September 7, 2001 

APWU wins major arbitration case on the employment of casuals.  The 
arbitration decision issued by arbitrator Days ranks among the most important 
received by the union in our collective bargaining history.  Since the early 
1980s postal management has relied extensively on casual employees as a 
permanent part of the employment complement, denying PTFs the additional 
income that would be received from the additional work opportunities, denying 
conversion opportunities to full time consistent with the 80-20 contractual 
requirement and denying full time employees overtime and bidding 
opportunities that would otherwise be available with the additional work. 

In the short term, it is expected that District managers will continue to use 
casual employees beyond the supplemental limitations endorsed by arbitrator 
Daas and defer compensation to career employees for contract violations.   
This will only add to the past monetary liability of local offices which is 
tremendous. 

Management is now denied their principal argument in regional arbitration 
that Article 7 only restricts the percentage of casuals and their term of 
employment.  APWU had been very successful in regional arbitration, winning 
approximately 70% of the cases arbitrated, but many locals and Business 
Agents were willing to settle cases for far less than their full value 
because of the uncertainty of losing the case in arbitration.   Further, 
after receipt of the Zumas 2 award, management aggressively referred every 
case to Step 4 pending the outcome of the national case.   Management will 
now be forced to pay significant sums to avoid arbitration where the only 
issue will be the continuous employment of casuals. 

This is a huge win and every employee should respect the tremendous effort 
put forth by the APWU in closing the book on this most important issue. 

I will be distributing a book to local presidents containing the names of 
3,800 employees who are eligible for back pay under the settlement reached on 
crediting employees for waiting time toward their initial step increase.  The 
employees are among those hired from October 1982 through the present and 
were hired on days 2 through 8 of their initial week of employment.  There 
are also approximately 3,500 additional employees who qualify, but their 
records indicate that their initial step increase may have been delayed due 
to a promotion prior to receiving the first step increase.  All of the 
individual records will be reviewed to determine eligibility and the 
employees are not required to do anything to receive back pay, and an 
adjustment to their placement for step increases. 
        
I initially intended to post the listing of employees in the tabloid or the 
News Service Bulletin but the space required would be prohibitive.  In 
addition to the employees names, there are five additional identifying fields 
that employees with the same name can be separately identified.  We have 
instead elected to accomplish the task of notifying employees of eligibility 
by including the entire listing in a booklet to be mailed to each local, and 
we are relying on the locals to notify the eligible employees.  This booklet 
should be mailed next week.     

The interest arbitration hearings will resume in Washington, D.C. on 
September 25 to be continued on the 26 and 27.  The original schedule listed 
the dates of September 27, 28 and 29 but the Capital Hilton hotel where the 
hearings were scheduled has been requested by the local police department to 
close their operations on that date due to the expected demonstrations of the 
IMF meetings.  APWU will continue with the presentation of its case for a 
significant wage increase and the unresolved working condition issues.  It is 
expected that our case will continue through the three days.  The next 
scheduled days of hearings are October 9, 10, 25, 26 and 27.