THE BULLETIN BOARD
February 2013
[February 7th]Scholarships Available to PMAPWU Members
APWU Vocational Scholarship
- Type: Vocational Scholarship
- Applicants must be a senior attending high school or other corresponding secondary school. Applicants must be a child or grandchild, including stepchild or legally adopted child of an active member, Retiree's Department member, or deceased member of the American Postal Workers Union.
- Winners will receive up to $3,000 for specialized training in such fields as culinary arts, medical or dental assistant, electrician, real estate, auto mechanic, certified IT/computer education, cosmetology, or massage therapy, etc. Eligible programs can be of a nine-month to three-year duration.
- Application is to be received no later than March 15, 2013.
- You can download an application and read the full eligibility requirements at the APWU's website.
The APWU E.C. Hallbeck Memorial Scholarship
- Type: Academic Scholarship
- Applicants must be a senior attending high school or other corresponding secondary school. Applicants must be a child or grandchild, including stepchild or legally adopted child of an active member, Retiree's Department member, or deceased member of the American Postal Workers Union.
- Winners will be awarded $8000 ($2000 annually) to apply towards their four-year college tuition. There will be ten recipients (one male and one female from each of the five postal regions)
- Applications are to be received no later than March 15, 2013.
- Please download the official brochure and read the eligibility requirements at the APWU's website.
You may also visit the APWU's Scholarship Programs webpage where the various scholarships are discussed.
Further scholarship searches can be conducted at
the Princeton Review/SallieMae Scholarship Database
Patrick McShane Memorial Scholarship
- Type: Academic Scholarship
- Current graduating high school senior or college undergraduate whose parent or legal guardian is a current active member in PMAPWU
- A posting to all the station/branches and AO offices will be going out for the month of March.
- Deadline to apply is May 17, 2013.
- Contact PMAPWU at 412-321-4700 for more information and an application.
[February 6th]APWU Condemns USPS Plans to Cut Service
excerpted from APWU Press Release, February 6, 2013
"The APWU condemns the Postal Service's decision to eliminate Saturday mail delivery, which will only deepen the agency's congressionally-manufactured financial crisis.
"The USPS has already begun slashing mail service by closing 13,000 post offices or drastically reducing hours of operation, shutting hundreds of mail processing facilities, and downgrading standards for mail delivery to America's homes and businesses. The effects are being felt in cities and towns across the country.
"USPS executives cannot save the Postal Service by tearing it apart. These across-the-board cutbacks will weaken the nation's mail system and put it on a path to privatization.
"Congress has the power to restore the USPS to financial stability. To do so, it must repeal provisions of the 2006 law that created the Postal Service's financial crisis."
Continue reading the entire article on the APWU website.
[February 5th]Carper schedules another hearing on USPS for next Wednesday
When it's not naming post offices or creating phony budget crises, the one thing Congress seems to excel at is holding hearings. This Congress looks to be no different than the last in that regard— Senator Tom Carper has already scheduled the first hearing on "Solutions to the Crisis Facing the U.S. Postal Service" for next Wednesday, February 13, at 10 AM.
No doubt the Senators will work diligently to answer the question on the minds of so many in the USPS and the mailing industry, namely, "How far can they kick the can down the road this session?"
[February 1st]At the Postal Service, New Reports Reveal the Strain of Change
excerpted an article by Sean Reilly at FederalTimes.com
For the U.S. Postal Service, change can ... be wrenching, particularly when it means shaking the habits acquired during years as a complacent semi-monopoly. A couple of recent reports highlight the rigors of reinvention for USPS leaders, not just in chasing new revenue and overhauling slipshod management practices, but in ultimately retooling their sprawling operation to survive in the digital age.
The Postal Service... didn't bother to compete via the GSA schedule until 2009, eight years behind FedEx and UPS. "Consequently many federal agencies have long-term relationships with competitors and are reluctant to switch to the Postal Service," the Postal Service's Inspector General (IG) found.
Why were USPS execs so slow to look for customers in their own backyard? The report doesn't give a reason, but they evidently just weren't interested, lacking even "a sales force or market strategy that targeted the federal sector." It has a sales force now, but the IG questioned whether the 13-member squad is adequate to meet agencies' specialized needs.
Inertia of a different sort is evident in the findings of a separate IG audit that examined the Postal Service's handling of its two largest advertising contracts, worth a combined $136 million in fiscal 2011. But for an organization in crisis, the Postal Service didn't do a very good job of overseeing how that money was spent, the audit found. To take just one example, USPS officials signed off on almost $632,000 in "questionable" bonuses to the two contractors in fiscal 2011 and 2012 "even though the process for evaluating contractor performance was not clear."
Also a problem: Keeping track of where money went and why. Some $4 million in invoices were missing from the contracting officer representative's files and another $2.3 million worth of bills had not been certified properly. On the larger of the two contracts, the Postal Service went beyond the standard federal maximum to pay hourly rates of more than $302.
Of course, assuming that the IG's findings are on base, the question is why it took so long to clean up basic business practices. At a time when management is pressing rank-and-file employees for concessions, these are the kinds of lapses that set the average clerk's teeth on edge.
PLEASE -- Read the entire article on the APWU.org website
[February 1st]Retiring APWU Members: Thank You! Farewell!
As approximately 20,000 APWU members say bittersweet goodbyes to their co-workers and hit the clock for the last time today, we say, "Thank you! Farewell!"
We wish you all the best as you begin a new chapter of your life. Thank you for your years of dedicated service to the American people and for the contributions you made to the APWU.
There are many battles left to fight — to protect the institution we have dedicated so much of our lives to; to secure our health insurance and retirement benefits, and to strengthen our nation's middle class.
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