Stand-by time?

I just responded to a segment on Fox & Friends about a Federal Times story about excessive Postal staffing being required to sit around doing nothing waiting for work.

Due to rigid union work rules and employee contracts that have been negotiated and agreed to by both labor and management, full time employees must come to work and if there is no work to perform, instead of being sent home and tailoring the workforce to the available work, they will sequester employees pending incoming mail volume.

That is resulting in an average of 45,000 hours of idle "stand-by" time. I don't approve or condone the practice, but in perspective, it amounts to 16/100 of one percent of total USPS work hours and less than 1/10 of one percent of the Postal Services $80 Billion annual budget.

In these difficult economic times $65 million is nothing to sneeze at, I could sure do great things with it, but if the impact is spread over the entire workforce it amounts to about 4 minutes a day in lost productivity for every employee.

The greater problem is the impact on the morale of effected employees, the opening to criticism from the public, politicians and unions, the latter who have collaborated in making the policies that have created this problem.

Here's my response:

I've worked for the Post Office for almost 20 years and have never heard of "stand-by time." In our branch office we are rapidly reducing the staffing levels. While this is long overdue we've never had employees just standing around. I, personally would go "nuts" doing so and have made a career of constantly learning more and doing more to be able to work in a wide variety of areas and become of greater value to my employer.

The current VER plan has been accepted by 2 employees in our office of 10 clerks while a third will no longer be working for the local office, in total, a 30% reduction. This will require a realignment in working hours and days off for the remaining employees, but we will do what needs to be done to serve our customers. Our only concern is that while the reductions are needed to accommodate the reduced mail volume and increased use of automated equipment, what will happen when the economy turns and mail volume increases again.

I don't anticipate volumes will ever return to the heydays of the late '90's and early 2000's of over 200 billion pieces a year, but it will return. When it does, we will be a workforce that is 35% leaner with 500,000 employees projected by 2015, down from a high of over 800,000 and a current level of 698,000.

Many of the problems of the Postal Service have to do with the government oversight and legislation that limits it's ability to respond to changes in the business climate and fiscal demands. Instead of making sound business decisions based on conditions, we have to go to Congress, hat in hand, and get permission to do what any other business has the right, and responsibility, to do. We have the burden of intrusive government oversight, while being a wholly self-supporting agency fully funded by sales of our products, no tax-payer dollars budgeted, funded or accepted.

It is that Congressional "meddling" that worries me when it comes to the current health care debate. Congress has historically proven itself to be inept in it's ability to direct good business practices through-out government, and the American people have spent decades deriding their politicians for their failure to do so. Now, all of a sudden, we are supposed to have a "come to Jesus" moment and believe that Congress can do what it has never had the will or ability to do before, run an efficient business? And this one doesn't just get your mail across the country or half-way around the world for 44¢, it will intimately impact our very health and lives.

I don't represent the Postal Service, my words are my own and represent my own concerns. Many of my fellow employees, who buy into the union atmosphere, would disagree with me on many issues. Yet there are many others who feel as I do and think the media and politicians exploit the few irregularities while ignoring and diminishing the overwhelming majority of employees who take pride in the service we provide the American people. That pride is reflected in the approval ratings we receive from our customers. With one and two day delivery scores of 96% and 94% respectively, our customers continue to give us satisfactions ratings north of 92%.


"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson