An arbitrator has ruled that the Postal Service must determine that employees meet minimum qualifications when “excessing” them to a different craft, the American Postal Workers Union has announced.
In 2012 it filed a grievance arguing that USPS had been reassigning craft employees without driver’s licenses into letter carrier positions that requiredthem in some cases, in violation of a collective bargaining agreement. The USPS conceded that point during arbitration, but the dispute continued in regard to the physical qualification standards required of letter carriers (that they be able to carry heavy mail bags and otherwise be mobile enough to deliver mail).
According to APWU, the arbitrator said physical qualifications are part of the minimum qualifications craft employees must meet to be excessed to letter carrier positions, and ordered USPS to “make whole all employees and former employees adversely affected by the violations in question based upon the July 24, 2012, filing of this dispute.”