On Monday, September 19, 2022, Lynn Pallas-Barber <lpallas@apwu.org> wrote:

To all APWU family,

On Saturday, 9/17/22 Director Lamont Brooks shared a notification concerning the USPS plan to deploy additional SDUS machines to various facilities (copy attached). In addition to the information please find below an attached information on SDUS Distribution Clerk Position.

We were notified of the SDUS Distribution Clerk Position Description. Both the Clerk Craft and the Maintenance Craft have pending disputes on that job. The Clerk Craft has issues with the Level and the Maintenance Craft for the type of maintenance work being done by the operator. The current level of this position is Level 6. Not a lot of information has been shared with the field as there has not been a lot to share. Both disputes are still pending.

The SDUS Distribution Clerk is a duty assignment on it’s own that does the preventative maintenance duties. It may depend on how many clerks will staff the machine to perform the allied duties as to whether or not they can add the duties of working on the SDUS to a SSDA/SSA/Mail processing clerk.

Per the Standard Position Description of the SDUS Distribution Clerk:

Attached is a copy of the preventative Maintenance training.

Regarding staffing for the Small Delivery Unit Sorter (SDUS), as no separate national jurisdictional craft determination letter has been issued for this machine, the national jurisdictional craft determination letter for the Automated Delivery Unit Sorter (ADUS) will be applied. Specifically, if an SDUS is deployed to a Function 4 facility, the ADUS determination from the Function 4 perspective will be applied. See the attached document. If it is an ADUS/SDUS in a Function 4 office then all the work is clerk work. I have attached a few slides from a USPS PP, in the slides it does provide “one person infeed position with operator paced….”

This national jurisdictional determination was upheld by Arbitrator Sharnoff in his national decision on the ADUS issued dated 9/1/22.

Once again since the SDUS is now in a Function 4 station/branch/annex the SDUS is Clerk work -period. Because the station/branch/annex is part of the main PO (Miami) – it may have a separate finance number, which can used to establish that the station/branch/annex is Function 4.

As far as staffing – that is usually a local issue that depends on the machine, the volume to be run on the machine, the hours of run time on the machine, etc… I would think that management would want at least 2 SDUS Distribution Positions. I have attached some training document that was received addressing the preventive maintenance. The Clerk Craft has maintained the position that this job is somewhat similar to the Senior Mail Processor. When we had the CSBCSs in the field there would be 1 or 2 clerks as Senior Mail Processor and other clerks staffing the machine for sweeping and other allied duties.

The VEA is the hiring test. The Qual Standards require passing the preventative maintenance training.

Please share with your state and local representatives.

Any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me.

Lynn Pallas-Barber
Assistant Clerk Craft Director
1300 L Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
202-842-4220

Please disseminate to the field.