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APWU Opposes USPS Surveys
APWU Web News Article #21-04, Nov. 5, 2004
The APWU opposes worker participation in USPS employee opinion surveys, President William Burrus reminded union members on Nov. 5. “We are aware that the Postal Service continues to mail Voice of Employee surveys to employees on an annual basis,” he said, “but we discourage union members from participating.”
The union’s policy, adopted by the National Executive Board in 1998, contests “the use of all surveys, focus groups, polls and audits as a means of interviewing employees and union officials to evaluate job related and internal union issues.”
Experience has taught union members a bitter lesson in that regard, said APWU Industrial Relations Director Greg Bell. “The Postal Service has misrepresented the results of previous employee opinion survey and claimed that employees supported the Postal Service’s wage proposals during contract negotiations and interest arbitrations,” he said.
The subjects addressed in the survey should be discussed in labor-management meetings where the concerns of all represented employees are considered, said Bell. “The APWU’s concern is that results of a survey of individual employees can be misrepresented or manipulated by the Postal Service in order to achieve management goals that the union does not share.”
Opinion surveys are often designed to elicit a specific response or result, Bell said. “In most cases, surveys conducted by an employer are designed to circumvent bargaining with unions and are used in management’s effort to reduce employee wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. This has been our experience with the Postal Service.”
