Blog

Joint Area and District Safety and Health Committees

Dear Committee Chair:

The United States Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO, are committed to the premise that every postal employee must have a safe and healthy workplace. Article 14 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement states that it is management’s responsibility to provide safe working conditions and that the Union will cooperate with and assist management to live up to this responsibility.

To this end, the Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) want to remind you of the importance of having functioning District and Area Joint Safety and Health Committees, which includes holding regular committee meetings. However, it is more than just having a meeting. District and Area Management and Union Leaders must be committed to making these meetings productive where safety issues can be freely shared, properly addressed, and safety issues jointly resolved. Management and the Union must be open to listening and working together. The goal is that we jointly cooperate on providing safe working conditions that ensure each employee will go home uninjured and healthy at the end of the day. Workplace injuries and illnesses take large tolls on the injured whether it be physical, mental, or in their familial and personal relationships. The financial costs to both the individual and Postal Service are large as well.

The parties at the national level are committed to helping you make your District and Area Joint Safety and Health Committees as effective as possible. In order to accomplish this, we are requesting that the committee let the parties at headquarters know whether or not your District or Area Joint Safety and Health Committees are functioning and meeting regularly. Additionally, we would like your input on what types of training you believe would be beneficial to both management and union safety officials. Do not limit your suggestions to just postal training. Look beyond that to possible OSHA training, the various safety council trainings, or even training other industries and businesses conduct.

We are requesting that you provide your ideas no later than (30 days of the date of letter). Please send your responses via email to: Linda DeCarlo (linda.decarlo@usps.gov) and Charlie Cash (ccash@apwu.org)].

We look forward to cooperating with you to improve workplace safety and the United States Postal Service, so everyone goes home safe at the end of each workday.

Thank-you,
Linda Decarlo & Vance Zimmerman

For the original PDF version of this announcement, click here.

USPS Special Delivery

APW-ABA Scholarship Program

The 2021 APW-ABA Scholarship Program is now open for applications. Please see the guidelines and application below, or click here.

Deadline May 15, 2021

The letter text to announce this year’s Scholarship Program is below as well.

————————————–

Dear President:

Enclosed are the guidelines and application form for the APW-ABA Scholarship Program which is named in honor of long time union activists, Thomas Hartos, Michael Tosches and Eugene Johnson. Feel free to make copies as well as insert into your local publications or on your local web site.

We ask that you insure all applications are filled out completely, paying special attention to the member’s postal employee identification number (EID), so that we may verify ABA membership. All applications MUST be filled out in their entirety.

Please contact our office if you have any questions. Our normal business hours are, Monday thru Friday, 8:00am – 4:00pm EST.

Web Page: http://www.apw-aba.org
Telephone: 603-330-0282
Facsimile: 603-330-0285
Toll Free: 1-800-526-2890

In Union Solidarity,

Wayne D. Maurer, National Director
nationaldirector@spw-aba.org

APW-ABA Scholarship Program Application & Information Packet

New Leave Under the American Rescue Plan (ARPA)

Effective March 12, 2021,theAmerican Rescue Plan Act (Act) provides employees with up to 600 hours of paid Emergency Federal Employee Leave (EFEL).  This leave is available to employees beginning on March 12, 2021, and continuing through September 30, 2021—or until the funding established in the Emergency Federal Employee Leave Fund (Fund) for reimbursement is exhausted.  The leave is available to eligible employees who are unable to work due to one of eight qualifying reasons as summarized in the chart below: 

As a reminder, the Postal Service provides an essential federal government service as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure.  Therefore, postal employees are generally not subject to Federal, State, or local quarantine or isolation orders related to COVID-19, so employees will generally not be eligible to use EFEL for qualifying reason (1) above.  Additionally, no substantially similar condition has been identified that would qualify an employee to use leave for qualifying reason (6) above.  

We are continuing to work the issues associated with implementation of these new leave requirements, and we anticipate receiving additional guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which will administer the Fund, in the coming weeks.  In the interim, employees seeking to use EFEL should submit a PS Form 3971 indicating for which of the eight qualifying reasons they must take leave, and employees must affirmatively state that they are unable to work because of the qualifying reason. 

For now, this leave should be managed and tracked within the Enterprise Resource Management System (eRMS).  Timekeepers will be instructed to enter the interim hours code 086-21 in eRMS for all employees, and then verify the Administrative Leave is entered in the appropriate timekeeping system using either hours code 086-21 for City or DACA Code O for Rurals.  For immediate reference, attached is the timekeeping quick reference table.  

We will update you with additional instructions and guidance as our processes for managing this new leave are developed and implemented.  We ask that you share this information with your teams as soon as possible, given that this leave will become available on March 12. 

Thank you for your support as we continue to prioritize the safety and well-being of our employees during this challenging time. 

For a PDF version of this article, click here.