Post by millring on Jun 28, 2023 8:56:56 GMT -5
A couple of months ago the USPS underwent a national recount of all the rural routes across the country. The reason for the new count was because: Rural route regulars are paid what is essentially a salary (rather than hourly), but it is a salary based on an hourly concept of how long it should take to accomplish the necessary daily tasks -- casing, loading, delivering, etc -- for a given route. Once such an evaluation is done, a route is given a size rating J or K according to the size, and a number 46, 48 according to how many hours per week it should take to do the route.
You may have been following this story in the news. It's being covered across the nation.
In Warsaw what happened with the 2023 count is that all but the 3 Claypool routes (the only routes in the office that don't have Amazon) got HUGE raises for the carriers. Most of the 18 routes got in excess of a $10,000 raise for each route carrier. The count showed for the first time in more than 4 years that the burden Warsaw carriers have been carrying since the hyper-acceleration of Amazon shipping, and the mind-blowing expansion of even THAT amount of Amazon that has occurred ever since the fear of the pandemic propelled people to now do ALL of their shopping online ... all of that Amazon burden that the Warsaw carriers have been doing for about 3 years now, they have been doing for free.
Said another way: Since all rural carriers nationwide are paid by the same evaluation system (the 46J -- 48K style evaluation), Sam, a rural carrier with a 48K route in Warsaw gets paid EXACTLY the same yearly income as Elaine, a rural carrier with a 48K route in nearby Bourbon .... even though Sam daily has to carry more than 300 parcels EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. and Elaine carries none.
In other words (to repeat the idea), the Warsaw rural carriers have been -- and will continue to -- carry Amazon parcels without remuneration.
And here's the (additional) thing: You could say "Hey, those Warsaw carriers knew what they were getting into when they took the job, right?" Wrong. All but three of the carriers had routes that they could almost always carry ALL of a day's parcel load in the back seat of a sedan with room to spare. And it had been that way for a decade or more for many of them. So, no, they didn't know what they were getting into when they took the job. They had the burden foisted on them when back almost 10 years ago the USPS entered into a contract with Amazon (and because I know this discussion ALWAYS tries to go political because somehow DeJoy has become a public villain, I'll point out that this contract was signed under the Obama administration, pre-DeJoy by YEARS).
But all's well in Warsaw now, right? The new count has made it right, right?
No. Not at all.
See, the problem is that the USPS is a national organization. And the count was a nationwide count. And because the USPS anticipated a bad (for their bottom line) outcome from this count, they changed the rules of the count in a manner that paid the carriers less for each evaluated item (steps to doors, number of stops, number of dismounts, letter-casing counts, flat counts). All the items that matter in the count were devalued before the USPS executed the count.
And what happened nationwide, then, is that, whereas Warsaw might have FINALLY gotten an evaluation that took their parcel load into account, the rest of the country got their routes DE-valued, and saw cuts in their annual pay. This is because MOST of the USPS operated in urban areas that are within the hub of Amazon's own delivery system.
And the USPS, being a national organization that is run from the top, it cannot make accommodations for one office that it doesn't make for all offices. One size HAS to fit all. No exceptions.
The nationwide grapple between the rural carrier union and the USPS is ongoing, but even our union (a national union) has (shows) no interest in solving the problem facing the individual offices like Warsaw that carry the Amazon burden. And right now all Warsaw evaluations are going to simply go away. Since the rest of the nation's rural carriers want their previous pay back, this year's count is going to simply go away. And Warsaw is right back where it was, not getting paid for Amazon.
In short, that's why I'm hoping to transfer to Bourbon.
You may have been following this story in the news. It's being covered across the nation.
In Warsaw what happened with the 2023 count is that all but the 3 Claypool routes (the only routes in the office that don't have Amazon) got HUGE raises for the carriers. Most of the 18 routes got in excess of a $10,000 raise for each route carrier. The count showed for the first time in more than 4 years that the burden Warsaw carriers have been carrying since the hyper-acceleration of Amazon shipping, and the mind-blowing expansion of even THAT amount of Amazon that has occurred ever since the fear of the pandemic propelled people to now do ALL of their shopping online ... all of that Amazon burden that the Warsaw carriers have been doing for about 3 years now, they have been doing for free.
Said another way: Since all rural carriers nationwide are paid by the same evaluation system (the 46J -- 48K style evaluation), Sam, a rural carrier with a 48K route in Warsaw gets paid EXACTLY the same yearly income as Elaine, a rural carrier with a 48K route in nearby Bourbon .... even though Sam daily has to carry more than 300 parcels EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. and Elaine carries none.
In other words (to repeat the idea), the Warsaw rural carriers have been -- and will continue to -- carry Amazon parcels without remuneration.
And here's the (additional) thing: You could say "Hey, those Warsaw carriers knew what they were getting into when they took the job, right?" Wrong. All but three of the carriers had routes that they could almost always carry ALL of a day's parcel load in the back seat of a sedan with room to spare. And it had been that way for a decade or more for many of them. So, no, they didn't know what they were getting into when they took the job. They had the burden foisted on them when back almost 10 years ago the USPS entered into a contract with Amazon (and because I know this discussion ALWAYS tries to go political because somehow DeJoy has become a public villain, I'll point out that this contract was signed under the Obama administration, pre-DeJoy by YEARS).
But all's well in Warsaw now, right? The new count has made it right, right?
No. Not at all.
See, the problem is that the USPS is a national organization. And the count was a nationwide count. And because the USPS anticipated a bad (for their bottom line) outcome from this count, they changed the rules of the count in a manner that paid the carriers less for each evaluated item (steps to doors, number of stops, number of dismounts, letter-casing counts, flat counts). All the items that matter in the count were devalued before the USPS executed the count.
And what happened nationwide, then, is that, whereas Warsaw might have FINALLY gotten an evaluation that took their parcel load into account, the rest of the country got their routes DE-valued, and saw cuts in their annual pay. This is because MOST of the USPS operated in urban areas that are within the hub of Amazon's own delivery system.
And the USPS, being a national organization that is run from the top, it cannot make accommodations for one office that it doesn't make for all offices. One size HAS to fit all. No exceptions.
The nationwide grapple between the rural carrier union and the USPS is ongoing, but even our union (a national union) has (shows) no interest in solving the problem facing the individual offices like Warsaw that carry the Amazon burden. And right now all Warsaw evaluations are going to simply go away. Since the rest of the nation's rural carriers want their previous pay back, this year's count is going to simply go away. And Warsaw is right back where it was, not getting paid for Amazon.
In short, that's why I'm hoping to transfer to Bourbon.