Good day brothers and sisters!  I hope this report finds you well.  Here are a few things that we have been working on over the last month;

Excessing – President Joe Cogan, Vice-President Bill Martin and I have had several meetings with Management concerning their multiple and concurrent excessing events.

On the Plant side, apparently in an effort to rearrange the furniture, management is moving a majority of the DPS letter volumes from the downtown Plant, where we have the machines and the staffing, to the Mt. Hood DDC, which lacks sufficient equipment and staffing, and is slated to close when we move into the new building.  According to management, disassembling and reassembling a DBCS twice, instead of once when we move to the new building, is more efficient.  Management insists that this event will result in 33 employees being excess to the section (Tour 3 Mail Processing Clerks), but they have no “landing spots” for the junior employees in the section that need to bid or be assigned to a new work section.  Oblivious to our Local Memo language, one of their plans was to move people to Tour 3 at PACC, not realizing that that is the same section, for the purposes of excessing.

On the city side, they are attempting to reinvent the wheel by eliminating the Pool and Relief clerks and the non-traditional full time (NTFT) assignments.  Dozens of city employees received notice that their duty assignments were being reposted, with no notification of what the new assignment would look like.  Once again, management was ignorant of the fact that each Station is not its own section, but sections are defined by job description and tour.  Letters were mailed over the Union’s objections, AND without OUR being provided a final staffing plan.  They sit on the 3^rd floor, playing 52-card pickup with the duty assignments, oblivious to the impact on the employees.  If any of you think that your managers give a damn about you, let this be a wake-up call.  They don’t care about the customers, and they don’t care about you.  They only want to kiss the feet of the bean counters at Area and meet one unrealistic goal, turning a blind eye to the multiple failures in other aspects of the operation.

Please be assured that while these actions are management decisions, the Union is not rolling over and letting it happen without protest.  From the very beginning, all we asked is to be provided with their plan – what they wanted staffing to look like when these changes were implemented.  And why.  Why disrupt the employees’ lives when there is a move to a new building in 9 months?  What’s the rush?  Their reply?  The deafening sound of silence.

Reversions – In a classic example of shooting themselves in the foot, while struggling to find landing spots for the employees excess to the needs of the Tour 3 MPC section, management has notified the Union of their intent to revert 18 vacant Plant jobs and 11 vacant city jobs.  Grievances are being processed to challenge the reversions.

Bids – I continue to track duty assignments for all of the offices within our Local.  I get information on vacancies and awards for the Portland Bid Cluster, but I am reliant upon you for movements in the Associate Offices.  Has someone bid out, retired or resigned?  Has a PSE been converted to career?  Please shoot me an email about any movements that you observe.  I would rather be notified several times of a change than not at all.  As a reminder, for Local issues, my email address is Tour3PACC@yahoo.com.

Kevin Fraser, Clerk Craft Director