60 Minute Office Time
We all know that management is trying to push us out of the office in 60 minutes because of lack of mail volume. When we have mail, the ball is in our court but when there is no mail like there is now the ball is in management's court. But that does not stop us from doing our job professionally. These are some of the office functions that you should be doing every day as a professional letter carrier.
VEHICLE INSPECTIONS: M-41 City Delivery Carriers Duties and Responsibilities: Section 832.1 Inspect vehicle as described on Notice 76, Expanded Vehicle Safety Check for deficiencies, body damage, or inoperable items. How many of you make sure that your office is doing vehicle inspections. You must do this vehicle inspection with another carrier. The buddy system, you need two carriers to check one vehicle. Make sure you are doing the vehicle inspection. When you discover defects, including fluid leaks, they should be reported on Form 4565. If you do your job, the burden shifts to management to do its job. The Branch wants you to come to work safely and go home safely, so please do this vehicle inspection, don't cut corners!
SWEEPING OF MAIL: Make sure that you case all your mail at your case before sweeping mail. Don't sweep mail after a vehicle inspection, a comfort break or being called to the supervisor's desk. Take the time it takes for you to walk from your case to the clerk area to sweep your mail.
WORKING OFF THE CLOCK: How many of you know or see carriers working off the clock to maintain the 60-minute rule. Shop stewards if you see this is going on in your office file a grievance for that carrier(s) to get paid. Management will stop this immediately.
SERVICE & SAFETY TALKS: When management is giving these talks make sure that you STOP casing your mail and turn around and listen to the service or safety talk. Stewards, if you see carrier(s) casing mail interrupt the supervisor and tell them that all the carriers should be listening to the talk and not casing mail.
OFFICE BREAKS: If your office has an office break of either 10 or 15 minutes, stewards make sure that all carriers are taking the break and not working through the break.
THIRD BUNDLES: On park and loop routes you are only required to carry 3 bundles of mail. Mounted and Dismounted routes you can take out more than 3 bundles. Now with no FSS in offices a lot of the 3rd bundles will go to the street as the 3rd bundle. With that said you do not take them to the street in the strapped bundles. You get time in the OFFICE to cut straps and count out the 3rd bundle into relays. If the code above the address has ECRWSH you are allowed to case it. If the code above the address has ECRWSS you take it out as a 3rd bundle after you count it out into relay order.
CASING STANDARD: The only casing standard is 18 letters per minute or 8 flats per minute not both, one or the other. Seventy pieces of mail a minute for strap out time. An old professional letter carrier taught me years ago when the USPS was conducting route inspections the old fashion way how to professionally case mail: He told me just don't read the name and case it because you know that the Smith family lives here, or the Jones family lives there. He told me that every envelope has three lines; read the name, the street address, the city, or town, the state, and the zip code. This will make sure that you are casing the mail into the correct slot professionally.
SPR'S: SPRs that get thrown/sorted into your parcel hampers, in such a case we get time to fish them out of the parcel container then bring to case to sort into trays in delivery sequence. This is all during office time as well.
FIXED OFFICE TIME: In offices that do not have an office break, the minimum fixed office time is 33 minutes. Offices that have a 10-minute break, the minimum fixed office time is 43. If you have a 15-minute break in the morning the minimum fixed office time is 48 minutes. Some offices have even more fixed office times than that, but that is the minimum. The fixed office time includes your vehicle inspection, break, wash-up, etc.
WASH-UP TIME: If your office has a wash-up time before hitting the street, either 3 or 5 minutes make sure that you are taking this time.
PERSONAL TIME: Section 922.51.g of Handbook M-41 states: Personal Needs, etc. An allowance of 5 minutes is permitted on the first trip for personal needs, obtaining hat and coat from wall racks before leaving office, visiting swing room to obtain rain gear from locker, etc.
You should also ask to look at the Route/Carrier Daily Performance /Analysis Report this will show your projected office time in the AM projected street time and your projected PM office time. Don't let management rush you out of the office in 60 minutes without doing your job professionally!
On a personal note, it gives me deep sadness to inform the membership of the passing of one of our trustees Justin Puglisi from the North Baldwin post office. Justin was a good union man, a military man, husband, father and a brother who cared about the well-being of union members.
