Why The South Jersey District Is Way Out Of Line

By John J. Amtsfield, State Steward
From the Garden State Rural Carrier (March 1998)

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For some time, we have been reporting that personnel in the South Jersey District are instituting policies that are victimizing long term carriers for safety issues and accidents.
The District has not made all of the safety and accident goals in the last two years. That failure has impacted the merit bonuses for all managers within the District and it has brought unwelcome scrutiny from Allegheny Area.
Some high level managers within the South Jersey District have decided to institute severe penalties for even the most minor safety infractions and they are literally firing people who have accidents.
In the two plus years that they have been engaged in these shortsighted and grossly unfair policies, their safety and accident performance has not improved. When they started these policies, I told them they were wrong and that the policies were doomed to failure.
Their reaction was that they cared more about their employees than we did. Union people have consistently preached safety and we did it before managers who are worried about making artificial goals for eligiblity for merit bonuses.
But it is worse then even the petty greed. Currently, managers and management stooges are sneaking around trying to find carriers without seatbelts on, leaving vehicles without applying the handbrake or with the vehicle running, and/or other miscellanous infractions. They are issuing discipline all over the place.
They have made up new rules that violate national guidelines and contractual entitlements. We have filed a number of class action grievances on these safety rules where they were instructed to modify the rules. They have refused to do so and reissued the old rules illegally.
They cannot require carriers supplying their own left hand drive vehicle to wear seat belts while delivering. They cannot require carriers to wear the shoulder harness at all times even in an LLV while delivering mail. They cannot mandate that there be no backing up when carrier route descriptions require backing up.
All of these disciplinary actions involve violations of rules.
In order to enforce these shortsighted rules, they have created a climate of fear so that postmasters and district personnel are conspiring to deny every safety and accident grievantthrough the first two steps of the grievance procedure. They are enforcing the issuance of severe discipline over the objections of local managers and requiring managers to terminate employees involved in all accidents.
These are all gross contract violations. Every time this happens, they trample on the contractual rights of employees in some cases where the employee was not involved in any misconduct, but was simply unfortunate enough to have an accident. If you think it can't happen to you, THINK AGAIN! We have long term employees with little or no record being denied the opportunity to work while grievances plod through the grievant procedure. It can happen to any rural carrier tomorrow. Discipline is being issued for alleged rules infractions, yet in issuing the discipline there is a conspiracy to deny employees their rights to due process under the grievance procedure, they are violating regulations in assessing automatic penalties for accidents, they areviolating the contract by not allowing these grievances to be settled at the lower levels, they are violating the contract by forcing managers to issue discipline determined by the POOM or by Human Resources.
If USPS is issuing discipline to good carriers for violating one rule and in so doing violating 5 - 10 rules; who is the bad guy?
I wrote to Mike Fleury (Manager of Human Resouirces, South Jersey District) requesting to discuss these issues. I told him that I would prefer to lose every case to him so that he could notch his belt, if only they would stop this madness.
I told him that as long as we cannot agree on a joint policy of accident prevention, and we could never agree that their punitive policies are proper and that they can trample on employees contractual rights. As long as they continue to believe that they can scare employees safe, they will continue to contribute to the fearful toll of carrier accidents.
Their plan is doomed to failure because as senior experienced employees are replaced by new junior employees with minimal training, these new inexperienced employees will likely have more accidents. Most studies confirm that employees with under a year of service have the most accidents.
While being involved in an accident means swift and certain punishment, carriers tend not to be forthcoming when these things occur. All this does is make the USPS reaction even meaner. It also means that the Union is placed in an adversarial positian contesting every discipline issued.
Now when District people express concern for employees, we know they are not sincere. When the district talks about accidents, listen for the cash register sound in teh background or the swing of the noose in the wind. They are engaged in labor relations - Dirty Harry style and they are just waiting for you to make their day.