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Chapter 6: Aligning People with Progress: Building a 21st Century Postal Service Workforce Source: Postal Commission Final Report on USPS Table of Contents
• Introduction • Dissenting Statement of Commission Report by Commissioner Norman Seabrook
As valuable as the Postal Service is to the nation, its ability to deliver that value is only as great as the capability, motivation and satisfaction of the people who make the daily delivery of the mail to virtually every American home and business possible. Their desire to make the modernization of the nation’s postal network a success, along with their willingness to make possible the Postal Service’s ambitious goals to rein in costs while improving productivity and service, will in no small part determine the success or failure of the entire transformation endeavor and, ultimately, the fate of universal service at affordable rates. A new collective bargaining process that brings management and employees together and places a premium on constructive and timely resolutions, more businesslike flexibility that permits the Postal Service to address mounting benefits liabilities, and a new commitment to making all employees vested in the enterprise—all these steps can help bring under control the extraordinary costs of the Postal Service’s national employee base. This result can be achieved without turning to ratepayers or sacrificing the Postal Service’s commitment to compensating its employees comparably to the private sector. If the Postal Service proves capable of focusing its mission and purpose, its workforce must be no larger than necessary and committed to facing the realities of declining mail volumes and revenues. In this area, its strategy must be two-fold: minimizing the risk to taxpayers and ratepayers, and realigning the workforce to the realities of a leaner Postal Service without sacrificing service. A lean, motivated and strategically deployed workforce is essential to this equation. Equally important is the potential of technology, even amid such a challenging transition, to propel the Postal Service to a new standard of excellence. return to Table of contents
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Appendix D: Additional Statement by Commissioner Seabrook July 30, 2003 President’s Commission on the United States Postal Service 1120 Vermont Avenue, N.W. Suite 971 Washington, DC 20005 Dear Commissioners: I have reviewed the final recommendations to the Commission from the Workforce Subcommittee. I agree with recommendations 1, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11. I disagree with recommendations 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 for the following reasons: I dissent from recommendation number 2 because it places artificial constraints on the bargaining process. Management and labor should be free to conduct arms-length bargaining and reach a decision through that process and the existing arbitration process. Cutting the time of the arbitration process to 180 days at the most is a worthwhile objective but is not the answer to the existing arbitration problem. The arbitration process takes too long because management often takes an unreasonable position. Adequate funding of the Postal Service as well as recognition of the financial and other interests of the employees is a better approach. Expediting an unfair process is not the answer. I dissent from recommendation number 3 for the following reasons: Adding Postal Service pension and the postretirement healthcare plan to the collective bargaining process puts these benefits at greater risk than is the case for other federal employees. The benefits of federal employees in the existing structure grow out of a long history of federal budgetary considerations and legislative initiatives. While the benefits could certainly be improved, this recommendation does not have benefit improvement as an objective. Placing pension and retiree health benefits into a collective bargaining process and then constraining that process by pressuring for settlements within "180 days" creates an environment that may be potentially harmful to active and retired postal workers. I prefer that the benefits for postal workers be considered in the same way as other federal employees. I dissent from recommendation number 4 because the operationalization of the concept is problematic. Pay comparability is a concept best applied when public employees’ salaries and benefits are not subject to collective bargaining. In a collective bargaining process, pay comparability inevitably enters any determination of salaries and benefits. However the dynamic of the bargaining process where management and labor meet on an equal footing and struggle through to a determination is quite different from an administrative process where "personnel types" organize groups of people into boxes of comparable worth and impose their view of a worker’s value. The former is an equitable approach. The latter is quintessential bureaucracy. I dissent from recommendation number 5 for the following reasons: Pay for performance is a disguised way in which management can attack the strength of a union by dividing its members. "Pay for performance" as a concept seems unassailable because who could argue that people who perform better should be paid more? In practice, however, such systems are characterized by nepotism, favoritism and horrible morale among the workers. I challenge the subcommittee to demonstrate a successful pay for performance system in any large strongly unionized public organization. Personnel evaluations, performance evaluations, employee rating systems, etc., all have some value but only as an integral part of an employee management system that includes a strong labor component, which in the final analysis balances the outcome in favor of objective performance. I dissent from recommendation number 7 because it implies that workers’ compensation abuse is so rampant that a tested and respected system needs to be totally revamped to ameliorate the abuses. If one honestly believes that a worker has been injured and that the work-related injury must be subjected to an equitable process, these recommendations are troublesome. Only when read in the context of widespread abuse do these recommendations become logical. If the subcommittee assumes that there are abuses, the individual abuses should be dealt with in a detailed and aggressive way. However, encumbering an already difficult process by adding reduction in benefit payments and expedited retirements is unfair to the bulk of postal workers who are injured on the job. In closing, I believe that recommendations 2, 3, 4, 5 & 7 require additional work by the subcommittee. Each of the recommendations focuses on an issue that we thought needed examination. However, the approach to the solution in my view is counterproductive and biased against the worker. The efficiencies enjoyed will be at the expense of the effectiveness of the employee and, therefore, the effectiveness of the organization. Under the circumstances, these issues should be left the way they are instead of changed by the recommendations brought by the subcommittee. Thank you, Commissioner Norman Seabrook |
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