This sounds like a math problem on a standardized test: If the amount of mail processed in fiscal year (FY) 2018 declined by 5 billion pieces and total number of workers used to process mail declined by 5,000 career employees (with workhours also dropping by 4.3 million), how much did overtime costs decrease?
Answer: They didn’t. Overtime costs to process mail increased by $257 million (31 percent) in FY2018 from the previous year. What happened?
Our latest audit report looked at the U.S. Postal Service’s management of mail processing overtime in FY18 and determined that the USPS did not effectively manage mail processing overtime costs in FY 2018. It planned for total mail processing overtime costs of about $732 million, but actually incurred $1.09 billion, a difference of 49 percent.
USPS uses overtime to give it flexibility in operations. But it must manage overtime efficiently, given its impact on costs. Overtime is paid at 1.5 times an employee’s hourly rate. Another category of overtime – penalty overtime – is paid, under specific conditions, at double the employee’s hourly rate.
The Postal Service planned for about 18.5 million overtime workhours and 767,000 penalty overtime workhours for FY 2018. The actual overtime workhours used were 26.7 million (44 percent over plan), and the actual penalty overtime workhours used were 1.7 million (126 percent over plan). This occurred, in part, due to implementation of an employee scheduling tool at the beginning of FY 2018, which we discovered needed some finetuning.
The Postal Service is currently rolling out an updated version of the scheduling tool that should better set the standards for employee schedules and complement levels.
Our report also cited opportunities to address management oversight to prevent unauthorized overtime, reduce grievances, and increase employee availability.
What thoughts or ideas do you have for helping to rein in overtime costs?
Source: USPS Office of Inspector General
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU - Atlanta Metro Area Local 32
Office held, if any
Maintenance Steward
Email Address
apwunodine@gmail.com
You got me there Danny.
What is your solution to the overtime/staffing problems?
Good luck with that.
Mine is to retire by early next year or sooner.
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU - Tri County Ohio Local 7038
Office held, if any
Former Steward
Email Address
dclements3@cinci.rr.com
I am not interested in your long winded response to a simple math question. I fact I only read the first paragraph. You stated “I apologize that I was in a rush and failed to state my point clearly. Yes, 1.09 billion is nearly half again more than 732 million, but 732 million is 33% less than 1.09 billion. Statistics don’t like, but statisticians do….” Math does not lie. It was a 49% increase. Next year if the amount incurred went back down to the $732 million, yes it would be a 33% decrease.
You have either deliberately misused math to make it look like the OIG (i.e. Management) lied, or you do not understand math/statistics. You are correct about one thing, if the people continue to misuse math/statistics, on either side, (includes you) we are in fact doomed.
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU - Atlanta Metro Area Local 32
Office held, if any
Maintenance Steward
Email Address
apwunodine@gmail.com
Brother Clements,
I apologize that I was in a rush and failed to state my point clearly. Yes, 1.09 billion is nearly half again more than 732 million, but 732 million is 33% less than 1.09 billion. Statistics don’t like, but statisticians do…
The old “Labor costs (wages) are 80% of the USPS’ budget” line has been kicked around for decades. But why wouldn’t labor costs be that high or higher for any business that paid for most of its real estate, buildings, facilities, motor vehicles, machinery, and all forms of capital property DECADES ago?
And why would any business that cut it labor force to the bone, to the point it lacks adequate staffing to perform the core duties of the business, NOT have overtime costs because fewer employees than are necessary must be forced to work over 40 hours per week to get that work done?
Consider that my pay location has been critically short staffed for a few years now. And not just I have been doing my job in the same plant for some 30 years, but I have been working the same daily assignment for some 20 years, maintaining and repairing a fixed mech legacy TMS system that is worn out and falling apart. A system there is little training for and that requires years of experience to become well versed in diagnosing and repairing problems efficiently. A sortation system that is critical to a large percentage of the flow of mail in my plant every day,
What you get is a situation where the Level-10 ET’s who had extensive experience maintaining this TMS system retired, they were not replaced or were replaced with Level-7 MM’s. And there are days that I work the system alone, the only maintenance person in the building that can fix the dozens of problems that arise during it’s most productive operational window. So of course, I am on mandatory 6 days per week overtime required whether I like it or not.
And get this, since I am retiring by early next year, if not sooner, I might as well volunteer to work 7 days per week since I can’t get two consecutive days off most weeks because we are so short staffed. Why not help my plant make it’s goals and get paid the extra overtime money in the process, a win-win, the way I see it.
But no! Someone at district or headquarters put my name on a list of people they considered were working too many consecutive days without a day off and they mandated that I be denied my 7th V-time day every other week or something to that effect. Now consider that this is probably someone who knows nothing about the people down the hall who make up the fictitious “staffing package” numbers that continue to say we are overstaffed and even more jobs should be cut by attrition. And the “replace all ET’s with MM’s through attrition.
Here is what I see… USPS management is repeating the same mistakes McNamara made when he managed the “Vietnam War” (Congress never declared it a war, but whatever). The focus is on reports of numbers and statistics and juggling all reports with the goal of making those numbers and statistics appear to portray an image of what is desired, not what is really going on.
MacNamara won his war on paper many many many times over. The US dropped more bombs in the Vietnam conflict on Southeast Asia than all nations on earth dropped on each other during all of WWII. Think about that fact. Isn’t it amazing that with all of the high-tech weaponry and massive firepower the US brought to bear on a practically barefoot army operating underground armed mostly with rifles and boobie traps, at the end of the day we failed to achieve our goals?
Why? Because the North had one major advantage that is greater than all of the technology and superior equipment money can buy. They had high morale and, by the late 60’s, we had practically no morale. And what is the one thing USPS management, like McNamara, could give a flip less about? The one thing that can overcome all obstacles, defeat all superior foes, and win wars against impossible odds?
It couldn’t possibly be “Employee Morale” could it? Of course not. Don’t be silly, Labor isn’t an asset, it’s a liability that must be exploited.
Just like our troops who were sent to the Vietnam theater to be micromanaged by those in DC were doomed to fail because those in Washington managed that war with reports and statistics with no regard for the people or their morale that had to perform the actual work in the field, so too the USPS is doomed to fail by repeating the exact same kind of mistake McNamara made. And our USPS management is doing it with the same stubborn arrogance McNamara had because they are really smart well-educated people who know everything, just like Mac.
The advantage USPS management has is they have the unions to use for a scapegoats to blame all of their failures on. McNamara didn’t have that luxury, he had to live the rest of his life in denial.
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU - Tri County Ohio Local 7038
Office held, if any
Former Steward
Email Address
dclements3@cinci.rr.com
Union and NAME of Local/Branch
APWU - Atlanta Metro Area Local 32
Office held, if any
Maintenance Steward
Email Address
apwunodine@gmail.com