Flavor of the Month: “You Have Undertime”

It’s been a bit since the diner’s been open, so slide on up to the counter for this delicious flavor; it looks like it’s going to stay on the menu for a while.

If you’re not familiar with this, management has started telling people they have undertime before they even get clocked in. Sometimes there’s a white board with vacant routes on it and carriers’ names written under the routes. Further still, sometimes these carrier names have “UT” written next to their names to indicate those carriers will carry off-assignment work in projected undertime.

Why is this happening? The mysterious entity known only as “District” is telling offices and installations that they are expected to pivot vacant routes in undertime. For Springfield, District says we should be splitting eighteen routes per day in “undertime.” At SWA management let us know this info and stated our office was responsible for five of those eighteen. This is a metric for management, and is part of their “Pay for Performance” plan. Essentially, their goal is to harass and squeeze carriers with non-contractual practices to make their numbers look better so they get incentive pay. Don’t believe it? Check it out here. To reiterate: you are being pushed to “make the numbers” so they can get more money. What do you get out of it? Glad you asked.

A longer route!

Just kidding, but kind of not kidding. When management tells you that you have a piece of another route to complete in “undertime” and you run to make that happen so you “stay off their radar” management will just keep doing it stating you have “demonstrated performance” showing you can do more and are stealing from them when you don’t. Maybe your actual route doesn’t get longer, but management will continue to expect you to carry more. Do that and you’ll get more, and more, and more.

Now if you’ve got some undertime for the day, no sweat! But I wouldn’t be reporting that until after I get my route done so I don’t generate unauthorized OT because we can be disciplined for that. Most of you caught that, but I’m going to break that down to help you protect yourself in case you didn’t:

If you tell management in the morning you’ve got 30 minutes of undertime, then your route takes you 8 hours, you suddenly have work in excess of 8 hours. Management can unauthorize that overtime and keep you on the hook for it, issuing you discipline for it if they want to. It’s only a matter of time before they do that to bully you further, so heads up.

So what do you you in that instance? Contact management and ask them if you should carry in an OT status to complete the assigned work or bring it back to avoid a possible “Improper Mandate” grievance. Don’t call, use your scanner or your phone if you do that sort of thing to document the instructions. KEEP THAT correspondence, it proves you didn’t make the decision and should not be logged as unauthorized. Remember, we’re paid to carry mail and management is responsible for making decisions: make them make decisions, they’re paid to do so.

Here’s the thing; the street work is the unknown element in all of this. Things are a lot more controlled in the office, but on the street there is no standard because it’s way too unpredictable and the NALC would never agree to a street standard to avoid harassment of carriers. Management knows this too but they also know there are some people out there who can be pushed and bullied into going faster. Management’s gonna manage, so you know they’ll come at those carriers hard. Is this carrier you?

I’ve met on the Formal A level of the grievance procedure relating to this very issue and my counterpart said, “How do you know if you don’t have undertime based on the volume yet? You haven’t even been on the street yet?” He was using the Royal “you,” meaning all of us carriers. I responded with, “That’s exactly the point: I haven’t gotten to carry my route yet, how am I supposed to know if I have undertime or not before hand?” That should be your response in the morning.

So let’s go over how this should go down in the morning when management tells you you’ve got undertime to protect yourself. If you’re given off-assignment work in “undertime” you have to let management know whether that’s accurate or not. You have reporting requirements in the City Letter Carrier Handbook (M-41) that management hands out and selectively reads in section 131.4. that states you are required to verbally let management know when you’re going to be over eight hours. If management is creating this situation you need to stand up for yourself and let them know. They will tell you “demonstrated performance” and “with this amount of mail that’s unacceptable” or something equally disrespectful. You haven’t gotten to carry your route and dealt with all the variables of the street yet, and you can stand on that. You can just tell them you’ll happily report any undertime after you’ve completed your route. You still have to comply with orders, but doing it this way covers your butt.

If you’re instructed to carry in projected undertime despite your report request a steward. Now I know that can be difficult sometimes because you don’t want to cause problems, or you might be scared of retaliation, but let me ask you: what more are they going to do? They gonna give you more work? Follow you on the street? Give you an investigative interview? Hey, aren’t they doing all that already? It’s not a big deal for you, let them catch you working, but for them? If they have an office of City Letter Carriers who are ready and willing to stand up for their rights, if they have an office who is willing to take time on the clock to request steward time and write statements, if they have carriers documenting harassment on the workroom floor? Who has the problem now? If they want to willingly violate the contract your best avenue to is to stand up for your rights procedurally and take the time to do so because time is the only language they speak.

Stand up for yourself, work with integrity, and let them catch you working out there.

Stay gold, and may all your doggos be good.