Branch News
January 8, 2022
Fellow Members- Happy New Year to everyone and let’s start off the 2022 by wishing two former coworkers good luck as they leave the Lehigh Valley P&DC and two others good luck as they move to a different craft. Without much fanfare, Cherresse Johnson has transferred out to be a carrier and we wish her the best as she embarks on her new postal path; carrying mail in Allentown sure does sound like a dream job…not. Robert Loerch also quietly slipped out the door on the night before Christmas never to return to the building again. As I said on the Facebook page, Bob was a model employee; he came to work and did his job without ever making a fuss. You never heard anything bad about him or from him and he was always willing to help out. Bob and his work ethic will be missed and we wish him the best as he now gets to enjoy life without having to report to work anymore. Congratulations!! On January 15th, we will also be losing Gregoria Taylor and Daniel Driscoll to the maintenance/custodial department. We wish them good luck as they move onto new jobs within the Plant. Speaking about coming to work, we are in the middle of a big COVID spike, if you believe in those sort of things, and the amount of people not showing up for work is somewhat stressing the plant. If you are healthy, please continue to come to work and assist your coworkers in getting the mail out for our customers. If you are experiencing Covid symptoms and/or go to get tested, please be sure to call out and then notify the plant of your test results. If you cannot get a hold of anyone at the Plant number (610-882-3268), which is often the case, please, email me and I will pass on your results to the nurse and the proper management officials. If you are out for COVID related reasons then make sure to specify that upon your return when you fill out your 3971’s so that it can be coded properly by attendance control. These absences can’t count against you for discipline purposes per the MOU’s. There are no more government plans currently in place to pay people who are out with the illness, so you will be using your own leave; this is all the more reason to hold onto your sick leave or annual leave. Again, if you’re healthy then please continue to come to work, but if you are ill then take the proper steps to protect your health and the health of your fellow workers and their families. The “prime time” vacation bid forms are now available in the Union Office. The forms are used to pick vacation weeks during the year. The first 78 people on the seniority list get to put bids into the green box by the time clocks from January 18th until February 1st. The results are then posted on the vacation bid board and bidding by seniority numbers 79 through the MHA’s takes place from February 7th until February 22nd. The directions are printed on the forms and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask a steward or to contact this office. While we are on the topic of the seniority list, I will post my version of it with this posting. My version (the correct one) differs from management’s version because they have yet to fix a massive screw-up from the July conversions and still have one member that is a regular listed as a MHA. Philadelphia HR is an absolute disaster. How they can take people who are in a relative standing order for months and then complete shuffle them when they are converted completely flummoxes me. It’s a simple cut-and-paste exercise, but they somehow made it look like they were carrying fifty pieces of paper down a street and a strong wind blew all of the pieces out of their hand. When they caught up to all of the pieces then that’s the order they put the people in. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the order that they have things, and well, they refuse to answer emails or messages about it or about how to fix it so we just have to grieve it and force their hand. Thankfully, local management is on the same page as us when it comes to the jobs, the hiring, and the seniority; unfortunately it’s up to these other people to fix the issues. We now segue into the topic of job bids since I mentioned the Philadelphia HR’s abysmal performance. January 15th appears to be the date that jobs will go up and once again they will go up for manual bid. Philadelphia did not answer my email about the bids, so after speaking with Greg Miller it appears that we will post 29 jobs. Please read them carefully because some of the assignment areas are changing. Hopefully by the time the jobs take effect HR can get all of the people into the correct bids, something that hasn’t been accomplished since July of 2021. I guess we can continue to wish for miracles in the New Year. As someone once said and I’ll clean it up, you can crap and one hand and wish in the other and all that you are guaranteed is a hand full of crap. That’s basically what it comes down to at this point when dealing with Philadelphia in any aspect of running their HR departments. I know that if it was the Mail Handlers not doing their job then we would be seeing some sort of corrective action, but since it’s higher level EAS people we can just expect to keep hearing regurgitated excuses, buck-passing, blame, and finger-pointing, as well as lies. I apologize to all of the Harrisburg HR people that I ever harassed and harangued; I’d deal with them instead of this disheveled circus in a heartbeat. Finally, let’s address the issues with signing up for and showing up for holidays. Posted on bulletin boards inside of the plant are the sign-up periods for each holiday this year. During those sign up periods, you acquire a form from the supervisors’ office and fill it out if you wish to work your holiday/designated holiday/or drop days that are part of the three day holiday period. You fill out the form and place it in the green box by the time clocks outside the MDO offices. You then look at the holiday posting in the main hallway the Tuesday before the week that the holiday period falls in. If you missed the sign up time frame and still wish to sign up, you have until the 3PM the Thursday after the list is posted to hand a buck slip into the Union office. You cannot just show up on your holiday or non-scheduled days during the holiday period, especially if people are forced in…you will be sent home. Stay United, Stay Strong- Sean Lehigh Valley - Scranton
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Branch President Sean Craig Bids Effective December 4, 2021Your Union RepresentativesLocal Memorandum of Understanding |