Unsung Heroes

Happy New Year APWU family! I hope you and your family had a peaceful and joyous time celebrating the holiday season and are ready to start the year defending and growing our union.

The holiday season is a time for enjoyment, but it is also a time of hard work for bargaining-unit employees of the APWU. This time of year is the peak season for mail and parcel volume, which creates more work hours for the Clerk, Motor Vehicle Service, and Maintenance crafts. The sisters and brothers in these crafts sacrifice time away from home and their families to fulfill the postal mission of providing the nation with reliable, affordable universal mail service. I want to thank them for the work they do and let them know they are appreciated.

Our Support Services craft experiences peak season in a way different than the other crafts. While mail volume dictates an increase in work and work hours for the other crafts, the nature of work for each of our Support Services groups determines when we experience increased work volumes and hours. These occurrences can be seasonal or sporadic throughout the year. I would like to show appreciation for the hard work our craft does throughout the year by recognizing the situations that lead to an increased workload in Support Services.

The Information Technology and Accounting Service Center (IT/AS) bargaining unit have increased demands based on numerous scenarios. For the IT developers and programmers, deployment cycles of different applications and programs determine when there is an increase in workload. The cycles involve completing programming code, testing, and launching. These cycles happen at various times throughout the year, depending on the business needs of the Postal Service, to make updates or changes to the IT infrastructure.

The Accounting Services group has increased workloads based on various cutoff dates for financial information. Our finance employees experience cutoff dates in September each year based on the fiscal year information needs of the Postal Service. Payroll employees have an increased demand at the end of each year due to processing cutoff dates for information that allows for postal employees’ W-2 tax forms to be updated and created.

The private-sector mail-haul drivers experience peak season at the same time as the other crafts due to increases in mail volume. The over-the-road drivers may have more unscheduled layovers that prevent them from returning home at the conclusion of their shift. These drivers work under Hours-of-Service driving regulations and must complete their driving within a certain amount of time before a mandatory 10-hour break.

The Human Resources Shared Service Center (HRSSC) group experiences increased demand based on the section they work in. The Benefits and Phones sections have a high demand during Open Enrollment Season for health benefits due to employee changes in healthcare plans and questions related to those changes. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) section has increased demand in January due to employees submitting FMLA documents for recertification.

The Occupational Health Nurses (OHNs) have an increased work demand each year from January through March due to moving seasonal employees’ medical fi les from a folder of active employees to another folder for inactive employees. With the increase of seasonal employees during peak season, the OHNs have more fi les to transfer to the inactive folder at the beginning of each year.

The Material Support craft employees of the Western Area Supply Center experience an increased workload over the summer months. The Supply Center warehouses parts and supplies for postal machinery throughout the country. There is an increase in the need for machinery parts due to breakdown and malfunctions in the summertime that creates a larger workload for these employees.

Whether increased workloads are seasonal, monthly, or sporadic, we want to recognize the additional work that our Support Services workers do for the Postal Service.