Springfield: Denied PS Form 3996

Welcome back everyone, we have another update from a bunch of resolutions we recently received! This is a short one, but a contentious one, because it has to do with management’s responsibility to maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect and their documented abandonment of that responsibility.

This grievance focused on carriers requesting copies of their 3996 to document their request and disposition of overtime. Management refused to give a disposition of the requested overtime and refused to give carriers copies of their 3996. We filed a grievance and tried to settle it locally, but management was resistant to that, so instead it went up and now the resolution applies to the whole installation.

This is an important one for us for a lot of reasons, but mostly so that you can cover your butt when requesting your 3996, requesting a disposition of overtime, and requesting a copy of your 3996. It keeps management from avoiding their responsibility and pinning it on you (i.e. unauthorized overtime). Here we go!

All right, let’s check the timeline first: the incident date was on 5/28 and the resolution was on 8/30. That’s not *too bad, especially considering that we have a bunch resolved from around that day. These Step B teams are working hard to get through these and attempt to fix the issues.

Next, let’s check the issue: one issue is centered on carriers being denied copies of their 3996 and the other is about management not maintaining an atmosphere of dignity and respect in the workplace.

So far so good, so let’s look at the “Decision” next, as that’s how the Step B team identified violations and ruled on the grievance.

It’s a violation for management to deny you a copy of your 3996 at the time of request. Also, management failed to maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect by violating this right. Pretty simple there.

Then we get a look at the overview of the Union and management position for the grievance. You can see that the Union brought it on the contractual support as well as the respect support: carriers cannot comply with disposition of overtime if we don’t know what that disposition is! We identified that trap meant for us to the Step B team and they understood it.

Management’s position is we didn’t need a 3996 because there wasn’t mail and that we needed to get to the street, that carriers “demanded” their copies “immediately,” and that they don’t have a time limit on providing 3996s, and that both parties have an obligation to maintain dignity and respect in the workplace. Let’s see how that shakes out.

Dang, it doesn’t get much clearer than that: M-39 handbook section 122.33 pretty much covers that for us and puts it to bed. But also, check out the fact that they cited the M-39 section 115.4 again here, which if you’ll read near the top of page 2 is the section about management maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect. That’s important because it states that it’s management’s responsibility to initiate that mutual respect.

The Step B team agrees with us; it is easier for carriers to show respect when it is first shown to us. That’s fantastic, and in line with dozens of other resolutions we have on the matter from previous grievances.

And with that, we’re done! Short and sweet, simple to read. Thanks for popping in over here, and if this kind of stuff interests you, let a steward know!

Be safe out there.