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What's in the SAC? · United We Scan

• 0:14
  Welcome to the United We Scan Podcast, the podcast by rural
• 0:18
  carriers for rural carriers. The views expressed in this
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  podcast are of the presenters and the presenters only and do
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  not represent the views, opinions, or strategies of the
• 0:28
  United States Postal Service or the National Rural Letter
• 0:30
  Carriers Association. We ask that you please consult
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  your assigned union representative for guidance in
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  Please leave a comment or question for us below.
• 0:47
  Thank you. Now here are the hosts of the
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  United We Scan podcast. Welcome back, everybody.
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  Episode 108, What's in the sack? Well, that's quite the title
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  there, James. Oh, James is down in Atlanta, GA
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  for the South Atlantic Conference this weekend, so he's
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  going to be kind of giving us a review on what's been going on.
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  But before you traveled to Georgia, how was your week,
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  James? Well, I had to work my route
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  till Wednesday and when I left my house I first had to snow
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  throw the driveway and then when I got out of my driveway to put
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  it in a four wheel drive because it was all ice.
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  Then a four wheel drive on the main drag down to the state
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  highway. Got on the state highway, the
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  plows that just came through so it was clear. 2 wheel drive.
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  Get on the 23 S, get about two miles down the road, everybody
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  starts flowing down. It's all ice.
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  I was in four wheel drive until almost the Ohio border to get
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  out of out of Michigan and then after that it was smooth sailing
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  all the way down, all the way down 75 and because 75 runs
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  right here to Atlanta, I didn't have to change freeways all the
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  way down. But it was an easy drive or
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  wasn't much weather involved with that.
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  It was beautiful and didn't even have to come to a complete stop
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  in Cincinnati for the first time ever at the 7175 interchange
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  there. So that was quite interesting.
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  So it was like almost destined to come down here.
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  Everything worked out for that and then got in here and glad to
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  see a lot of friendly faces, a lot of people that I've talked
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  to at national conventions as well as in other issue
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  situations where I've been, because Chris is here as well
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  and a couple other people from other areas are here.
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  So it's just nice to see friendly faces and have people
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  that I've talked to before to talk to and a lot of new faces
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  to talk to. And it's been a very good, very
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  good convention so far. Pretty well run.
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  Things have been moving pretty quickly.
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  We've actually been getting done with things a little ahead of
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  schedule compared to the schedule they put down.
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  So I do appreciate that as well. And it's been very welcoming
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  here. I feel like I've gotten what
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  they would call Southern hospitality down here.
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  So other than that, we'll get into what what all happened a
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  little bit later, Bill. Well, all I can say is if you
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  hear banjo music, run. That's the form of Southern
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  hospitality too. There's, let me tell you, boy,
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  you got a pretty mouth. Typical week there.
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  There's a lot changing on the front in Westchester.
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  As of yesterday, they are now part of the formerly part of the
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  SD and C with their finance numbers being changed over and
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  everything. They've been notified that
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  they're going to have route, you know, adjustments and they
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  anticipate creating four to five new routes for the Westchester
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  office, which is kind of hard to explain because, OK, you only
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  have 4 Subs right now. You have one person retiring at
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  the end of February, another person retiring shortly after
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  that. So that means you'll be down to
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  2 Subs for the routes you haven't hired anybody in eight
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  months. So how the hell are you going to
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  cover those routes with non existent employees that you
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  haven't hired in eight months, let alone come up with four to
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  five new vehicles? Because not out there.
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  That's not out there. And I just, I just had to laugh
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  because of, you know, I saw where Fox was making fun of our
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  new electric postal vehicles costing millions and also the
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  fact that Oshkosh is manufacturing.
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  So how's the military contractor?
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  It's good business for designing postal trucks.
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  We all know that topic, you know, But the the fact of the
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  matter is it's it's been a busy week for me in the background
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  for my office and for a couple other people and just got done
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  back-to-back with the grandsons Friday the into today into this
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  afternoon. So it's like, oh thank God, go
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  back to being retired now. About you grandma.
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  Yeah, how was your week? I worked all week, well, except
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  for Monday. I even worked my K day
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  yesterday. And thank you, M Sparks for the
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  monthly Advos yesterday. What a way to spend the day off.
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  But other than that, no, it's just been cold all week and you
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  know, babysat Little man Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday when Ruby was
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  at work. But on that, that's pretty much
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  it for my week for the most part.
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  Well, do you, do you find a, a really, really insulated closet
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  to put the little man in for a couple hours so you can go get
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  things done? Or, you know, are you
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  responsible? Responsible Ish.
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  Ish. I love that.
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  I'll, I'll send you some rolls of baby size Velcro tape, OK?
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  Yeah, You just put them up, put them up on the wall about two
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  inches above their their where their feet can touch.
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  They don't go nowhere. Yeah, he'd probably love that
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  because he does not like to sit. He wants to stand all the time.
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  Yeah. And you go to set him down and
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  he locks his knees so you can't put him on his butt.
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  Mm hmm. Just just hit him in this little
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  joy toy. That'll fix that, yeah.
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  Yeah. Bend your knees.
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  But yeah, no, pretty normal week for me for the most part.
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  So, James, well. There's a question for Bill,
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  though. First, they wanted to know about
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  your SNDC. How many Subs are actually total
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  in the SNDC? See, the problem with that is
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  that there's two other offices that are in there.
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  The one office has no Subs whatsoever.
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  The other office has 9 routes and has three Subs.
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  Let's see, the other office is 11 sets, 20 routes.
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  There's 3 Subs there, our our 18 and the five Subs we have.
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  You don't have enough Subs. So if you go to add five more
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  routes on there and I don't know what the adjustments are on
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  their routes, if any are forthcoming or not, but if you
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  just say 4 on to Westchester folks, you're screwed.
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  I mean you, you have a fight every day getting a truck for
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  all the routes in the SDNC. Now that you're going to be
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  combined with the SDNC, your vehicles are now going to be
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  available to the other offices, your Subs are going to be
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  available to the other offices. And of course, if you don't
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  follow the order of consideration from Westchester,
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  how the hell are you expecting them to follow it for recombined
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  offices, royal offices in the FD and C?
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  Like I said, they, they haven't thought this out very well at
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  all, period. They, they, they OK this, this
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  is how bad management is. On Saturday they had a girl
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  breakdown on 2O2, which is the major highway to our routes.
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  And Bill froze. Yes, he did.
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  Oh. Wow, hard freeze.
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  There we go. What?
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  Oh, I, I froze. Yes, yeah.
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  You know. So where'd I leave off at?
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  She was on 2O2. 2O2 broke down, they towed her back.
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  They they gave her another vehicle.
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  She went out to deliver. 3/4 of the way through she gets a flat
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  tire. They tow her back again.
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  They write her up for bringing mail back.
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  I'm sorry. I, I I I I'm lost.
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  I'm lost for words. I mean, how effing stupid can
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  you be to expect somebody who's gone Now mind you, it's 847 when
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  she calls up with the flat tire. It is 952 before they get out
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  there and get her. And I'm sorry, what was she
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  supposed to do, walk the rest of the route?
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  Well, yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, you know, just because
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  it says curbside doesn't mean you can't walk it, right?
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  Give me a radio fire wagon. Let's go it.
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  It yeah. Then again, it's the it's the
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  sub. It's intimidation.
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  You know, they fear for their jobs.
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  And, you know, it's just the same old, same old.
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  You know, this the same way some people have breathed the fact
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  that they were forced to work on vacant routes on Friday and and
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  others filed the grievance for being forced on Tuesday.
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  Not everybody did it both days. Yeah.
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  It it can't be segmented like this because that fractures the
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  way you stand against management.
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  It weakens your stance. It really does.
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  If you have a presentable to management where everybody's
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  standing together, maybe the shit'll stop.
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  We can't keep doing things that divide this craft.
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  We can't keep doing things that separate carriers from each
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  other. It's already bad enough that we
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  have the two table system for regular carriers, 4 tables total
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  to cover everybody. You have this, I've been here
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  longer, so I have more experience and I have, I'm the
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  better person at this. And you have the younger people
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  who are fresh into this, who don't know exactly everything.
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  And when they make a mistake, a lot of people hold it over their
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  heads for as long as possible. You know, it's help each other
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  learn, help each other understand.
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  Because I do say at the end of this day, we're all in this
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  together because we need to be together.
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  When we are divided, we fall. It's the same in in anything you
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  do, whether it be in unions or war.
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  When you're at war, if they divide you, you've lost.
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  And I'm not saying we're going to war with management, but we
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  do have to defend our right, left and right, and it's time
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  for us to stop bickering amongst ourselves about trivial things
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  and stand together for one. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't hurt.
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  Instead of bashing the new people or newer people or
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  whatever when they mess up, why not mentor them to help them to
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  get better, to be better? Yeah, you can't make a.
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  Discreet with James because yeah we're, we are at war with
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  management with the mistreatment of carriers, the intentional and
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  deliberate breaking of contractible language.
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  And now the MOU was presented to these supervisors.
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  They don't care. And you know, like I said, I
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  feel bad that, you know, I left my my customers OK in the hands
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  of an inept sub for three months.
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  I I, I feel bad because of the carrier they have now who is on
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  them curbside people. You know, you'll find more
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  packages at the curbs and you will at your garage door.
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  But I really feel bad for the people in our office because of
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  the fact that nobody's standing up for them.
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  And we have a local steward in the office and he's as feckless
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  as a pimple on a warthog's ass. I won't mention his name unless
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  you really asked me, then I might.
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  We're good, we're good and. James, I think people are
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  waiting for your report. Yes.
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  Yeah, so Saturday was all the pompous circumstance that all of
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  our conventions and conferences have.
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  You know, you had your opening ceremonies, the the parade of
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  flags and things like that. They had the national auxiliary
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  president and their aux campaign that they're doing this year,
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  Pioneer Retirement Club, APCU, National General and the health
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  insurance program. And then they discussed SAC and
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  what's going on with SAC and things like that and had AQ and
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  a on what's, what's SAC's next moves.
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  And then they had the Postal Service health benefit seminar
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  after that. And they did say that if you
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  have problems with it, you need to to contact.
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  They have contacts information and stuff like that.
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  I'm sure somebody got pictures of it that they could post
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  somewhere frequently or anybody else on Sunday.
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  We have legal if Mike Giesler, their law firm has a new named
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  partner on their law firm. I didn't catch the names.
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  They went through the legislative update and they're
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  pushing for the Protect our Letter Carriers Act again and a
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  few others. I did contact the our
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  legislative Rep and asked them to e-mail me every time they
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  have something new come out so that way we can get it out to
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  the Everybody Faster Lady Carriers Club.
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  The then they presented a gift to the past president of FACT
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  and he gave a speech and then it was time for our national board
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  members to start talking. And first they had Tommy Turner
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  up and these are the important numbers that I pulled from his
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  report. Cancellations of their of their
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  membership to the NRLCA, 676 to management, cancellations out of
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  those cancellations was 205. We've had 19,118 terminations or
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  resignations. Now that includes those Rcas
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  that came in, signed up for the union and then quit, as well as
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  even an RCR. An RCR that resigned after 30-4
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  years of service resigned. Wow.
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  Yeah now new memberships were 26,489 bringing total of and
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  then the number of non members is 41,895 people which is a
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  total loss of dues of $17,000,803 and seven 803,737
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  dollars in. In fact, the sack states Alabama
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  gained 83, Georgia 30, Kentucky lost 5, Mississippi gained 12,
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  North Carolina lost 6, South Carolina gained 115, and
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  Tennessee gained 64. The biggest expense for the
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  union is the National Stewart System.
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  They spent $8.9 million in the National Stewart System in
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  paying their wages and fighting and the extra hours that they
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  work on grievances and things like that. 5.7 million to Labor
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  Relations and 1.6 million to National Convention.
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  Then President Mastin got up there and talked for about 45
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  minutes in a speech. He quoted you, Bill.
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  Oh. I'm surprised.
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  Got to make sure you get home to your loved ones.
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  Got to make sure you get home to your loved ones.
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  That plagiarism. It gets even better, gets even
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  better, he said. Black and white several times.
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  I can't remember the exact number.
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  I wrote it down in listener chat eight times.
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  He said solidarity 5 four times and he said we're all in this
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  together 11 times. So I I wish to thank you for
• 19:34
  being a very well listened podcast listener.
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  We appreciate the extra listen. I mean, big thing shouldn't?
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  We give some kind of gratuity for him using our material.
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  But I've got some major updates to give and these are very
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  important. He started out, he wants to give
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  factual language, make you aware what's going on the national
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  level. He says social media is going to
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  be the rue nation of this nation.
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  And one of the big things that's that's going around is the Max
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  exodus of leaving this union. However, we just proved that the
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  numbers are showing they're not actually a mass exodus.
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  People are leaving and people are coming in.
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  That's an important distinction to make.
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  He acknowledges the. 1000 that are non members.
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  That's the important number to me.
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  Yes, and then he acknowledged that RCA's are a revolving door
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  position right now. He says that a lot of retirees
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  choose not to join the union because they don't see the value
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  in the union. His personal goal is to have
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  transparency, make sure everyone's getting correct
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  information from the source. He went on to safety about not
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  wearing seatbelts, distractions, rollovers, ejection, the names
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  on the plaque in the national office.
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  He even mentioned David Troutman again.
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  We were averaging 10 carriers lost on the route.
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  There were 13 last year and so far we've already had two killed
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  in January on the route talked about North Carolina and
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  Florida, the California wildfires, and he's unsure if
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  his original route that he used to work before he went into
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  union work still exists or not. He went over the letter of
• 22:00
  understanding for pars labels. He used the tech changes of our
• 22:07
  contract to explain it, which is I believe Article 4 if I'm not
• 22:13
  mistaken. You guys can correct me on that.
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  Pars labels were the only thing they didn't have the data for or
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  ability, he says, and he brought us that.
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  His current route had 0 pars labels on the last mini mail
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  survey Where Mr. Adams had five on his and it added about a
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  minute to his route. He's saying that there's issues
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  with bank time and Rex. No provision on it.
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  They're close to reaching a resolution.
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  If you're on the cusp of the next hour, you should not have
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  to wait for a change to get credit.
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  And if you lose a box, the 90 days language is still
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  applicable. But we'll see management still
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  pushing the scan editing for Rex being allowing local management
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  to change your edits or edit your scans that you input into
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  the scanner. So things like box holders, you
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  know, one in a day, two in a day is reasonable.
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  There should be reasonable in numbers.
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  We agreed to not benchmarking, not outlier stuff like that, but
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  something that could be expected to be in that slot.
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  So management cannot go in and change the scans.
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  But if they were going to change the scans, they were going to
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  print out a paper for the carrier to sign that they had
• 23:45
  changed the scans, kind of like checking the box on our mapping
• 23:50
  program. They're going to do another
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  pilot of the rural route optimization.
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  They're going to try and which is part of what Bill was talking
• 24:03
  about for redoing the routes is part of that as well, part of
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  the roll route optimization program, the Step 4 on route
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  adjustments, 25% of routes are still overburdened.
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  They are acutely aware and they said that they could have issued
• 24:29
  the Step 4 sooner. They should have done it four
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  years ago, three years ago, but there were so many moving parts
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  that they work diligently to try and get it done.
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  But management kind of stonewalled them, saying it was
• 24:45
  more of a local issue than it was a national issue.
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  And then it finally came down to being a national issue and
• 24:50
  that's why they finally filed a Step 4.
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  Here's some good news on the management front.
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  You remember the MOU that came out was signed by a Kathy Peron.
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  He has retired. Oh my.
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  We have a new person in there. They're saying that the
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  possibility of things moving quicker up top is in the cards
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  because Kathy was a it's my way or the highway, and if you
• 25:24
  change anything, we're not accepting it.
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  Yes, that was that was one of our.
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  That's one of our biggest backlogs we had in the in the
• 25:33
  union. Step 4 is the grievances,
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  especially because she was the person that was handling
• 25:38
  everything and she wouldn't let anybody else do it.
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  Even negotiations too. You've heard it from them.
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  You know, she would fit there and not let anybody else on the
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  panel of managers speak except her.
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  So they're looking at it, you know, when this new person, this
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  is where the Pars label thing comes in.
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  Very importantly, when they sent the the Pars label, Lou, the
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  manager sent it as a draft. They looked at it, sent it
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  through the board, the board looked at it.
• 26:12
  They edited a few things on it to make it clearer, sent it back
• 26:17
  to this manager. This manager read it over and
• 26:20
  said Yep, that's good. Signed off on the changes that
• 26:23
  the union had made to it and sent it back and said it's good.
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  Imagine if every process went that fast at that level, we
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  could get everything cleared out before National Convention.
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  Not, not, probably not going to happen, but we can always be
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  hopeful. You know, now, now we get into
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  this is where everybody needs to pay attention.
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  This is about that MOU because it did not come out clearly to
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  us. We did not have the information.
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  Nobody was willing to be forthright with with the
• 27:01
  information to us. But finally now here in February
• 27:07
  or being nearly February here at Stack, we finally got some
• 27:12
  information on it, the route adjustment MOU.
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  People didn't understand or think it's fair and don't get
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  it. I'm trying to, I'm going to try
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  to the this national board was unanimous.
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  He was kind of stumbling over himself as he was stepping into
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  this. So he got into it and talking
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  about how when routes were being cut, yes, some of it went on to
• 27:37
  ox routes to make them full routes.
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  But there were a lot of places where they Frankenstein this and
• 27:44
  they cut from three or four routes and put on 5 or 6 routes.
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  And those were regular routes. They were putting it on.
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  And those guys were the ones that got screwed the most.
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  In fact, I think he said it was close to half of the routes that
• 27:56
  got added to were regular routes, not aux route.
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  And so these carriers got really gutted down below even aux route
• 28:06
  values up below 42 standard hours.
• 28:09
  So they had to do something and then the carriers got the
• 28:13
  evaluation back over 48K and management was threatening to
• 28:19
  cut their routes again. In fact, one of the managers had
• 28:23
  even put in for that route to be cut a second time after those
• 28:27
  evaluations came up. And so they decided to come into
• 28:31
  an MOU like this with the stuff and they tried to do it where it
• 28:37
  wouldn't hurt the carriers, but management threatened to cut the
• 28:42
  routes from these carriers as well as to mess with other
• 28:48
  things, from what I'm gathering, and would not sign it without
• 28:54
  the letter of demand in there. That is, that is the information
• 29:01
  we needed right off the bat, telling us that management
• 29:05
  threatened to hurt carriers even more had they not signed this
• 29:10
  MOU. That was the piece we were
• 29:12
  looking for, Bill. Why did they sign it?
• 29:15
  What was the threat that they had?
• 29:18
  And had they come out with this information that we got it fact
• 29:21
  right as soon as that MOU came out or even brought out a video
• 29:25
  just before it happened and then put out the MOUI think a lot
• 29:30
  more people would have been able to swallow it.
• 29:32
  Would there still been angry carriers?
• 29:34
  Yes, but there would have been a lot less and a lot less
• 29:39
  confusion over it had they given us these details we just got at
• 29:43
  Stack. And this also brings up the fact
• 29:47
  that being involved in this union and going to these events
• 29:51
  can sometimes give you the information you need that may
• 29:56
  not be put out on the website, may not be put out on social
• 29:59
  media, you know, and. Here, here's my contention with
• 30:06
  this whole situation, James, is that on a day-to-day basis the
• 30:11
  carriers are intimidated and threatened, correct, coerce into
• 30:15
  doing things that are not contractually correct.
• 30:20
  It almost sounds like they gave an ultimatum to our national
• 30:25
  board, threaten our own national board, do usurp arty in regards
• 30:32
  to representing us with these adjustments by threatening even
• 30:37
  more stringent they. Threaten to use our own.
• 30:41
  Well, technically they're actually allowed to do that with
• 30:45
  our contract because it says adjustments as soon as the route
• 30:49
  is considered overburdened. If you look at the contractual
• 30:53
  language about overburdened routes, it is to bring the route
• 30:57
  back down as soon as practicable and.
• 31:02
  Being on an overburdened route for six years, I would sit there
• 31:05
  and say is this soon as possible?
• 31:09
  Is that the language you're referring to?
• 31:11
  I'm talking, well, I'm talking about the routes that already
• 31:14
  got cut and they went back overburdened and they would have
• 31:18
  gutted them down to an ox route basically by cutting them back
• 31:21
  again with the same amount of boxes off of them.
• 31:25
  You know, using our own contract language against us, as
• 31:30
  ambiguous as some of it is, is rate up management's MO and.
• 31:37
  It's it's one of their playbook. Yeah.
• 31:40
  And the thing, the thing of it is it it wouldn't be so bad if
• 31:46
  they were doing it for practical business reasons.
• 31:50
  They're not OK. This, this is for intimidation
• 31:54
  purposes only. It's almost self-destructive in
• 31:58
  some sense because of the type of animosity we create for
• 32:02
  carriers. Like you said, an RCR actually
• 32:04
  resigned. I didn't know who you had.
• 32:07
  Was that the last one we had? No, I, I believe there's still,
• 32:12
  I think, I think if I remember, I think somebody has a picture
• 32:15
  of it because they were taking pictures of the screens that
• 32:18
  Tommy Turner had up there. But I think the number was like
• 32:21
  6 there. There a single digit number of
• 32:24
  RCRS left, you know, but we still have one mileage route,
• 32:28
  so. Oh.
• 32:30
  Yeah, that one's still. He's still hanging on there for
• 32:33
  that mileage route down there in Illinois, isn't it?
• 32:37
  I Illinois or Indiana, one of the two I can't remember.
• 32:40
  It's better from the night. 200 and something.
• 32:48
  I'm not sure, but you know, and through all of this and talking
• 32:55
  about the Meus, he admits that he recognizes that carriers have
• 32:59
  been working for free. Not only before we had the mini
• 33:04
  mail survey, but the carriers that got Amazon after the last
• 33:08
  count. But also the people who were
• 33:12
  overburdened after the first mail count and consecutively
• 33:16
  mail count after mail count after mail count have been
• 33:19
  working for free and understands that this MOU does hurt them.
• 33:25
  But another translation I got from a source, I'm not going to
• 33:29
  name this source, but it is a very, very well knowledgeable
• 33:34
  source that is direct contact to this information said that this
• 33:41
  MOU is more along the lines of following when you have box
• 33:46
  adjustments, if you get the adjustment, you know you're
• 33:50
  getting paid for the work you do next based on the work you used
• 33:54
  you did before. And it's a hard way to look at
• 33:58
  it because we're always saying, oh, we're getting paid for the
• 34:00
  past 52 weeks of work, but it's supposed to forecast our next 52
• 34:04
  weeks of work. This is how they explained it to
• 34:07
  me. You know, it's crazy to think of
• 34:16
  this MOU being so difficult to interpret that even
• 34:22
  unfortunately President Mastin stumbled over his words
• 34:25
  describing it to us and trying to explain the actual work of
• 34:29
  it. I mean, I've got, I've got
• 34:33
  almost a page of notes on that that I was just typing as fast
• 34:37
  as I could as he was talking to get as much information as I
• 34:40
  could. You know he did a 20 year look
• 34:46
  back at the three crafts, the NALC, the APW and us, the NAL.
• 34:52
  The NALC is down 10,000 carriers from the last 20 years.
• 35:00
  The APWU is down 58,000 members in the last 20 years.
• 35:08
  The NALNRLCA is up 11,000 members which is still not
• 35:16
  enough members to cover all the mail routes we have.
• 35:22
  So then that led into him saying that there will no be no
• 35:26
  voluntary early retirement for the rural craft because early
• 35:30
  retirement is for when you have excess employee.
• 35:35
  That's why the mail handlers, which are being moved to the SMD
• 35:38
  CS and places like that, and the clerk craft are getting this
• 35:42
  because the clerks are being taken away with these SMD CS.
• 35:46
  So they want to offer them early retirement because no layoff
• 35:51
  clauses. Then he went on to bargaining
• 35:56
  update. They're aware that the NALC will
• 36:02
  be announcing the results of their vote on the tentative
• 36:06
  agreement within the next week. He says it's not been a big
• 36:12
  driving force in their negotiations.
• 36:14
  They've been continuing to have meetings, working hard economist
• 36:19
  teams, having weekly meetings with the deputy postmaster
• 36:23
  general, monthly with the postmaster general.
• 36:27
  It's a struggle. It's not black and white.
• 36:31
  You got a large organization and the strategy the NALC did
• 36:35
  promising a huge thing. It's not horrible, but it
• 36:39
  certainly wasn't what he thought it was going to be.
• 36:42
  It fell short in some areas. They called, he called it
• 36:48
  pattern bargaining, where they use all the unions to try and
• 36:51
  get everybody at the lowest possible cost.
• 36:56
  There's the APWU hasn't reached an impasse yet.
• 37:00
  They're still talking, he's talking with the APWU, working
• 37:04
  on what they're looking for to try and make sure that
• 37:07
  everybody's getting as high as they possibly can between the
• 37:10
  the unions. They're aware of the GWI, the
• 37:17
  erosion of Table 2, but not elimination.
• 37:23
  Starting rates for non career of $0.50 an hour is not
• 37:26
  substantial. So that's going to be a problem.
• 37:30
  He says he values their Rcas more.
• 37:35
  They're trying to come up with solutions to fix the Postal
• 37:38
  Service problem. They have problems and they
• 37:42
  don't want to pay to fix it. And then he says maybe it's like
• 37:47
  an alcoholic and they haven't hit rock bottom yet.
• 37:53
  They're paying a lot of money in overtime, training and having
• 37:57
  Rcas leave for having a crappy job.
• 38:00
  He brought up the fact of Bucky's paying more than an RCA
• 38:03
  makes you know. He said he he's very frustrated
• 38:10
  with everything that's going on. Been laying in bed, awake in bed
• 38:13
  until at 3:00 in the morning staring at the wall, just
• 38:16
  constantly thinking of this stuff.
• 38:19
  It's becoming clearer and clearer that they may not be
• 38:22
  willing to do some things as we think they need to do to fix
• 38:25
  their problems and why would we want to change things to make
• 38:29
  things easier for them? If in the next week the NALC
• 38:37
  tentative agreement gets ratified, he says the APWU is
• 38:42
  going to roll immediately after two largest postal unions with
• 38:47
  1.3% and elimination of three steps and $0.50 for non career.
• 38:55
  We got to see with the APWU, he said.
• 38:59
  He said. And I quote, we're not sitting
• 39:02
  on our ACT waiting on the on what the NALC are doing.
• 39:12
  Did anybody call him a liar on that?
• 39:14
  Hold on. I'm getting there's other things
• 39:17
  that they can attack if we go to arbitration, though, we're not
• 39:22
  afraid to go to arbitration because the arbitrator, but it's
• 39:27
  a problem because the arbitrator could make it beneficial to both
• 39:30
  sides and he brought up the COLA and things like that that could
• 39:35
  be attacked by the arbitrator. We've had more good work rule
• 39:44
  changes outside of the the negotiations on the side of the
• 39:49
  negotiation since he's been on the board since 2008.
• 39:54
  They've had more talks about work rule changes during these
• 40:00
  negotiations. Apparently I'm still looking for
• 40:03
  those, He says to the carriers. You should be paid for the value
• 40:10
  you bring to the Postal Service, which I believe is greater than
• 40:15
  what the NALC has negotiated. And he said also added that.
• 40:21
  He thinks that management thinks that RCAS are the highest paid
• 40:25
  non career people than any other craft.
• 40:33
  He talked about the privatization of the Postal
• 40:35
  Service and he even brought it up that Postmaster General Lewis
• 40:41
  Dejoy is most likely not going anywhere.
• 40:46
  He brought up that he carried mail for 17 years.
• 40:50
  He can still put mail in the slot.
• 40:53
  He would have to relearn the scanners, but he did deliver
• 40:56
  with a scanner. I talked about the delivering
• 41:01
  for America and keeping transportation down with fewer
• 41:05
  trucks. One truck to Westchester versus
• 41:13
  how many did you have at Westchesterville?
• 41:17
  How many? How many trucks what?
• 41:19
  How many delivery trucks for your routes?
• 41:24
  You know, for the rural side or for the whole.
• 41:27
  Office Your for the Westchester office as a whole. 88.
• 41:33
  You had 88 trucks at Westchester?
• 41:36
  Yeah, delivery trucks, postal vehicles.
• 41:38
  So and how many trucks did you have come from the plant to your
• 41:42
  office? 2:00 in the morning and one in
• 41:47
  the evening. Two large trucks driving back
• 41:53
  and forth to that post office every day.
• 41:55
  Over 88 trucks driving back and forth to the post office every
• 41:59
  day. I think somebody's math ain't
• 42:02
  mapping, but especially. When your your your flats are
• 42:08
  coming from Lindbergh Blvd. in Philadelphia and your DPS is
• 42:12
  coming from Delaware. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:17
  You know, and I was talking about the local mail changes
• 42:21
  where they're not picking up the mail in the evenings anymore.
• 42:24
  He said it's probably delaying the mail about 10 hours.
• 42:29
  But he brought up the going from Reno to Sacramento and back.
• 42:35
  And I'm just thinking, OK, so the day that the night that is
• 42:38
  supposed to be picked up, it's clear weather.
• 42:40
  The next day you have a major snowstorm over Snoqualmie Pass
• 42:44
  Guess what? You're still in the same
• 42:47
  position. Now that mail is delayed even
• 42:49
  longer because it can't go across the Sacramento.
• 42:51
  And I'm not talking about them closing down the Reno processing
• 42:54
  facility yet. They did delay that.
• 42:56
  Don't know if they're going to go back to that or not.
• 42:59
  But I do believe the the senator from Nevada would have a nice
• 43:03
  conversation with him about them trying to close it down again if
• 43:06
  they tried. He said some of the media hype
• 43:11
  is off about it. Who's he?
• 43:15
  Who's he? Why is he defending the joy and
• 43:19
  what's said in the media about the Delivery for America plan?
• 43:24
  I thought we passed the resolution that we disavow the
• 43:28
  Delivering for America plan as untenable for the real craft.
• 43:32
  But anyway. Then he brought up the Insignia
• 43:37
  store for the national office where you can buy NRLCA approved
• 43:44
  articles including clothing, a union proud yard sign, things
• 43:51
  like that. What?
• 43:53
  What? What was that last?
• 43:58
  1A Union proud yard sign. And then he's talking about that
• 44:08
  and he had to learn about thread counts and clothing and figuring
• 44:12
  out whether you know, to buy the shirts in Indonesia and have
• 44:15
  them made screen printed here or buy America shirts and print
• 44:22
  America because it's a higher cost and stuff like that.
• 44:26
  So that's one thing I didn't like, you know, let's, let's
• 44:29
  bring in foreign materials to a American company, American
• 44:36
  organization delivering for the American government and the
• 44:40
  American people and sell them stuff from foreign countries.
• 44:47
  I I got to disappear. I have to go get a glass of
• 44:50
  Crown Royal right now. OK, 'cause I I can't take this
• 44:52
  sober, right? Then after that, Nikki Phillips
• 45:05
  and John Adams got up to do the labor side of things, talking
• 45:11
  about grievance remedies and including escalated remedies.
• 45:17
  You know, they're they're continuing to explore how to
• 45:20
  write remedies beyond just pay, but including interest fees,
• 45:25
  etcetera, and especially to prevent future violations.
• 45:32
  Examples, you know, you start with a cease and desist,
• 45:37
  bringing back cease and desist. Now there are some a carrier
• 45:44
  stepped up and spoke and said that their step two people won't
• 45:49
  accept remedies that say cease and desist.
• 45:54
  Well, our director of Labor relations and director of
• 45:57
  Stewart Operations said the words cease and desist in there
• 46:02
  that they should be remedies in this.
• 46:05
  Those are legal terms that arbitrators look at when you're
• 46:09
  filling out grievances. So you want to have them in
• 46:11
  there. Of course, Nikki Phillips talk
• 46:16
  about additional remedies he worked on for continued
• 46:19
  violations starting at 50 a hundred, a hundred, 5200,
• 46:24
  working it up the way. Oh, we lost, Bill.
• 46:28
  Yeah, we did. Screens OK for.
• 46:33
  Well, sort of, but he'll be back.
• 46:37
  I'm not going to readjust everything and then have to
• 46:40
  readjust it again, so. No worries.
• 46:44
  So, and he talked about, the first one he talked about was
• 46:47
  the scanner messages and having to come back for your routes and
• 46:52
  how they want it for, you know, they're not emergency messages
• 46:55
  to have to come back and pick up late mail or late packages or
• 46:59
  things like that. And did get additional remedies
• 47:03
  for it every time they violated it.
• 47:05
  He also talked about one with the seniority list matrix and
• 47:11
  stuff like that. And it took over 200 / 300
• 47:15
  dollars additional remedies to finally get district to pay
• 47:21
  attention to it, which finally stopped it.
• 47:24
  And that's the biggest thing about these additional remedies.
• 47:28
  It's to get it to the point where District pays attention to
• 47:32
  it and speaking with another source, off the record, well, on
• 47:41
  the record for me, but off the record where I wouldn't name
• 47:43
  them. It's almost as if management
• 47:50
  thinks the grievance payment system is secret money that
• 47:55
  doesn't affect anything at the post office, that they can just
• 47:58
  draw and draw and draw and draw from this secret pile of cash
• 48:02
  that doesn't run out. But it does run out.
• 48:07
  And it is part of the losses that the post office accrues.
• 48:13
  You know, and penalties of progression is the biggest
• 48:16
  thing. You progress higher and higher
• 48:18
  until the people higher up start noticing, hey, we're losing a
• 48:21
  lot of money out of bills back just got in the crown, you know,
• 48:29
  and then he's also talked about the release day work list.
• 48:33
  And then they took questions from the audience.
• 48:37
  And, you know, I actually got up there and because of from 8
• 48:45
  arbitration, I asked the question of how do you feel
• 48:48
  about our arbitrary panel of arbitrators when it comes to
• 48:52
  settling for additional remedies on top of the, the make the
• 48:59
  whole carrier hole with what was afforded to them at the time of
• 49:02
  the grievance. And we have the same issue that
• 49:05
  the city carriers do with ours is that they don't like to some
• 49:10
  don't like to give the additional remedies and others
• 49:14
  handed out like candy. So it's a crapshoot when it goes
• 49:18
  to arbitration, but they didn't say try to get the additional
• 49:23
  remedies at the lowest level possible.
• 49:27
  Am I back on? Yes, you're back on.
• 49:30
  OK something happened to my laptop so I'm on my phone right
• 49:33
  now so I have no video. That's OK I'm trying to trying
• 49:37
  to remedy it. Must have been a bottle of
• 49:41
  alcohol I spilled on it. We're going to have to ask for
• 49:45
  an additional penalty remedy for that.
• 49:48
  Oh well, I'll I'll bring 2 bottles, OK.
• 49:52
  OK, OK, figure out after that, unfortunately I had to step
• 49:57
  aside. I had to talk with my parents.
• 49:59
  They called and I usually talk to them on Sundays at in the
• 50:03
  afternoon. So I had to take a phone call
• 50:06
  and 2 1/2 hours of conversation later, you know, everything was
• 50:10
  pretty much done. But my parents are doing fine.
• 50:16
  Nothing to worry about there. Just unfortunately I did miss
• 50:20
  the DPM and LTM put on by an ADR from Alabama and the OWCP with
• 50:27
  Devin Cassidy. So those were the last things
• 50:31
  that we had tonight. If anybody in the that was here
• 50:35
  in our chat wants to add on anything to this, we appreciate
• 50:39
  that, but you guys have any questions for me that I might be
• 50:46
  able to answer? I, I'm, I'm just appalled by
• 50:51
  the, the, the comment about transparency.
• 50:55
  You know, I, I just, all of us, you know, listening any, anybody
• 51:02
  who listens to the podcast, you know, and you know, people
• 51:06
  around the country on all other platforms are, are just sitting
• 51:11
  there shaking their heads because they're not getting the
• 51:13
  transparency. They're not seeing their reports
• 51:16
  every day. You know, they're, they're,
• 51:19
  they're not seeing, you know, all the information that they're
• 51:22
  required of, you know, to provide us in a timely fashion.
• 51:27
  And, you know, to sit there and say that, you know, you've been
• 51:30
  fighting for transparency. This is 12 years in the making
• 51:34
  and we have had none on a consistent basis.
• 51:38
  Even in in an office like yours, James or Kristen's who who are
• 51:42
  people who are adamant about getting it, you're not getting
• 51:45
  it all the time. I mean, I have yet to find an
• 51:49
  office that actually gets them every day.
• 51:53
  And we realize the reports are off by a couple days or even a
• 51:57
  week or so. But the fact of the matter is
• 51:59
  that we don't get them every day in a timely manner because most
• 52:04
  of the management, you know, you want to talk about all the money
• 52:06
  they spend for training. How about training your
• 52:09
  management? How about training them on, on
• 52:12
  their responsibilities? How about training them on, you
• 52:16
  know, the regards of the, the Rex program, the R camp, the
• 52:21
  contract, the ALM, the, the M38, yeah, the P6O3, which is, you
• 52:27
  know, outdated per SE. But you know, until they
• 52:29
  actually abolish it, I'll still abide by it.
• 52:33
  Where's where's the money for that training?
• 52:40
  You know he's talking about transparency from the union
• 52:43
  itself. And we don't have that, James,
• 52:49
  as of our last convention, they said that the contract was all
• 52:54
  but done. And here we are still we're
• 52:57
  we're still fighting over minutiae.
• 53:02
  Minutiae should not be our issue right now.
• 53:05
  You know, I will say this, the way he talked about this today
• 53:13
  at Zach has been the way he should have been talking about
• 53:17
  things the entire time. He should have been this open at
• 53:22
  these conventions, at these conferences to the craft.
• 53:26
  Yes, I understand he wants to protect the craft, the union
• 53:30
  itself, from people who don't pay dues.
• 53:34
  He wants to make sure that only people who pay into the union
• 53:39
  get the information, because that's how he is.
• 53:45
  The biggest thing is he actually took the time to sit down and
• 53:51
  run through this information itself and go over why he did
• 53:58
  the things he did with the national board.
• 54:01
  The MOU was a unanimous with the national board.
• 54:04
  He said everybody on the national board voted for it.
• 54:07
  So there's the answer I was finally looking for that I've
• 54:10
  been looking for for a couple months now.
• 54:12
  I finally got the answer. It was everybody on the national
• 54:14
  board. But the transparency coming from
• 54:20
  our national office is important, more important to me
• 54:25
  right now to start bridging the gap between the carriers that
• 54:29
  are disenfranchised from this union and the national office
• 54:34
  and the Hugsby Union itself. We need the the biggest things
• 54:39
  that need to happen are starting and I will tell you this, every
• 54:46
  single person who has been talking on social media,
• 54:52
  whatever the group is, whatever the person is, whoever the
• 54:56
  person is talking about this stuff, putting it out there,
• 54:59
  getting people talking about it has made the difference, whether
• 55:04
  it be on this podcast or other podcast or on rural letter
• 55:11
  carriers or rural carriers, rural carriers, 2 point O rural
• 55:17
  mail carriers United, the United we scan podcast group anywhere
• 55:23
  on social media where it's getting back to the national
• 55:28
  board has made a difference in this craft has made a difference
• 55:31
  in the way the national board presents things to us and every
• 55:36
  single person out there that's been doing that.
• 55:39
  I thank you because we're finally starting to open up to
• 55:44
  the craft from the national board.
• 55:51
  And that was, you know, that's always been a goal is, you know,
• 55:57
  this is listen for them to listen to us in one capacity or
• 56:01
  another, regardless if it's, you know, it takes a podcast or
• 56:06
  social media groups or whatnot to know that there's they're
• 56:11
  finally taking what we're saying, what we're going through
• 56:15
  and what everybody has been pushing to see more of, to
• 56:21
  finally hear that they are listening and things are going
• 56:25
  under consideration and actions are slowly starting to happen.
• 56:31
  Is it's, it's good. I mean, things aren't going to
• 56:37
  change overnight. We, we all know that it you know
• 56:40
  things, not everything can change overnight.
• 56:43
  It takes time. Unfortunately, sometimes it
• 56:46
  takes longer than what a lot of us would like, some of us would
• 56:50
  like, but it does take time and every step forward is
• 56:55
  progression. Exactly.
• 57:00
  And oh, right there, the comment just reminded me of something.
• 57:05
  So they were talking about. It was a question that was
• 57:08
  asked. I didn't write it down because I
• 57:10
  have my own question to ask and I was waiting, but it was about
• 57:14
  the splitting of routes and you know, they were talking about
• 57:17
  that. And if there is no start load or
• 57:23
  end load then or any inputs into the scanner for a route, the
• 57:30
  system deletes that. Not only does it delete that day
• 57:35
  from the route list of numbers, it also deletes the denominator.
• 57:40
  So if we have a 301 day period that they they calculate us on,
• 57:45
  that cuts it down to 300. So it does change the
• 57:48
  denominator. So you actually get zero credit
• 57:51
  for that day whatsoever, but it does not affect your evaluation.
• 57:54
  I I forgot to add that in there, but thank you to the person in
• 57:59
  the route that talked about splitting route.
• 58:01
  But if they hit start load and immediately hit end load or
• 58:06
  return to DU and clock out, that hurts the route because those
• 58:13
  inputs are in there. It shows that it's there.
• 58:16
  Yeah, if they do it in less than 60 seconds, you get a patent 0
• 58:20
  for that. It actually gives you a 0 on
• 58:23
  that route and there is no deleting it.
• 58:28
  So these carriers that are coming in, getting back to the
• 58:33
  office, hitting return to DU and immediately clocking out, it
• 58:37
  drops your average hardcore because think about it, you add
• 58:41
  a zero to any average and it tanks it hard.
• 58:45
  I would rather see a day of absolutely no no inputs than a
• 58:50
  day of inputs that are just going through them fast because
• 58:55
  they got to put them in there. Which the sad part of that is
• 59:00
  you'd rather have a city carrier running your route because
• 59:03
  they're running it on the City side of the scanner than the
• 59:06
  rural side. And there's zero inputs into the
• 59:08
  rural scans. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not
• 59:14
  condoning city carriers running our route.
• 59:17
  That is rural work. Rural carriers should be doing
• 59:20
  it. But that is one way that saves
• 59:23
  the route from getting those numbers that are of people who
• 59:27
  don't do that. Yes, they should be.
• 59:31
  They should be required to do the rec scans, but a lot of them
• 59:37
  aren't from what I hear. But it should be rural work and
• 59:43
  rural carriers should be doing that.
• 59:48
  Yeah, they're required to do them, but a lot of them don't.
• 59:50
  Yeah, and especially if you split routes, a lot of times
• 59:53
  they won't even switch over to your route, and that's a
• 59:56
  benefit. But it's a benefit for them to
• 59:59
  not switch over on your route. Unfortunately, at least from
• 1:00:05
  what I've gathered from what was said here, it is my opinion.
• 1:00:09
  My opinion only. Does not reflect the views,
• 1:00:12
  opinions, or strategies of the United States Postal Service or
• 1:00:14
  the National World Letter Terriers Association.
• 1:00:18
  Now let me play devil's advocate here.
• 1:00:22
  Go ahead. They split.
• 1:00:23
  They split my route. One sub switches his scanner
• 1:00:28
  over and I get credit for the part that he took out.
• 1:00:32
  The other sub doesn't. I'm now getting partial credit
• 1:00:37
  for a day on my route. Wow, that logic.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, yeah. And but according to the split
• 1:00:49
  route thing, it should only add to your route.
• 1:00:52
  It's if you don't have a clock in clock out on it or something.
• 1:00:56
  There were there were pieces in there I didn't fully catch
• 1:00:59
  because they were back and forth next to the mic, but I think
• 1:01:08
  that the splitting routes doesn't actually affect the full
• 1:01:11
  evaluation of the route from what I've gathered.
• 1:01:15
  Again, my opinion only. Again, this is where
• 1:01:19
  transparency comes into play. To be able to see this and
• 1:01:23
  actually document it and and detail that that's the actual
• 1:01:27
  actions being occurring when you're not there.
• 1:01:31
  You know, when their routes being split, whatever.
• 1:01:34
  Yeah, and that's that's why we push carriers, you know,
• 1:01:37
  management's pushing them to be off the clock in 5 minutes on
• 1:01:40
  into shift duties or to be, you know, out on the done with load
• 1:01:46
  time in 15 minutes, stuff like that.
• 1:01:48
  No, that is your evaluation they're affecting and that's why
• 1:01:53
  they're doing it. Management doesn't do things
• 1:01:56
  that are negative, that are positive towards your route in
• 1:01:59
  most instances. There are some managers that
• 1:02:01
  will help you out and help educate you to help your
• 1:02:06
  evaluation on your route. There is a list for excessive
• 1:02:11
  load time, but I'm going to tell you excessive load time to me is
• 1:02:15
  over an hour and a half. If you're out there for more
• 1:02:20
  than an hour and a half, I'm going to wonder what's taking
• 1:02:25
  you so long. But I'm not going to say you
• 1:02:28
  can't have an hour and a half of load time, but I'm just going to
• 1:02:31
  wonder why it's taking you an hour and a half to load an LLV.
• 1:02:36
  It's the same on end of shift duty.
• 1:02:41
  You know, it could be 15 minutes if all you have to do is your
• 1:02:44
  mail and, and put everything away and stuff like that.
• 1:02:48
  Or it could be an hour and a half, two hours, depending on if
• 1:02:53
  you have to do your mapping, if you have to do your case labels,
• 1:02:55
  if you have to, you know, do a lot of edits in your edit book,
• 1:03:00
  if you have to write a grievance, things like that.
• 1:03:04
  Talk with management. I mean, I had a 45 minute
• 1:03:07
  conversation with my my postmaster a week ago or so.
• 1:03:12
  And that was on end of shift duties because it was a
• 1:03:17
  conversation with management. That's part of your end of shift
• 1:03:19
  duties. And that was on top of my end of
• 1:03:22
  shift duty work that I had to do.
• 1:03:24
  So I was at about an hour and 15 minutes on end of shift duties.
• 1:03:28
  You gotta stay. Yeah, Thursday I did my mapping
• 1:03:33
  and it took forever. Normally DPM to LTM, you know,
• 1:03:40
  5-10 minutes, 15 as it tells you.
• 1:03:43
  It was almost 45 minutes for my route to go from DPM to LTM.
• 1:03:48
  And so, yeah, I had pretty close to an hour and a half of end of
• 1:03:53
  shift duties because of that. Mm hmm.
• 1:03:56
  Mm hmm. Yeah, we did have a situation
• 1:04:00
  there where with the DPM not switching over, not syncing,
• 1:04:05
  and, you know, sitting there for half an hour and then the
• 1:04:08
  supervisor like, you know, well, if this goes on, you know, I
• 1:04:10
  can't keep paying you for this. Yes you will, right up until the
• 1:04:15
  point it clicks and says you know, accepted.
• 1:04:20
  Until you get a green light folksy, don't go anywhere.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah, exactly. So there were two candidate
• 1:04:31
  announcements. I did not catch the name of the
• 1:04:35
  candidate that was announced for a four year executive
• 1:04:37
  committeeman. I apologize for that.
• 1:04:40
  I was actually walking back to my seat after announcing my run
• 1:04:43
  for presidency. And in fact, you only get to
• 1:04:47
  announce your name, your state and what position you're running
• 1:04:50
  for. You don't get to do a speech or
• 1:04:53
  anything like that, which is kind of nice, you know, had a
• 1:04:57
  speech prepared just in case, but it was nice just to say,
• 1:05:00
  hey, I'm doing this and I'm running for president and
• 1:05:01
  several people come up and ask what what my platform is that
• 1:05:04
  I'm running for and stuff like that.
• 1:05:07
  So and nobody came to get podcast stuff, Kristen, just so
• 1:05:12
  you know, that's fine. Not yet, that's fine.
• 1:05:15
  I'm still around. I'm still around.
• 1:05:17
  I'm carrying it with me. Catch me when it's not during
• 1:05:20
  convention stuff going on. You can catch me outside and
• 1:05:23
  catch me on break if not during the the proceedings please.
• 1:05:31
  I kind of like the the, the, the beard growth in law.
• 1:05:34
  You, you, you almost look residential.
• 1:05:39
  Thank you. Accept this hand.
• 1:05:44
  I was going to say the the addition of the beard and not
• 1:05:47
  just the mustache is quite less. We'll talk about that after.
• 1:05:53
  We'll talk about, we'll talk about that in the after show.
• 1:05:56
  And if you're not listening to this on Discord, you don't get
• 1:05:58
  the chance to hear it. He, he almost looks like a, you
• 1:06:05
  know, a, a Michigan Mormon or something.
• 1:06:07
  You know, almost 1/2 assed Amish.
• 1:06:14
  Oh, look at that throat too. That throat air too.
• 1:06:17
  Oh, my God. He just, I don't know, you know,
• 1:06:22
  Brother Bruce. He's the Donna.
• 1:06:26
  Wow. Anyway, but that's that's pretty
• 1:06:30
  much what I have for you guys from SAC.
• 1:06:34
  I'm sorry I couldn't get more details down.
• 1:06:36
  I was typing as fast as I could. I decided I couldn't write fast
• 1:06:40
  enough, so I took the laptop with me and was just typing
• 1:06:45
  away. If anybody's seen me typing, you
• 1:06:48
  know, I'm not even looking at the keyboard.
• 1:06:49
  I'm just going. But even I couldn't keep up with
• 1:06:53
  some of the people. OK.
• 1:07:00
  That's a nice summation. Got to do what you got to do,
• 1:07:05
  man. I know frequency you can type a
• 1:07:08
  lot faster than me and the discord server.
• 1:07:16
  She was going nuts at National. That was awesome.
• 1:07:18
  But anyway. Yeah, she was.
• 1:07:24
  Kudos to her. So that was awesome note taking.
• 1:07:29
  Yes. You guys have anything else you
• 1:07:33
  guys want to discuss or? No, I think everybody's looking
• 1:07:37
  for the highlights of SAC this weekend.
• 1:07:40
  I'll save my comments for after the show.
• 1:07:43
  I will say tomorrow is the USPS management time, which obviously
• 1:07:50
  I'm assuming the reason they scheduled them on Monday was so
• 1:07:52
  that they'd be paid by the Postal Service to be here, but.
• 1:08:00
  Made by Crown Royal. That's if.
• 1:08:04
  If anything important comes up in that, I'll be sure to post it
• 1:08:08
  to everybody on the Discord and then we can possibly put it out
• 1:08:12
  on the page and stuff like that, so.
• 1:08:18
  All right, guys. So I guess so you got tomorrow
• 1:08:22
  still. So you'll be heading home
• 1:08:23
  Tuesday? Everything ends at noon,
• 1:08:27
  supposedly at noon tomorrow, so I'm going to start start
• 1:08:30
  probably heading. I'm going to start heading back
• 1:08:32
  tomorrow and see how far I get before I fall asleep.
• 1:08:35
  Yes. If I may get home, if I make it
• 1:08:40
  back, if I make it back before, great.
• 1:08:43
  If I don't, I'll get a, I'll get a, a little Roach hotel or
• 1:08:48
  something, Yeah. Who knows?
• 1:08:51
  Yeah. Yeah, roadside napping and the
• 1:08:53
  rest area maybe if it if it gets that bad, all right.
• 1:08:58
  Motels next we leave the light on.
• 1:09:02
  Yes, leave the light on for me, Bill.
• 1:09:05
  All right. What's your final thoughts,
• 1:09:08
  Bill? My final thoughts I, I'm OK,
• 1:09:17
  let's let's take this with a, a, a grain of bill salt, OK?
• 1:09:25
  No, seriously, I mean, I, I've, I am desperately upset about the
• 1:09:31
  way things are going in my former office.
• 1:09:34
  OK, from the steward representation, you know, the
• 1:09:40
  NSS representation, the the fact that management is, you know,
• 1:09:46
  overtly just breaking the contract, willfully said, you
• 1:09:53
  know, it's, it's immoral, it's illegal, yet nobody's standing
• 1:09:56
  up for themselves. They're filing grievances, OK?
• 1:09:59
  But the fact of the matter is that you should be able to stand
• 1:10:03
  there and say no, I'm not obeying your direct order
• 1:10:06
  because it's illegal and it's immoral.
• 1:10:10
  But nobody has the balls too. I'm I'm sorry, James, I belong
• 1:10:14
  to the James Brennan big balls category because I would step up
• 1:10:19
  and say no, I'm not doing it. And if you EP Ed me, I'd be
• 1:10:23
  laughing my ass to the bank. I really would.
• 1:10:28
  And I, I know there's, there's not a a lot of Bill May, Kristen
• 1:10:33
  Wakemans and James Wake and James Brennan's out there that
• 1:10:36
  would stand up and do that until we get that mental attitude,
• 1:10:41
  until we get that spine that is required to stand up to
• 1:10:46
  management. This is what's going to happen
• 1:10:49
  every day in the office of the cross country.
• 1:10:53
  And it just, it tears me apart. It does.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, I'm glad I'm not in my office right now and and yet I'm
• 1:11:05
  torn about not being there. You understand what I mean?
• 1:11:11
  It's, it's just, it rips my soul really does.
• 1:11:18
  And, you know, I, I, I don't know, I'm, I'm involved in, in
• 1:11:24
  certain levels on, on some little side ventures here and
• 1:11:31
  I'm handling a lot of phone calls and everything from people
• 1:11:33
  and IMS that, you know, are, are giving me an insight.
• 1:11:36
  It's like, I almost wish I had a, a part time position, you
• 1:11:40
  know, to do this stuff, but I'm doing it on my own because, you
• 1:11:45
  know, I, I want to help people. But it's still just, it really,
• 1:11:52
  it rends your soul into pieces listening to the stories, you
• 1:11:57
  know, social media is destroyed. You know, it's destroyed society
• 1:12:01
  because of the shit people believe.
• 1:12:04
  As far as providing information on the different platforms, it's
• 1:12:07
  been a boon. The problem is making sure you
• 1:12:11
  verify the information on this platforms.
• 1:12:16
  But ladies and gentlemen, you know, people say you can't fight
• 1:12:20
  every fight. And I always say if you don't
• 1:12:23
  stand up and fight every fight, first time you back down, they
• 1:12:28
  win and that means they got the upper hand on you.
• 1:12:33
  Even if you don't win the fight, you have to step up for the
• 1:12:36
  fight because whether you win or lose, you learn something.
• 1:12:42
  That's the most important thing is that you have to learn from
• 1:12:45
  your wins and your losses. And sometimes you learn more
• 1:12:48
  from your losses if you're smart enough.
• 1:12:54
  Absolutely. But you can't stop fighting
• 1:12:59
  ever. And I, I encourage everybody
• 1:13:04
  learn more, be educated, go to your local meetings, go to your
• 1:13:08
  your boosters, your state conventions, the National
• 1:13:12
  Convention, doesn't matter. James travelled all the way from
• 1:13:15
  Michigan down into Georgia and, you know, on his own time, on
• 1:13:19
  his own time so that he could participate.
• 1:13:23
  This is this is not the level of participation we're asking of
• 1:13:26
  you, but it's the start, OK? Get involved.
• 1:13:33
  Protect your salary, protect your job, protect yourself,
• 1:13:36
  protect your coworkers. As James says, we're all in this
• 1:13:40
  together. Yes, Step up for each other,
• 1:13:44
  Step up for one another. It's the same way you intervene
• 1:13:49
  when a bully's picking on the smallest kid in the class.
• 1:13:52
  This is the way the post office operates.
• 1:13:55
  So step up for that smallest kid in your class, in your office.
• 1:14:01
  Tolerate this shit anymore. We are at war James, with
• 1:14:05
  management. It's plain and simple.
• 1:14:09
  And they attack us every day. So let's start punching them
• 1:14:13
  back in the mouth utilizing the contract, the grievance process,
• 1:14:18
  EE OS, NLRB. Doesn't matter what you do.
• 1:14:23
  Back down. James, you got a final thought
• 1:14:28
  for tonight. You didn't tell them that.
• 1:14:32
  Make sure they get home to the loved ones you know well.
• 1:14:34
  I can't say that because Don's using it now.
• 1:14:37
  I mean, you know, you know, people might think I'm topping
• 1:14:40
  it off of him. I highly doubt that, Bill.
• 1:14:46
  I highly doubt that. Everybody knows.
• 1:14:48
  That's your statement, you know, and just like mine.
• 1:14:52
  Just like mine. It does go without saying.
• 1:14:57
  I, I truly care about everybody and you know, whether I like you
• 1:15:01
  or not, I don't want to see anything harm come to you.
• 1:15:04
  You're, you are the most important delivery of the day.
• 1:15:07
  There's somebody out there that loves you more than we do.
• 1:15:12
  So get home to them. Be safe.
• 1:15:15
  Make yourself the most important delivery of the day.
• 1:15:19
  Much better. I agree with you, Bill 100% and
• 1:15:27
  I am. I don't like to call it a war
• 1:15:30
  because in war there are casualties and we are having
• 1:15:34
  casualties with our rural carriers right now.
• 1:15:37
  But we should be fighting the battle with management to make
• 1:15:43
  things better across the board. And if you're not willing to
• 1:15:48
  fight, you've already lost. Fighting gives you the chance to
• 1:15:54
  win. You know, I remember a lot of
• 1:15:59
  people are nerds that I know would understand this.
• 1:16:03
  But in Star Trek, the next Star Trek, the original series, one
• 1:16:07
  of the movies, The Wrath of Khan, or was it?
• 1:16:12
  No, it was a different one, Search for Spock.
• 1:16:18
  They were in a losing scenario and they self destruct the ship
• 1:16:25
  and they get, they beamed down to the planet's surface and
• 1:16:31
  Captain Kirk goes, my God, Bones, what have I done?
• 1:16:36
  And Bones turned to him. He turned and said you took, you
• 1:16:44
  took the, you took certain death and gave us a chance to live.
• 1:16:52
  And that's what you do when you fight.
• 1:16:53
  You fight for the chance of a win because most of the time
• 1:16:58
  you're going to win if you step up to fight with management
• 1:17:03
  because management's not going to have the knowledge and
• 1:17:08
  experience of dealing with this stuff as your designated union
• 1:17:13
  reps will, whether it be your DRS, your ADRS, your area
• 1:17:17
  stewards, even a lot of local stewards have more experience
• 1:17:21
  than the manager that's in that office.
• 1:17:23
  Because that manager came from a different craft that doesn't
• 1:17:26
  know the rural contract, doesn't know the MO US, the LO, US, all
• 1:17:32
  the the M38, all the contract materials, all postal documents
• 1:17:37
  that pertain specifically to the rural craft.
• 1:17:42
  You have to, you're going to bank on the fact that they don't
• 1:17:46
  know Jack when it comes to the royal craft.
• 1:17:50
  There are managers out there that do, they do know the royal
• 1:17:55
  craft. They do think they have all the
• 1:17:57
  answers, but even they don't have them.
• 1:18:01
  Your research and knowing what your duties are is the most
• 1:18:06
  important aspect of your job, and helping your fellow carriers
• 1:18:12
  to understand that stuff is even more important.
• 1:18:16
  Getting everybody to stand together, because I do mean it
• 1:18:21
  when I say at the end of the day, we're all in this together.
• 1:18:29
  Somebody else says that too. Thank you guys.
• 1:18:38
  Yeah, I mean it's very insightful to get James Take
• 1:18:42
  away from sack. I do believe E Eastern states
• 1:18:46
  the next one. Nope, SWAC.
• 1:18:49
  SWAC is OK. Yep, and then Eastern.
• 1:18:52
  States, then eastern, then western, then mid states.
• 1:18:55
  Yep. And I'm working.
• 1:18:56
  I'm working on making sure I have the funds to go to all
• 1:18:59
  these. Slowly but surely I will, then I
• 1:19:02
  will. We have our spring booster too
• 1:19:05
  coming up too. Yes, we do.
• 1:19:07
  Yes, we do. It helped you, but I'm going to
• 1:19:10
  a Super Bowl. I do know of one first timer
• 1:19:18
  that will be at our booster in March.
• 1:19:21
  So far so. Is her name Ruby?
• 1:19:25
  No, no, I do know of one with the possibility of up to three.
• 1:19:32
  The other two are still trying to work out details.
• 1:19:34
  But yeah, so that'll be exciting.
• 1:19:38
  So yes, thank you for that update from Zach.
• 1:19:41
  I know I was anticipating it as well as everybody else.
• 1:19:45
  And we all are going to wish you safe travels getting back to
• 1:19:50
  Michigan, bring some of that warmer weather back with you if
• 1:19:53
  you can. Our one of our city PTF 2O4BS
• 1:20:01
  left for a cruise and it's on Saturday.
• 1:20:04
  And I told him Friday. I said you better be bringing
• 1:20:06
  that warm weather back with you 'cause we could definitely use
• 1:20:09
  it. And yeah, that'll we hope.
• 1:20:14
  But you know, not holding my breath on it.
• 1:20:16
  It is January. So on that note guys, everybody
• 1:20:20
  have a safe week and we will definitely be back next week.
• 1:20:36
  I am going to be a grandma again.