Elaine Dunlap

Maintenance Craft Director

edunlap@apwu480.org

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Legislative Page

Maintenance Report
September 15, 2011

First let me say nothing is final with these other facilities coming into the Metroplex. The AMP study process takes time and is not a total given for the USPS management to close facilities or move operations out of a facility.

Flint is the only PDC that is for sure has machines and mail coming to the Metroplex. The machines are going to start coming next week and some of the employees will come shortly after.

If a PDC moves its operations and the employees are excessed or reassigned into the Maintenance Sections at the Metroplex (big if).....

Those employees will come with their seniority for preferred assignments (we call it installation seniority). That is the seniority used for bidding and vacations. There has to be a residual vacancy for them to be placed into. If there is not a residual vacancy (a vacancy all of the Mplex maintenance employees have decided not to choose and we have nobody unassigned) then....... there is nobody going to be excessed or reassigned into Maintenance at the MPLEX.

IF- a PDC is consolidated with the Michigan Metroplex (big if)......

Then there will be a merging of the seniority rosters. Then management will have to decide how many total occupational groups and employees within each group are needed. There would be new staffing packages done. There would be talks between the local union and management on how posting and bidding would work.

If there are more employees than they need in the ANY section they will be excessed into lower level maintenance jobs (if there are any), by juniority, at the Metroplex. (Employees could get promoted into higher or lateral level jobs if the employee has a qualifying score- again if there are any jobs)

There are a lot of big IF's. There are a lot of variables.

I cannot tell you exactly how it will impact current Metroplex employees until Management tells us if they are excessing, reassigning or consolidating facilities. Those are the three important things to look for. So far, it has not been officially determined that facilities will be consolidated. We have been told we will get the mail from Flint and we already process some of Detroit's mail. The stand up talks say they will possibly move some operations from affected facilities into the Metroplex. Management is being careful not to say excess, reassign or consolidate.

This could turn out that the Flint, Detroit, Jackson, and Saginaw employees are found excess to the sections within those facilities and only get to come to Metroplex if there is an opening for them.

Our current contract says you cannot excess employees more than 50 miles. Only Flint and Detroit are within 50 miles.

I am not convinced Congress will allow this massive quest of facility closings and slower mailing times. It will devastate some areas of our country by eliminating the only good paying jobs in towns/counties. It will severely impact people that count on our current delivery standards. These are the same Congressmen and women that hope to get re-elected next year.

What was proposed last night were Area Mail Processing studies and those take time and allow for public input. Your Union will be giving input both nationally and locally. The general public can give input too and they will. If you are reading this out of concern for your job- then you should be talking to your congress person and writing them letters.

I am sorry this is not a cut and dried answer. I am sorry these are uncertain times. But, at the same time, I am not sorry this is simple or cut and dried-because that would mean hardship on those outside members and possibly on some of our members too.

I will update this website when I have more definite word from national or management.

Sincerely-

Elaine Dunlap