(See prior blog entry)

It was chaos today, as everyone but management thought it would be. Out of 34 routes, actually there were 13 down initially. After about two hours, management figured out this wasn't going to work, so against instructions of the higher-ups, the manager made some calls and found a couple of carriers to come in. 

Why did they come in, knowing the situation? One carrier said he came in because he didn't want his customers to not have mail delivery on Christmas Eve. Now that's dedication in the face of stupidity.

Speaking of stupidity, after the manager called a couple of carriers, I think I heard the supervisor say the calvary was on its way. Wow, Jesus is coming to help? 

I do know I heard the supervisor say several times that they were surprised that we had mail. (They were told it would be a light volume day). Well, there's two things wrong with these statements. First, it's Monday. We always have mail on Monday, and on Monday the DPS is about double. And today's mail was filled with Christmas cards. Who would have thought? The second thing wrong is that today is Christmas Eve. They didn't think we would have mail on CHRISTMAS EVE? There was a ton of Priority Mail!

At 4:00 PM there was still 30 hours of mail to be carried by about fifteen remaining carriers. None of the carriers were back yet. Why would they be? The first one back gets the biggest extra route to carry.

The evening supervisor said he was hoping to leave by 10:00 PM. He was already bracing for confrontations. He said a couple of non-overtime list carriers had already stated they weren't helping carry beyond their routes, seeing the postal management stupidity in not scheduling enough carriers and also because they didn't want to carry in the dark. 

And these carriers have a point. Management has known about this for days. Yet they left all the overtime and holiday people at home to prevent all-day overtime work. As it turns out, the holiday people they called will now be payed at the overtime rate per the contract. They would have been paid straight time if mandated to work last week. Now there will be a slew of grievances from both the overtime and non-overtime list people that will cost the USPS even more money.

I received the local NALC union report today. On the front page, president Sid Simmons is reporting on this very subject, saying he sent a letter to the Dallas District Manager about the district-wide prohibition of full day replacement overtime.

What's happening is that overtime carriers are left at home on their days off, and in many cases, non-overtime list carriers are being mandated to work, often long hours and in the dark, to cover the down routes. It's certainly a contract issue, but foremost it's a service issue, as many customers in the Dallas area are having their mail delivered late in the day and sometimes after dark. 

All this leaves me wondering if the Postal Service is just chasing some numbers or if finances are in dire shape and are necessitating such drastic personnel and service cutbacks.