APWU, USPS Agree On Implementation of Das Award

The APWU and USPS have reached agreement on implementation of an arbitration award on retreat rights for Clerk Craft and Motor Vehicle Craft employees, Industrial Relations Director Mike Morris has announced. In an award issued June 29, Arbitrator Shyam Das sustained the APWU’s grievance protesting the Postal Service’s refusal to allow excessed employees to retreat to Non-Traditional Full-Time (NTFT) duty assignments that were posted in August 2011 after approximately 9,000 part-time flexibles and part-time regulars were converted to full time.

The July 25 agreement stipulates that Clerk Craft and Motor Vehicle Craft employees who had exercised their retreat rights at the time of the excessing and were denied their rights on or after Aug. 27, 2011, will be given the opportunity to select, by seniority, among duty assignments for which they would have been the senior bidder. Affected employees will be made whole, based on local fact circumstances, the agreement says. Any employee who becomes excess to the needs of an installation as a result of the agreement will be reassigned in accordance with Article 12 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.