FSA Should Be RSA
As far as I’m concerned FSA should be RSA for Rigged Spending Account as far as the Postal Service branch of the program is concerned. I guess we were all supposed to have received a letter telling us that the Postal FSA is for working mothers! OK. Am I angry? Just a little, but I’ll get over it. I put $500.00 in there to learn how to use it and receive a tax benefit by lowering my taxable income or face lost opportunity costs, they recommend $2000.00 each to as much as $4000.00 for a couple on their web site. Two things to keep in mind: If your are near your high-3 years of service for computing your retirement it can lower what you receive from your retirement! So if you are putting any significant amount in there, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Secondly, if it is as difficult as I find it is to collect your money back in the name of lowering taxes, and you could conceivably lose your own money why go through all of the paperwork, time wasting to call 800 numbers and general foot dragging to receive a modest lowering of your tax obligation? The credit card they issue you is for drugstore.com and Walgreen’s only! Can’t use it any where else in the world. They are trying to change that, but it seems the USPS has some reservations about letting us take advantage of a good thing so easily. So, if you are going to fax your claim in you have to call their 1-800 number 24 to 48 hours after faxing to verify that they received the fax. OK, let me go over that again. Credit Card is limited. YOU have to fax your claims in or mail your claims in. You have to wait 24 hours and check back with them to make sure they received your fax. YOU have to get your insurers EOB, or “explanation of benefits” and know that as a postal employee your ID number is your postal employee ID number and you have to call them for a group number before you can do anything. My take on it is this, it’s just not worth the extra bureaucracy to save a few bucks when what you are using it for is medical and you are usually in some state of incapacitation when you need the services so the extra effort to file the claims and get it right are just not worth the trouble. To take advantage of the plan you are taking on a second job just to file the paperwork. How sweet is that my friends?
Have a great week
George
RE: Fighting ‘The Femail Man’
OK, the count is over, I’ve lost 5 hours in my evaluation as have thousands of “Rural Carriers” across the country, and I’m happy I still have a job. My point was proven to the nth degree as automation makes controlling our numbers easy for management trying to shift postal funds from one function to another. The arguments are the mail volume has fallen by 20%, (it always does in February.) Also there is an adjustment period just after a rate increase, which will now happen every year just after our mail count is finalized. To make up for the lost 5 hours I will be fortunate if I can add 5 more hours to my week through realignment of the routes in my Zip code. Just about the time that finalizes some new automation will be put into place and I will be looking for more hours to fill the hour shortage again. The POINT is automation is pushing us into a corner making speed more important than ever much more important than accuracy, and forcing carriers into the position of cutting customer service corners in order to get back by the new target time of 4:pm to get our collected mail back to the office so that a truck can get it to the plant yada yada yada. So Marty, pardon me if I laugh when you expect me to dismount during a snowstorm when darkness and a 4 P.M. deadline dictate my rules of engagement. Every business has its working rules and we have been privatized since 1971. The price of the stamp pays our fees, which are trying to compete with free email and an inflation price cap imposed by law. No pressure??? Customers think we are subsidized by tax dollars but we aren’t. The government still has control over us through the board of governors but our top man is a CEO of a corporation. Labor issues are settled through collective bargaining without that body having the freedom to strike. UPS has the teamsters if they have labor issues they can and do strike. They can strike! Marty, you have the freedom to strike if your craft feels so inclined, but not the craft members of the USPS. We serve 145 million addresses per day or more, which makes us the largest communications company in the world. We have to have working rules that make it economically feasible to deliver our product to the country in an efficient and timely fashion or else go bankrupt. Dismounting at every delivery during a snowstorm is not good business sense and would make necessary installing central box units to replace curbside delivery if you press the issue. The USPS could save 2 billion with a “B” just by eliminating some types of delivery. We don’t run on pipe dreams but economical realities just like every other business in the world. What you want could only happen if we were still subsidized by the tax paying public. So, to bring you back to the realities of the real free enterprise world and the economic pressures that govern the modern postal service I give you this information free of charge in hopes that you will make the best use and entertain the thought that you don’t dictate the working rules of the postal service, economic realities do that job for us. Have a nice day Marty.
RE: Fighting ‘The Femail Man’
To: Marty Fortier
Coeur d’Alene Press
RE: Fighting ‘The Femail Man’
It’s too bad that this story gets lost in gender wars. The real story is automation is pushing the limits of human endurance. We are about to go to the next level of automation in our office. In the months to come we will lose people to automation who are the middle postal workers who route the mail to each carrier.
The carrier will have to add more customers to each route to make up for what automation will take away especially on rural routes but also city routes and CDS routes.
We have a formula that will give us 2 minutes per each box per 6-day week if we maintain a route with fewer than 12 boxes per mile, (impossible after the next phase in of automation.)
The minute we go over 12 boxes per mile we get 1.82 minutes per box per week. If we deliver to a central box, (apartments, trailer parks, business, new housing developments use central boxes,) we only get 1 minute per box per week. (The Postal Service can potentially save 2 billion a year with delivery to central boxes.) That’s not 1 minute per day, but 1 minute per 6 days of mail delivery, (you do the math.)
The formula is computed on the lowest volume month of the year, February and the luck of the draw of what mail might show up then verses the rest of the work year. An inventory is made of every piece and type of mail, plugged into a formula that is used to pay us for all of the year, (the rest of the year mail volume is heavier than the post-Christmas slump,) leaving us with nothing but hustle on our minds to get our routes finished before the sun sets and the last dispatch truck leaves. I’m a rural carrier and I don’t get paid by the hour, but by the above method.
That pace of delivering mail is maintained even on light mail days, not just out of habit, but also because it is figured into the formula and lets us go home early. Some customers will complain because we burn up the road to achieve our mission as efficiently as possible, but if customers start leaving mailboxes blocked with kids toys, trash cans, pit bulls, farm animals, parked cars, overhanging limbs and branches, or snow on any significant amount of our routes, we will be delivering in the dark and past the last dispatch truck that takes the mail we collect for delivery.
When we walk our walking sections to deliver to houses should it be necessary for us to come armed with deadly force to defend against that loose Rotweiler that is known to kill more people than any other dog including Pit bulls?
Now the post office has essentially merged with DHL, UPS, and FedEx for sharing the delivery loads. They say we have a monopoly on the mailbox. That has essentially disappeared over night. I have delivered DHL, UPS, and FedEx parcels on my route. I’m sure they are doing the same with USPS products.
If we got paid for all the real services we provide, especially pruning customers trees and shrubs, moving kids toys, the price of postage would skyrocket which is not in our best interest or the general publics best interest.
The postal service has a zero tolerance for missing the dispatch trucks with outgoing mail. We are penalized if we are late for that truck. Methods of punishment include changing our start times, cutting the size of our routes, (hence cutting our pay,) and forcing different casing methods that force us onto the street transferring the workload to the street which makes us do the work, (that could be accomplished so much easier in the office,) to the street.
We have been called glorified paper boys by some members of congress who are trying appeal to those who would transfer every penny of the postage stamp that pays for our services into their own advertising pockets, (yes Marty, you were once one of those on the congressional dole if you were an ad exec and as a writer still are,) while working us into the ground before we can collect a retirement pension, (which I might add was radically changed when it was moved to FERS from CSRS,) but those who make those kind of statements don’t realize the work that goes into delivering a paper route much less serving the number of people we serve daily delivering mail, selling postal products, picking up and delivering parcels and mail, and offering friendship to those whom we serve.
Our local surgeons know us by first name for constant knee, wrist and shoulder repair for the damage repetitive and awkward motions cause that we endure to deliver the mail efficiently. Just try it during the heavy months of the year. We must maintain an average speed of 10-15 miles per hour just to stay within the time allotted to do the job. That doesn’t sound like much in terms of speed, but when you take into account we have to come to a full stop, collect outgoing mail, sell stamps, and deliver parcels to the door, well, our average speed doesn’t reflect our true speed.
If you were to drive where you had to stop quickly, accelerate quickly, constantly watching out over your shoulder for speeding customers who hate to get caught behind a delivery vehicle for even 10 seconds, making constant turns down every cul-de-sac, private drive, and street on your line of travel, you would find the same stresses on your neck and lower lumbar that a fighter pilot endures. (We hire a lot of those by the way.)
That very friendship we establish with our patrons can get taxed when we are under pressure to deliver the amount of mail that we now have to face each and every delivery day that will only double by the end of next year.
Thanks so much for the cookies and milk, the walnuts, the fruit and other goodies my appreciative friends supply me who know the meaning of a fair days pay for a fair amount of work and I have so many on my own route who have toiled for a living and know what I endure daily. I’ve been delivering for nearly 2 decades to the same customers and we know and appreciate each other well.