President's Message

April 2, 2007
Charles Mapa, President

Greetings Fellow Postmasters and LEAGUE Members

Dear Leaguers,

The convention season is upon us! Many of you are involved in helping to plan your branch conventions and I must commend you, as I, having planned a branch convention myself know how much work goes into the planning, and with a Postmaster’s day stretched so thin these days, it is more difficult to find the time to take care of this very important event. It would be a shame if a lot of effort went into putting together an effective convention and many Postmasters did not attend. As I’ve said before, the Postal Service expects you to attend, that’s why they allow you 5 days of convention leave and why they work so hard to help us to present classes and workshops. I recently met, with fellow Management Association Presidents Ted Keating from Naps and Dale Goff from Napus. As you know, the three organizations have been doing an admirable job working together to find solutions to common problems. During the course of our meeting the subject of the current work climate in the field for Postmasters was raised. We all agreed to the potential volatility in many districts. We arranged a meeting with Postmaster General Jack Potter to discuss this issue. After discussing the problem with Mr. Potter for some time, he agreed that the issue was not trivial and that we should pursue a course of action to try to alleviate some of the tension in the field. One immediate partial remedy offered by Mr. Potter was to talk to District Managers about the preponderance of telecoms that Postmasters and supervisors are forced to participate in numerous times a day. It was his opinion that there was little value to expect managers to spend so much time on the phone every day with their districts. We agreed to form a task force to include the Association presidents and Tony Vegliante and Doug Tulino from Postal Headquarters. This group has its first meeting on April 4 and we hope to explore some of the forces that might be affecting the work climate for managers. The League will be making a big effort to collect the specific data requested by Postmaster General Potter to help address the problem. Additionally, I suggested to Mr. Potter that there is likely a great value to the Association presidents meeting with him directly to discuss the Postal Service. We, as the leaders of our associations, are the eyes and ears of Postmasters and supervisors in the field and we would be a great resource for him. All in all, we felt that our meeting with the PMG was quite successful and we are optimistic about the possibility of good things coming from our meetings with Mr. Vegliante and Mr. Tulino. The Postal Service, in the 11th hour, contacted us to begin pay consultations. As you know, it was my hope that, because of our common issues, Postmasters and supervisors would meet together with the Postal Service for pay consultations. Naps, Napus and the League notified Postal Headquarters of our intention to meet jointly with them. This joint meeting had been the norm in the past and it made sense to the management associations that it be done this time around. For whatever reason, those responsible for making the decisions regarding pay consultations denied us the request to meet jointly. Therefore, the League and Napus will begin pay consultations on April 11. As far as I know, Naps has yet to be contacted to schedule their talks. We will be looking for pay equity, fair treatment for Postmasters and better pay and training for PMRs. We are prepared to offer strong justification for our requests and are confident that we will reach an agreement that will benefit all parties. While we will be restricted from providing specifics regarding our pay issues, we will continue to provide information on the general trends that may be occurring during our talks. Within the next few weeks, you see a new look to this website. We are in the last stages of our website development which we began last October. When the League first started our website, the website was state of the art and we were one of the first Postal associations to have a website. While our current website is very functional, it needs a facelift and we also need to be able to take advantage of the latest website technology. There are a number of very important events occurring or about to occur that will impact Postmasters. I will report on them soon. In the meantime, keep doing the great jobs that you are doing, in spite of the challenges you have and the work environments in many of your districts. I am committed to do whatever is necessary to make things better for you.

Sincerely,

Charley Mapa
President