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USPS Told That It Must 'Follow the Rulings'

(Excerpt from the November/December 2003 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

As part of its never-ending effort to avoid implementing rulings in national-level cases won by the APWU, the Postal Service has gone to the National Labor Relations Board to try to overturn an arbitrator's decision.

The saga began when the union determined that a number of positions that were being treated as non-bargaining unit jobs belonged in the Clerk or Maintenance Crafts. We filed unit clarification (UC) petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). After the APWU and USPS settled a number of disputes and agreed to submit the remaining issues to arbitration, we withdrew the UC petitions.

An arbitrator issued an award finding that the Address Management Systems Specialist position was a Clerk Craft rather than an EAS (non-bargaining unit) position. The Postal Service responded by filing its own UC petition, asking the NLRB to find that all contested EAS positions were outside the bargaining unit.

When the APWU filed a motion to dismiss the petition, the director of NLRB Region 5 granted the motion, ruling that the Postal Service had clearly agreed to have these issues decided by an arbitrator, not the NLRB, and that to rule otherwise would permit the Postal Service "to pick and choose which [National Agreement] provisions it wishes to invoke and which it prefers to avoid."

The Postal Service may seek review from the full NLRB, but we believe the regional director's reasoning is sound and are optimistic that the APWU will prevail.