APWU Expands Electronic Grievance Pilot

The APWU is expanding a pilot program for the Electronic Grievance System (EGS), APWU Director of Industrial Relations Mike Morris has announced. Two hundred APWU locals are currently participating in the program, which is the result of an August agreement with the USPS.

“We are expanding the pilot to allow additional locals to participate through November of 2013 at no cost to locals,” Morris said.

Locals that are interested in participating must:

• Appoint at least one administrator, who will be responsible for issuing access to local officers and stewards.
• Make serious efforts to use the program for grievances filed by the local, regardless of craft.
• Provide written feedback about the program from pilot users via email.
• Click here to register for the Electronic Grievance System.

“Once the pilot is complete, locals will have to pay a small fee each month to use the system,” said Idowu Balogun, Maintenance Division Rep-at-Large, who chairs the committee overseeing the project. The fee is expected to be less than $50 per month. “The monthly cost to the APWU is a flat fee, so the more locals that participate, the lower the fee will be for each local,” Balogun explained.

Using the Electronic Grievance System, locals can file Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3 grievance appeals electronically. Appeals can be submitted via email or by mailing printed forms. The system allows authorized stewards and officers to track grievances at every step from any desktop computer or smart-phone. It also permits users to add scanned documents to electronic grievance files. And because the system is “cloud-based,” there is no need to purchase or maintain expensive servers.

Once locals sign up, they will be invited to a once-a-month Welcome to EGS Webinar, where a demonstration of the system will be provided.

Participating locals are encouraged to meet with local managers to exchange email addresses and to let managers know they will be submitting grievance forms electronically.

For more information about the Electronic Grievance System, see the Questions and Answers (below) or contact the eAppeal Committee at eAppeal@apwu.org.