New enrollments in the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program on hold until December 2024

March 16, 2023 The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has paused all new applications for the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program. Unenrolled individuals cannot apply for the program. The suspension period, which will run for 24 months from Dec. 19, 2022, is designed to give OPM and the John Hancock Life and Health…

 Continue reading

USPS reminds employees they may not run for partisan office

March 15, 2023 The Postal Service is reminding employees they may not run for partisan office. A partisan election is one in which any candidate in the race represents a political party. This Hatch Act rule applies to partisan elections at the federal, state and local levels. It also applies to employees who are on…

 Continue reading

USPS: European Union tightens rules on declarations

March 15, 2023 Postal Service employees should be prepared to provide tools to customers sending packages in order to meet new European Union requirements to provide more detail about their contents on customs forms. Customers should be reminded that broad descriptions of the contents are not acceptable. For example, “men’s cotton dress shirts” is acceptable;…

 Continue reading

National Postal Mail Handlers Union ratify 2022 National Agreement

March 13, 2023 The terms of the 2022 National Agreement between the NPMHU and the U.S. Postal Service were officially ratified on March 13, 2023. The certified results show that over 84% of the membership approved the new contract, with the final vote tally at 6,617 in favor of ratification and 1,237 in opposition to…

 Continue reading

NLRB: APWU of Louisiana breached it’s duty of fair representation when it failed/refused to process employee’s grievances

FINDINGS OF FACT I. JURISDICTION The United States Postal Service (the Employer) provides postal services for the United States and operates various facilities throughout the United States in performing that function, including its facility located at 3928 Highway 32, Leonville, Louisiana (the Employer’s facility). The Board has jurisdiction over the Employer and this matter by…

 Continue reading

NALC: Social Security Fairness Act reintroduced in Senate

March 9, 2023 Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) reintroduced the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act (S. 597) in the Senate on March 1. The bill, which is identical to legislation introduced in the House (H.R. 82) in January by Reps. Garret Graves (R-LA) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), would repeal the Government Pension…

 Continue reading