Slow Shipping USPS
May not have been clerks. May have been mail handlers, carriers or other crafts. One thing you do not do in the P/O is cross crafts.
"One thing you do not do in the P/O is cross crafts".....extremely far from the truth. I started in the West Jersey General Mail Facility as a Mailhandler. We had 104 stations we processed mail for, none of them had Mailhandlers. Clerks/Carriers did the 30 minutes of Mailhandler work that was needed daily. The Mailhandlers union fought this tooth and nail. Management told us that they would be glad to create a bid job in all of the stations. Whomever bid that job would work the 30 necessary minutes and then call it a day. Needless to say that did not happen. Mailhandlers, thanks to a real stupid decision they made back in 92 or so are (now it may not be true) paid less then clerks/carriers. So if a clerk/carrier filed a grievance for doing the 30 minutes of mailhandler work management would gladly pay them the lower salary for the 2 hours and 15 minutes weekly.
Transferred to Phoenix. Worked in the Phoenix Processing and Distribution center. We processed mail for the entire state of AZ, minus 856-857 towns, which were handled by the Tucson plant. Only retail facility that had Mailhandlers was the Processing and Distribution Center. Rio Salado, where flats were processed, had Mailhandlers. But I don't think they had a retail unit. If I remember correctly Rio no longer exists, the flats are processed at the West Valley center. Out of the no doubt thousand, probably more, USPS facilities (minus the 856-57) area the only facilities that have Mailhandlers in AZ are the Processing Center, the Airport (and I think that once the FedEx deal come into existence most of the Mailhandler jobs were abolished at the Airport) and the West Valley facility. I know when I tried to transfer to Eastern Washington the only facility that has Mailhandlers is the Airport/Processing Center. Pretty sure that the only facility in Montana that has mail handlers is somewhere in the Billings area.
On a side note. Most of, if not all, the maintenance craft go to Norman Oklahoma for training. I was friends with many of the ET's & Mechanics. Many of them showed me images of the fully automated USPS "plant" that was under development. The entire process, minus hooking up the containers of mail to tow vehicles, was fully automated. From what they told me this plant was what the USPS is hoping for...at some point down the road. My 5 or 6 buddies that showed me the images and got a tour of the place told me that there was several things holding them back. The first is obviously the $$. The second is the Unions. I know in the Phoenix area the APWU was losing members at an alarming rate for the longest time. Don't remember the specifics....but part of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 was when the Unions started. Part of the agreement between the USPS and the Unions (APWU in particular) was that if the Union membership were to drop below a certain percentage, of that particular craft, that the Union WILL be abolished. I found this info on the APWU bulletin board in the plant. The date on the memo was from only a few moths prior to me reading it. At that time the APWU was only a few percentage points from being abolished. I think they were at 68% of the craft were members...and the abolishment number was 65% (not real sure of the numbers but the difference between them was not that far apart.
