You are standing in line at the post office, arms cradling a ton of holiday packages. The line is stalled. As minute after minute passes, you are growing impatient and grumpy because you want to get your stuff mailed quickly. Before you say anything rash, keep this in mind:
Postal workers and their bosses are not exactly a happy lot.
The General Accounting Office, a watchdog agency for Congress, not too long ago confirmed low, persistent grumbling among the nation’s more than 800,000 postal workers. The agency says the rumble from rank and file continues this holiday season.
Updating its 1994 study on the U.S. Postal Service, the GAO has concluded that little progress has been made in labor-management relations since then. New worker-management approaches were canceled, the GAO found. New ideas were laid to rest. Grievances keep climbing and both sides complain about the other’s complaints about the mounting pile of complaints.
“They just haven’t been able to make lasting progress on these problems,” says Teresa Anderson, assistant GAO director. So far, she adds, the post office’s workers and managers have not been able to “break out of their own mind-sets and look at what’s good for the organization as a whole.”
In the eyes of the American Postal Workers Union, the situation is worse than in 1994, but the 365,000-member union disagrees with the GAO’s description of the problems. The union puts virtually all the blame on the top-down management style of the Postal Service. The GAO, drawing a wider circle, blames the autocratic ways of the post office’s bosses, the combative grumbling of workers and their union representatives and on and on.
As an example of the icy ties that bind them, the union recently complained about the Postal Service’s refusal to give workers the day off on Friday, Dec. 26. Officials said the mail must go through, but they said that some workers might be able to take annual leave on that day.
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“Everyone expects us to rise to the occasion of this holiday and we are going to,” says Roy Betts, a spokesman for the Postal Service in Washington. “We’ve had three years of financial success and there’s improvement, even in Chicago.”
EEOC’s new twist: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission worked out a deal this week with Milwaukee-based Midwest Express Airlines Inc., and agency officials think they were able to put a new twist on a typical way of settling things.
At issue were complaints from black airline cleaners and mechanics over the company’s hiring and promotion practices. As part of a settlement, Midwest Express agreed to pay $115,000 to six people who had been affected by the firm’s alleged practices.
The nuance is Midwest Express’ agreement to pay for training future workers. Typically, the EEOC is satisfied with finding workers who claim they have been discriminated against, then, if they win their cases, dividing the settlement pie among the workers.
“We are trying to resolve this issue a couple of different ways,” says Jeanette Goss, an attorney with the EEOC in Milwaukee.
Besides the cash settlement, Midwest Express agreed to pay the costs for seven minority students to go through two-year college programs in Wisconsin to become aircraft mechanics. The company will fund a two-year program by the Milwaukee Urban League to help find future employees for the airline.
The airline also will increase its work with the Milwaukee Public Schools’ job efforts for minority students, as well as offer summer internships to students.
That time of year: “Say,” coos the boss, who has not locked eyes on you since John Travolta began dancing. “We are short-staffed. It’s the holidays. How about putting in some extra time and taking time off next week?”
You might reply:
A: I sense your frustration over an acute employee-assignment deficiency. Now can I work in personnel?
B. What is time off?
C. It’s against federal law for private companies to refuse to pay overtime wages for hourly workers. Banking time is illegal under current federal law, says Jules Van Rengen, acting deputy regional director for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division in Chicago.
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Email Stephen Franklin at [email protected]