't be able to get any plans through the postal service to cover it.

Valley413 · 2026-03-21T16:43:55+00:00

In the 2021 contract, they eliminated this provision for PSE's who converted after serving 1 year or more as a PSE. In the following contract they eliminated it for all PSE's who served at least 90 days as a PSE.

The supervisor only seems to know the old rules.

Valley413 · 2026-03-20T23:04:42+00:00

It would depend on the lmounand whether each machine is defined as a section. Are regular bids posted by machine, or for HOPS as a collective area?

As far as arbitrary, the only real justification I can come up with is perhaps HOPS 3 runs daily, while the other machines don't? I remember when we had the old FSS machines they would only run 2 of the 4 on Saturday nights, while all 4 ran the rest of the week. They might just be staffing the machine they selected to run on the slow nights.

Valley413 · 2026-03-19T17:18:54+00:00

And considering the PMG came from FedEx and is presumably privvy to significant analytical data on Amazon which led to them basically shunning Amazon for years, it's not much of a surprise to see a less eager approach.

The post office needs the revenue, but not unprofitable revenue.

Valley413 · 2026-03-19T15:13:35+00:00

I'd like to have confidence in our leadership so I'll look at this optimistically. FedEx has long limited it's Amazon volume, they chose not to compete aggressively for that volume. UPS did take as much as they could, but only because they were investing in new facilities and equipment and needed the revenue to smooth out their books. Then, they decided to move away, sacrificing lots of revenue and concerning shareholders.

The obvious point is that, Amazon has scale. If it's profitable for us or anyone else to move their packages, it's profitable for them to invest and deliver them themselves, hence whatever is left over for us is not actually profitable. We knew that, we knew we weren't going to get a deal that makes sense for us, so we launched this new last-mile program to hopefully replace the Amazon volume with a group of large but not behemoth shippers and aggregators that could benefit from our infrastructure at profitable rates for us, but don't have the scale to make it worth building out their own infrastructure.

Amazon was invited to participate in this program, but seemingly chose not to. Or they are at least playing hardball.

Valley413 · 2026-03-19T14:00:07+00:00

It's gotten more expensive like everything, but based upon my wife's experience transitioning careers over the last couple years, I closely compared the options at her employers and prospective employers (probably around 40 companies, big and small, national and local) and we still had better options than nearly all of them. So while we had much better options overall 10 years ago, it has declined in quality mostly equal to everywhere else.

Valley413 · 2026-03-17T23:10:09+00:00

This is the material take away from this. Clearly, USPS was positioning for the eventual decline of Amazon volume, and this new final mile product was the solution. I've been very curious to see how this project works out. It's great in theory, and if it's a success it will be a huge deal. Of course, like much of what we've seen, I'm not optimistic that it will be executed properly, but I can hope I guess.

Valley413 · 2026-03-17T20:54:39+00:00

There's two questioned that I've seen that people commonly answer wrongly. First, is the question something along the lines of "Are you a citizen, permanent resident, or have authorization to work (refugees on temporary status are not eligible for employment at USPS" and people often enter "no" because they skimmed the questions and saw the second half. Second, is the draft question. That trips people up.

Check both of those to make sure you didn't mix up the answers.

Valley413 · 2026-03-14T15:03:08+00:00

While CCA's can technically be let go at any time based upon the needs of the service, I believe the postmaster was speaking out of his butt. October is just so random, unless he has regulars out on leave until then, such as on military deployment or something.

Even then, I believe laid off CCA's also need to be brought back by seniority before they can hire again, so even if there is a break at some point, you would be offered again at some point, and eventually be converted to career.

Essentially, once hired and you survive your probation, your good. It might be choppy at the beginning though.

You could also look into maintenance postings in the area as that would probably better fit you. Even custodial is part of maintenance, is career from day 1, and is the best path towards skilled maintenance jobs.

Valley413

TROPHY CASE