Wow, the LMOU For Offices Without a Local Union Structure is better than what some larger post offices have. “Any request for incidental annual leave will be acted upon and returned to the employee within 72 hours of receipt by management, or the leave will be considered approved.“ Excluding the month of December, no less than one person, but at least 15%, will be allowed off at one time. Vacation signup begins January 15th of each year.
Management may utilize PTF and PSE clerks from other installations to cover incidental annual leave and choice vacation selections of clerks, after following a pecking order. This should help getting time off in small offices. Caveat–without a steward presence in these small offices, it will be difficult to police the restrictions and exceptions.
“When it is necessary to change, abolish and/or revert a duty assignment, the installation head/designee shall notify the APWU Regional Coordinator/designee, in writing of this determination.” I’ll believe this when I see it. Locals and state organizations are typically not notified of anything in writing in the small offices they represent.
The best small office LMOU I’ve seen is the CT Valley District LMOU for Level 20 post offices and below: A Model Local Memorandum of Understanding (LMOU).
First Name: Don
Last Name: Cheney
Email: doncheney@live.com
Union/Local: APWU – Auburn WA Local
Office held if any: Retired President
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU Cape Girardeau MO Area Local #4088
Office held, if any
President
We’ve got a 48 hour agreement rather than the 72 hours. Sometimes when they don’t give us a reply within the 48 hours, we don’t even say anything. We just take off knowing it’s approved. When we get back they sometimes ask where we were, and we just show them our copies of the 3971s that they signed as received. Once they forgot to process all our single day requests during prime time, and every one got approved. You’d think this would motivate them to get those requests back to us sooner, but it still happens a lot. This is a policy that needs to be adopted everywhere.