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AVOID “EMPLOYEE OPINION SURVEYS”!
By: Lee Simons
Have you seen the recent films presenting Management as being “open” to your personal ideas about making positive changes in the workplace? Management has spent big bucks for actors with Hollywood accents to sell us the idea of “Employee Opinion Surveys”. But it’s time to consider the balance between words and actions. Are your personal ideas really sought, or are you just one of the many, lost in “The Numbers Game” of broad statistics?
We once had a program for submitting personal ideas and innovations, though somewhat lacking in giving proper credit for good ideas. It was our Suggestion Program, which indeed gave an outlet for personal ideas to improve the workplace. But the Suggestion Program was withdrawn and now substituted with “opinion surveys” which purport to be “The Voice of the Employee”. Yet the questions in the opinion surveys are not formulated by representatives from the work floor (your Union), but by Management. Being formulated by Management, the “questions” are really “points” for Management to use to their advantage during meetings with higher powers such as contract arbitrators or representatives of national organizations such as the N.A.A.C.P.
Did you not know that responses from a former “opinion survey” were actually used by Management against the Postal worker? Yes indeed! On a former survey, an overwhelming majority of Postal workers indicated that they were well pleased with their wages and benefits. This fact was used by Management at the bargaining table during the negotiations for the 1998 contract to show arbitrators why all workers should be only given the barest, minimal future compensations. Do you not think they will try this again? Any good rating we give Management can be used against us later! To that end, many of the questions on the survey form are “loaded”. Let us consider one such question: “How well do you think the USPS has achieved diversity?” You may be one who agrees that any hiring must be done without regard for race, culture, or religion. You may also agree that people should not be “profiled” and divided by skin color, culture, or religion. Yet, the very concept of “diversity” is based on just such divisions of people. Consequently, if you are like this writer, you find concepts supporting the idea of dividing people by skin color, etc. highly offensive. But look at the question again. It is a trick question – like the one you probably remember from childhood school days that went something like this: “Does your mother know that you are an idiot?” No matter how you answer this childish question, you lend credence to the idea of being an idiot. In the same way, no matter how you answer the question of “achieving diversity”, you lend credence to the idea of dividing and classifying people by race, etc.! So you see, survey questions do not take into account personal thoughts, but at best represent only a narrow cut of employees with certain agendas such as those in “diversity committees”, statistical programs, ergonomics committees, or Management training classes.
Now let us consider an area outside the survey questions themselves. Does Management ever consult the common worker, the Union for personal advice for making improvements? Hardly! They are more open to letting outsiders come in for the purpose of cutting jobs and rearranging tour schedules! They have hired an outside company, Synovate, to conduct these broad opinion surveys with slanted questions, and call that "The Voice of the Employee". Synovate is a company based in Illinois that does nothing but compile broad statistics for gullible companies with major dollars to waste for something that could be had for free by going directly to the workers’ unions. Do you think for one minute that Synovate has any concern whatsoever for your personal welfare? They are only in business to make money!
These "opinion surveys" are touted as "working for you", but in truth, they only work for Management. If Management were truly interested in the “voice of the employee”, they would show these outsiders the front door, refusing to increase employee workloads and stress. Further, they would favorably address employee concerns such as lives being turned upside down by altered tour schedules! So don’t be intimidated the next time you are herded into a room to fill out survey forms, with an MDO watching your every move. Just politely check the box that says, “I do not wish to participate at this time” (or any other time). The fact is, you have the perfect right to simply throw these forms in the nearest trash can, where they belong! There is so much truth in the admonition to “Just say No!”So, “Just Say NO” to Employee Opinion Surveys!
A TERRIBLE DILEMNA: WHY ERRP WILL NOT SOLVE THE DB PROBLEM
The Ergonomic Work Group (EWG) minutes I posted on 8-20-07 had a link to an article I wrote about the NIOSH DBCS ergonomic investigations as posted by the San Diego local. However, significant parts of the article were cut, so here is the complete article. At the bottom may be found links where both the 1993 and 2006 investigations may be downloaded in pdf.
The National Institute For Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) under the Surgeon General of the United States has just completed a three investigation here in Denver of the Ergonomic Risk Reduction Process (ERRP) and other supposed "solutions" to the flawed ergonomic design of the DBCS. What the investigation reveals is that short of a major redesign of the sweep side of the DBCS, the most effective way for clerks to avoid injury is to slow down the pace of work and run less mail through the machine. Of course, management will NEVER go along with this. That is why any joint labor-management agreemen t such as ERRP is doomed from the start in dealing with the DBCS.
In 1993 NIOSH released another ergonomic investigation in which they described the sweep side of the DBCS to be "a significant departure from good ergonomic design which places workers at high risk for lower back and shoulder disorders." As a clerk who works on the DBCS almost every day I fully realize that NIOSH states what most of us grunts have already long known. However, when the best expertise in the country (NIOSH) backs us up, it gives us more legal muscle against management's relentless push for BIG NUMBERS.
As most of you probably well realize, NIOSH has no enforcement power over the USPS. However, they are the very best expertise in occupational health in the country. The truth they reveal for automation clerks in both investigations looks dismal. With the deployment of the four tiered DIOSS DBCS to replace the single tiered ISS the fewer clerks that will be left in automation w ill be doing far more ergonomically hazardous work and ERRP has done little to address these hazards.
The Denver NIOSH investigations were featured in a 9-25-06 article in FEDERAL TIMES in Washington, DC, which follows below in italicized print:
For all their recent efforts, however, the Postal Service appears frustrated by one mail-sorting machine it introduced in the early 1990s and which, at least according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), poses a risk of injury to those operating it.
After a three-year investigation into the Postal Service’s Ergonomic Risk Reduction Process program, NIOSH reported in May that its Delivery Bar Code Sorter (DBCS), which is capable of sorting letter mail of all sizes, “posed the same or greater risk of injury to workers” as the machine it had replaced.
The author of the report told Federal Times that the latest DBCS, as the sorter is known, is worse than the older sorter b ecause it requires those who operate it to reach higher and bend lower when feeding mail into the machine or “sweeping” it out. At the beginning of its automation history the Postal Service had a machine with but one tier along which mail was fed. It was relatively easy to reach. “But that took up a lot of space so the Postal Service introduced a three-tier machine,” said Daniel Habes, NIOSH industrial engineer in the Hazard Evaluations and Technical Assistance Branch in Cincinnati. In 1991, NIOSH evaluated the Postal Service’s three-tier machine and concluded that it “put employees at potential risk for low back and upper musculoskeletal disorders” because of awkward postures and repetitive tasks required of the machine operators.
Then, in May of this year, NIOSH reported that machine’s replacement, the four-tier DBCS, was far from an improvement. “Use of the machine results in shoulder and back injuries,” Habes said, “though it is impossible to know how ma ny injuries it causes because figures are hard to obtain from the Postal Service. “They have training programs [on the safe ways to use the machine], but how can you work safely on something that is inherently flawed? No one will admit it, but they are stuck with it because they have thousands of them,” Habes said.
The best answer to the problems posed by DBCS is to automate the “sweeping” function, which requires employees to manually move mail from the tiers of stackers in the DBCS to trays opposite the stackers, said Loyd Reeder, a clerk at the Denver Processing and Distribution Center, where the NIOSH examination was conducted. “The Postal Service has spent millions on the machines and it is committed to its use,” said Reeder, a frequent blogger on the DBCS topic. “So what should be done now is follow the recommendations that NIOSH has made for the machines’ use.”
Those recommendations include reducing the amount of mail entering the machine and limiting the amount of time a worker is stationed there.
The Postal Service did not answer Federal Times questions about the DBCS system. NIOSH has similarly been locked out. “The Postal Service does not want to talk about this, and they haven’t,” Habes said. “They’ve denied me access before.” Nonetheless, Habes said that he does “praise the Postal Service’s efforts” in trying to make the machines safer. “But, sorry, it just doesn’t work,” he said.
The inevitable question arises why the postal service would deploy such a machine as the DBCS, a machine that one NIOSH official correctly described as a work comp time bomb back in 1992. The answer in one word is money. A major reason for the deployment of the multi tiered DBCS to replace the singe tiered BCS and the deployment of the four tiered DIOSS DBCS to replace the single tiered ISS is what management likes to describe as greater depth of sort. With 200+ stackers on a typical DBCS versus 60 stackers on an I SS, this simply means that the mail does not have to be run as many times with two clerks running mail on a machine with more mail sortation stackers. Hence, there will be a need for fewer clerks. for the same amount of sortation. With about 80% of USPS costs going into labor costs this does make sense. The big downside in all this is that the fewer clerks will be doing far more ergonomically hazardous work on the multi tiered DBCS, versus the single tiered machines. For the Postal Service, the decrease in labor costs are offset to some extent by the inevitable increase in work comp costs. However, as many of us grunts who work on the DBCS fully realize, the Postal Service has a very effective system in place to discourage workers from reporting injuries through use of harassment against injured workers. Several years ago OSHA cited the Denver GMF for gross underreporting for this very reason. This is another reason to hold highly suspect when we hear about miraculous reduct ions in injuries here in Denver that are attributed to ERRP. Are these ACTUAL injuries or just reported injuries?
I did call in both NIOSH investigations, but I am NOT a union officer. These investigations were NOT called in by union request. I am a grunt clerk who does work on the DBCS almost every day. I am a former high school teacher and my brother is a medical doctor who deals in occupational health issues which did help in gaining immediate expertise during the course of the NIOSH investigations. Both NIOSH investigations that are posted here are NOT copyrighted and can be downloaded. If anyone has any remote interest in these investigations and the truth they reveal PLEASE download and also email them to anyone else that may have an interest. The 1993 NIOSH investigation has already been used on numerous occasions by clerks who have been injured by the DBCS to successfully file comp claims.
I need to emphasize that mail processors, thanks to th e APWU, are not subject to work quotas. You and your mail processor partner should work together to perform you job safely. Do not work unsafely trying to keep up with a machine which the best occupational health expertise in the country (NIOSH) has described as a work comp time bomb. If the mail does not get out management should hire more mail processors.
I have one automation clerk friend who had to have a disk removed from her back from working on the DBCS. She told me afterwards if she had only known about what NIOSH said in 1993. She, and a number of people like her, is why I called in NIOSH for both investigations and had them posted here. When one local APWU president over a thousand miles from Denver read through both NIOSH reports he reminded me of the familiar quote of US President Garfield: "The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." The truth needed to get out there.
Because of several questions I received I see the nee d to elaborate further. The questions were along the line that the NIOSH investigations were “theoretical” and have the DBCS machines produced any “real” injury data. The answer in simple terms is you bet they have. In May of 1995, the DBCS was cited by OSHA for the first time in Albuquerque based on reported injuries. This was less than 2 years after the release of the first NIOSH investigation. What is significant is that in the relatively short life time of their operational existence the DB’s in Albuquerque generated enough “reported” injuries to be cited. The DB’s have been cited by OSHA many times since then. (See FEDERAL TIMES link "Denver Sorters Called Unsafe") As noted in a previous statement, this was reported injuries, not ACTUAL injuries. With the very effective disincentives that the Postal Service has in place this reflects that very tip of the actual injury iceberg. The description of the DBCS by one NI OSH official as a work comp time bomb back in 1992 has proven true. With the deployment of the DBCS the Postal Service has placed itself in a terrible dilemma. They have spent billions on them and are therefore committed to their use. They are by far the biggest injury producer among clerks, so I was told by a USPS safety official. With a typical clerk making close to $50,000 a year plus benefits, admittedly incredibly good money for semiskilled labor, the Postal Service is committed to high productivity or “big numbers” from the clerks who run the DB’s. This need for high productivity is increasing because of the decline in 1st class mail volume relative to reduced postage 3rd class mail. However, the DB’s, as a NIOSH official said to me, are capable of processing a much higher volume of mail than a human body can withstand over time, especially the sweeper. Hence, the terrible dilemma.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CRUCIAL, VERY TRUE, HOWEVER..........
by: Mark Baker, Littleton APWU
There is an article titled "IT Crucial to USPS’ Updated Business Strategy" on Federal Computer Week's website. It is available on this link: http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151204-1.html The biggest criticism from other readers was the quote that "79 percent of USPS' expenditures is from labor cost."
That percentage is not merely comprised of level 5 clerks and level 3 custodians - higher paid front-line and second line supervisors are also included in that statistic. If 79 percent of tasks performed by front line and second line supervision (SDO's, MDO's, delivery supervisors and stations managers) were replaced by lower paid automation and senior craft persons. (senior mail processors, station T-6's, Carrier Tech T-6's and MH-5 group leaders.) labor costs would drop significantly. The USPS lacks sincerity in their quest for reducing labor costs. None of us in the craft will never see a plan like that come to fruition. Very true, however.........
The reason I am writing this article is concerning our current and future use of technology. Currently with the outdated technolgy that is already in place - there are many who lack the skills to use it. Those who are higher up the postal ladder can't handle what is on their plate now. How are they going to handle something more advanced and complex?
Management lacks the grip of knowledge on using the current technology and how to utilize its workers within their facilities. The article I refered to above keeps using the phrase "Information Technology" - more accurately, we use "data processing" There are minor adjustments facilties can use to improve addressing, bar code display and reading, utilizing automation to reduce manual sorting, switching back to the more efficient IBM-POS for retail instead of the ancient NCR-POS system, how the internet can bring more business and how using mail can make shopping online easier for people. I am sure you asking about what kind of minor adjustments. Personally, I have attempted to send in my own ideas to the USPS about my own ideas on improvement. The responses I receive are form letters requesting approval from my postmaster and a Operation Support Technician.
The ergonomically-incorrect DBCS machines currently in place were designed in 1987 by ElectroCom Automations in Arlington Texas. The computer technology of a DBCS is a lot like your household computer. The machine exchanges data with a central file server over a TCP/IP network and also contains a broad range of diagnostic tools. All this functionality requires a full-featured, multitasking operating system, together with TCP/IP support and a comprehensive graphical user interface. Like this small website, commands can be entered into the system's code to improve functionality, addressing and readability. Mechanically, The DBCS machine must process mail pieces within a wide range of physical characteristics--minimum and maximum limits are set for mail-piece length, height, thickness, and weight. The USPS also sets strict performance requirements for sorting accuracy and mechanical handling of the mail. This lack of knowledge is passed on to the customers of our Postal Service in higher surcharges. Any Senior Mail Processors reading know the tricks to get around the constant jams from Holiday cards and Nexflix CDs. Open up the "reset" panel and place an object securely inside the lower cog belt pulley. This slows the machine down but widens the gap for larger mail pieces to be processed. Even those lousy Valu-Pak coupons make it in the DPS. That's the part management dislikes, you have slowed the machine down but you still walk away with ZERO jams. If the DBCS was designed correctly, mail processors wouldn't have to "cheat" the system to help it's customers. Technology has changed since 1987 and so has knowledge of ergonomics.
Before I wrote this article, I sent some questions via e-mail to the Postal Service to Siemens, Inc. who designed the DBCS physical design and to QNX Software, the designers of the DBCS computer mainframe. QNX, Inc. sent back several responses and I learned a lot of information from them. Their research and development has been taken over by developing FSM (flat-sorting machines) DBCS machines are on their back-burner for now. QNX informed me that most DBCS machines are using an RS-285 network versus the current RS-485 network. The data processor uses a RS-132 connector for data processing versus the current RS-232 connector. In layman's terms while I am at home using Window's Vista with Comcast Broadband - the USPS is using Window's 98 with DSL.
To be fair to the USPS, Customer Connect has been a successful winner for the USPS in terms of taking the trusted brand recognition to the next level. And in the final analysis, they are the most people we need to think about - the customer. Low-tech wise, we need to look at properly staffing the window for better customer service and rebuild the retail level brand which would open up more opportunties for upselling USPS products and services. Would you look at making that extra purchase if you had to wait in line 15 minutes, or if you breezed through and were helped with a cheerful person and had your wait time in line cut down to 45 seconds. Even the Spanish speaking folks at McDonald's know this - but not our management.
In my opinion, the IT stance is merely more political/business posturing. Arriving at work wearing USPS kneepads or APWU kneepads is irrelevant. Pleasing management or pleasing the union elite is also irrelevant. The future is all about whether customers think the mail is relevant. We have the technology available to please our current customers and I know this is very true, however.......
DIVERSITY OR PERVERSITY By Lee Simons Nashville, Local #5
In a society where Scriptural values are clouded by humanist interpretation, there is misunderstanding of the Biblical term, pride. In our society, certain pride is thought to be a positive quality and is often encouraged. For instance, there is national pride, as some have boasted, “I’m proud to be an American!” Yet it is no longer enough to be just an American, as many encourage and seek added distinction as African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, or whatever else-Americans. There is no more just plain American history, but “Black” history, Women’s History, and even a Southern history. There are also the activist sub cultural groups that blatantly proclaim “Black Pride”, “White Pride”, or “Gay Pride”. In this age of “diversity development” the trend is to maximize pride in one’s ethnicity, or racial identity. Bowing to activists, the Postal Service now produces “Black Heritage” stamps, honoring past figures with the correct racial qualification, to encourage racial pride.
Racial pride is nothing new – it existed in Bible times. Proud Jews, whom Jesus condemned, magnified their lineage, their ancestral traditions, and even their religion to elevate themselves over others. Jesus plainly taught that such pride is an evil that defiles the soul. (Mark 7:22, 23.) Pride, the antithesis of humility, seeks honor among men, and flourishes where souls forget to honor God. In our society, the alter ego is fed by encouraging pride in one’s racial kinship with successful figures. But racial pride draws the dividing lines between peoples and quickly breeds racism. Certain terms like Black History or African-Americans developed and used by racially oriented organizations serve only to foster racial grouping, alienating others. The focus on “diversity development” not only breeds separatist pride and division, but clouds Scriptural teachings concerning the singleness of man, i.e., his relationship and accountability to God. (Romans 14:12.) Though He has made us many nations of people, we are of one blood (Acts 17:26). In other words, though we have different homelands, we are “family”, having the same parents, Adam and Eve. Moreover, we, the offspring of God, created in His image, possess an unseen spirit – a spirit that will face judgment without regard to race or culture. Having one Father, and being of one blood, we have a common bond – the covenant of brotherhood. That is, we have a responsibility for the well-being of our neighbors, regardless of their nationality. We therefore should recognize only two groups of people – the saved and the unsaved, observing the commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. The proud, imposing upon others their separatist ideals and demands for special distinction have no concept of neighborly love. Jesus, our Lord, has shown by the washing of the disciples’ feet that our mission is to love and to serve in humility, putting aside all notions of social status, self-honors, or superiority. “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matt. 23:11). Are His words so difficult to hear? Recognizing the spiritual creates unity, but a focus on diversity only divides.
Since there is so much strife in our world today that can be directly attributed to pride, let us carefully consider our values and remember: wherever there is division and war, there is pride. Know that pride is an evil upon which God takes a very dim view. He calls it an “abomination”! (Proverbs 6:16, 16:5.) So before we take up or follow some cause, let us first search our hearts and make sure that pride is not the motivator. Let Christians seek only one honor: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”
The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: Pride and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate. Proverbs 8:13
Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord… Proverbs 16:5
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 (NIV)
