The American Postal Workers Union has said a USPS "post office structure plan" – POStPlan — announced in May that would allow rural post offices that had been slated for closure to remain open under reduced hours violates its collective bargaining agreement.
The plan calls for reduced staffing and work hours at thousands of small post offices, converting postmasters there to post master representative (PMR) positions with the status of part time employees without benefits.
USPS has originally planned to close most of these facilities and fold services into local businesses. APWU president Cliff Guffey wrote to the USPS labor relations vice president that, "Some of the details of the plan raise serious questions about how the Postal Service intends to reconcile POStPlan with the Postal Service’s commitments in the APWU national agreement."
APWU said it notified management that it expects USPS to follow provisions that eliminate PMRs in level 15, 16 and 18 post offices including rural offices and limit the amount of bargaining unit work postmasters in those offices perform.
The USPS maintains its plan, which would adapt office hours to community needs, does not violate any negotiated provisions and is just one option it is considering.
According to APWU however, the plan would conflict with USPS’s own rule of maintaining a one-to-one postmaster to PMR ratio, and using PMRs solely to relieve postmasters on a temporary basis.
"This plan to cover window hours in solely retail operations at the impacted rural post offices with non-bargaining unit, non-supervisory and non-managerial PMRs is a blatant rejection of key underpinnings of the national agreement, as well as the law," Guffey said.
