Going postal
Look what's in an already-controversial mail delivery contract.
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 Message delivered: Letter carriers are protesting the increased use of contractors to deliver the mail. IMAGE: Photo courtesy of National Association of Letter Carriers |
[March 28th, 2007] Beaverton Postmaster John Lee told the letter carrier's union in January that he was hiring a contractor for delivery in a Beaverton-area suburb because he thought it could save $33,878 a year ("You've Got Mail," WW, March 14, 2007).
But that's hard to believe given that records show the contractor, Christopher Onuliak, is getting $12,279 for a four-month "emergency contract." That means Onuliak is netting $118 for each day of delivery to 20 mailboxes in the Arbor Parc suburb.
"That doesn't sound cheaper than having a city carrier deliver those, which would take them about 15 minutes," says Linda Smith, secretary treasurer for Branch 82 of the National Association of Letter Carriers. "There's a letter carrier that drives right by there that should be making those deliveries."
Kerry Jeffrey, Portland spokesman for the
U.S. Postal Service, isn't sure of the current numbers of Arbor Parc deliveries but expects that number will expand and that the postal service will save money. He would not provide specifics of those savings.
"It's kind of tough to do an apple-and-orange with a contract route and regular street delivery," Jeffrey says. "It might be a good deal [for the contractor] right at the beginning."
The deal is also a family affair. Onuliak is the son of Mike Onuliak, a manager at the Beaverton post office. That's allowed as long as Christopher Onuliak is over 21 and not living at home, according to USPS internal purchasing guidelines. Records show Onuliak is 22 and with a different address than Michael Onuliak.
"It really shocks me that a relative of that supervisor has that contract,'' says Paul Price, national business agent for the letter carriers union.
Jeffrey says there's no conflict with the post office's nepotism rules. Contract negotiations were done in the USPS's Seattle office and Christopher Onuliak is a contractor who answers to different managers, not working directly beneath his father.
Story continues below
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"We all have relatives that work in different facets of the post office," Jeffrey says. "There's an old joke about providing full-family employment."
Union officials are steamed over the contracted delivery in Arbor Parc because they see it as the first local occurrence of a nationwide push by the USPS to broaden outsourced mail delivery beyond its traditional use in remote locations.
The union-management fight has escalated since the recent decision to outsource 10 routes in Reno, Nev., previously delivered by full-time carriers. Those routes were outsourced after management failed to receive bids from full-time employees.
"What normally happens when a route does not get bid is they promote a part-time employee and make them a full-time employee," Smith says, "so for them to take routes that do not get bid and to contract them out is a major development."
Smith says the union's Postal Operation Manual previously allowed outsourcing delivery only in "sparsely populated" areas. But the union says USPS took out that language, a decision that became apparent when more routes began being contracted out in late 2006.
USPS's Jeffrey says the post office is trying to maintain its current service level by saving money when there are 1.2 million new delivery points each year.
Jeffrey says the post office expects the contract in Arbor Parc to eventually include 370 addresses, and that postal officials are looking at new developments in Orenco as possible sites for more contract routes.
"It depends on how much development goes on and the economy," Jeffrey says. "Ultimately it could be a few thousand deliveries."
jennifer- you are wrong the contract is for the 12,000. dollar range and that is for 4 months because it is on an emergency contract. at the end of the 4 months if he keeps it , it will incurr anouther 12,000. So a years worth will be about 49,000. pretty good huh? they should have promoted the serior Part time flexible into that position just like they have done over the years. The union will greive it and win and will have to pay the carriers for all time that was given to the non-postal worker. This is not a true emergency because the service HAD people that were qualified to do this work.
Your comments make no sense. Why would anyone want to work for less than minimum wage? Why should the part time carriers not have the opportunity to go full time? That is what they are taking away when they contract routes. How would you know that the emergency contract was for 4 months or a full year? Are you related as well? Sister, wife, mother?
even if you pay $40 a day for 15 houses, that's a lot of money for 15 min of work. i hope we hear the other side of the story. but for now this is the story and this contracting out is not going to work. managers just want to hire family members that can't qualify for the post office job that's why they want this RCA to hire unqualified undignified workers...
jennifer, unions outdated! do you think labor laws and osha were passed into law out of the goodness of the heart of big busniess? Next time you get a vacation, sick leave, medical insurance, retirement, etc. thank a union somewhere, nonunion busniesses provide these because a union fought for them, and the benifits passed on to everyone. As unions grow weaker, the middle class grows poorer. This contracting out is just an effort to bust the unions. The post office is never concerned about cost or saving in any area other than what is paided to craft. Waste in the post office is of no concern if it pays friends and relatives in management.
jennifer,if it wasn't for the unions you would be making no money for the work you do ,.........you do work don't you
You must be the mom of this scab.You must be proud.Cant the loser find a job without his daddy's help.
Before I begin I would like to inform the masses that I am a Letter Carrier of 12 years experience. I have heald my own route for 10 years. I have always been a union member and am very thankful for unions.
There are many specific traits and skills involved with delivering mail. Accountability for other people's property is a main one. Being extremely flexible with customers is also very important. Adverse weather conditions are no excuse for not delivering the mail. But also if I might point out the unwaivering trust the general public has when they see a USPS vehicle. People wave, children smile and most call us sir, out of respect for the trust that we postmen have earned in our day to day work ethics.
What the general public understands is that the USPS is financed by taxes. The fact is that we finance our selves, by the stamps and services we provide. We are a multi billion dollar organization governed by Congress. We ask Congress to raise the price of postage, because gasoline costs more. Congress has the last word if they say no we do not raise postage, but if we have a good cause they say yes.
I do not agree with Postal Management to contracting out our routes. Thier whole intention is to privatize the USPS. There will be no Congress to control the cost of postage, it will be profit driven. At present the Postal Service must operate at zero profit. Congress makes sure of that. A private postal service will not deliver to every address 6 days a week in all 50 states, no profit in that.
Like I said before the Postal Service is a billion dollar buisiness. It is rated number 1 in the world. It is also the world cheapest. We are no 2 US employer, walmart is no 1. We have 800,000 employees that make a compfortable living doing what we do.
Take all that away and the billion dollar organization will only make even richer billionares. Our postmaster does not clear $150,000.00. If they privatize, de-unionize I garantee no watchdog will cap the CEO's pay, and we will have 800,000 underpaid contrac goofs handling your private info.
Calm down Jennifer. You sound like your related to the Onuliak's with all your hate.
Jennifer, I wonder if you read the article. the Postal Service does do emergency contracts and this is a good one and not for a year (4 months)! It amazes me that a few Limbaugh type fanatics are still trying to push decent jobs out of America's memory like we never had them. The price of a stamp is would still be relatively cheap if it was 50 cents but maybe having a fair salary and good benefits are too much for hard working Americans (mostly decorated veterans) to ask for! Maybe since contracting out at Walter Reed has worked so well, we can just forget about those who have fought for our country! Well I don't think so! And by the way, Unions are made up of and run by individuals, and what is more free market than that!? You're an idiot!
john lee son has a post office job.All these managers have loser kids.And the Post Office Gives them jobs.They should fire all kids of upper management that have jobs handed to them on a silver plater.
Jennifer, the John Deere tractor is on the way, you're going to need it to get your head out of your rear end.
$118 a day for 20 mailboxes..... i deliver to 485 mailboxes a day for $177 a`day hes making 5.90 a box while i make .37 cents a box? how in the world is that a savings? and let me know when i can bid on contracted routs like that one.........this contracting out is a first step to beating a union and once one goes down more will follow...........the middle class is getting poorer everyday while the rich are getting richer this is how our country will go under and we'll be in another depression and wonder whatever happened to our once great proud hard working country? we say that joe and pete shouldnt make 25 bucks an hour yet your the same people who will pay 10 bucks to go to a movie and 100's of dollars to go to a sporting event were those selfish sobs make nillions` and nobody cares?
Jennifer, Girl you've got it all wrong. Here's just one stat for your comment about the price of a stamp. For every penny that gas goes up the post office spends one million dollars for fuel. That's $1,000,000.00 per penny. Now get real if the price of a stamp stays low you will not get any mail delivery. Your taxes don't pay our wages and George Bush's Board of govenors dictate the rate of postage.The kid is hurting the business by taking the job and his father should have known the conflict that it will cause. He supervises the people in the same office that this is taking place. People who have been waiting for routes to come up so that they could get a route of thier own. Don't spout off if you don't know the facts.
If the U.S.P.S. is "non-profit" then why did they make record profits of almost one BILLION dollars each of the last two years. Why is the cost of postage rising when the carriers are working without a contract. I could see if they won a great contract with nice raises or better retirement or healthcare plans. Maybe stamps are going up to pay for these "emergency contracts". Where is the profit going that the non-profit agency is producing. They certainly are not sharing it with the people that made it for them.
When a Postmaster claims to the public there will be eventually 370 deliveries on a route, he should be prepared to know by when. By awarding a contract to an insider without posting the contract, it sends the wrong message. With the present stage of real estate development slowing down because of the economy, it may take many years for the Postmaster claims to become a reality, if at all. In the meantime, they pay a managers son $118.00 a day to deliver 20 deliveries. How much would it had cost to deliver these 20 stops to a city letter carrier paid at step-O pay? For sure $20.00 a day would be an exageration. If this development ever gets on tract in years to come, the Postal Service will be in the hole for many years before any claimed money savings could ever occur. This decision is typical of Postal Management not making well thought out decisions. This so called contract should have never occurred. An investigation concerning the emergency contract be launched immediatly. The present contractor (manager-son) should be fired and the Postmaster relieved because of ignoring the nepotism rules, but more importantly, deceiving the public.
YOU'LL SURE TO GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
Th SPS prsnnl r th hghst pd sm-sklld wrkrs n th wrld. mphss n SM-sklld.
Thr dts cnsst f tkng tms t spcfc lctn tht s clrly prntd n ch nd vry pc. Mst f th ml s srtd by dlvry rt by th tm th crrrs vr tch t.
Whn y pstl wrkrs r gng n bt th 'spcfc sklls nd trts' nvlvd n bng pstl wrkr, pls try t hv lttl prspctv.
dd njy th "scb" cmmnt. dscssn nvlvng nns wldn't b cmplt wtht sm thggsh bhvr. ws hpng t s n 'vl crprtn' r myb 'nt brgnng n gd fth' thrwn n bt gss th 'scb' wll hv t d.
If the post office didn't deliver a pound and a half of junk mail to my box everyday then they wouldn't have to buy so much of this fuel to haul it that they claim is so expensive.
And, it isn't so hard to be a billion-dollar profit organization when you're subsidized by Uncle Sam and can put all the profits in your piggy bank, sort of like Amtrak.
At every post office I've been to, there's a long line, eight windows, but only one or two clerks working. And working slow as hell. Slow moving, becausae you can't fire them - the union would be all over you.
Most of the postal workers I know would never make it if they had to get a real job where they had to meet a quota or actually be productive.
Don't be silly, the junk mail is what subsidizes the non-junk mail. Without junk mail, there may not be sufficient economies of scale to have daily delivery.
One wonders if perhaps privatization will be costliest to the very advocates of privatization: conservatives living in exurbs, rural areas, etc. Those are the costliest to service, not the high-density inner-city routes. Republicans living in Alaska taking our money to build bridges to nowhere -- think it's cheap to get mail delivered to Alaska? Farmers in Iowa railing about gays and immigrants -- think it's cheap to service a rural route with maybe three houses per mile? "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it."
Nepotism is illegal in the USPS. So why is it practiced so often? I had a supervisor who directly supervised his own sister. I made a complaint with the OSC and now I am the scourge of the office. The Postal Service management couldn't care less about ethics, it's not in their nature. Relatives of management should not be allowed to get any postal contracts I don't care how far away it is. Current mail carriers are prohibited by law to win contract routes...interesting eh?
The United State Postal Service is a national disgrace, chockfull of lazy, rude, overpaid employees.
It should be immediately privatized.
It's the cheapest, most efficient, most reliable postal service in the world. Do you really want to pay $5 for a first class letter?
As a delivery driver (non-union and doing fine I might add), no one has mentioned how far apart these houses are. If it had to be contracted out, I imagine they're in a remote area and far apart from one another. Of course the journalist dumbed everything down like they all do. Who cares about details, right?
I get the jist of this article. Unions don't like it when companies outsource labor. I'd rather the USPS outsource if it means the cost of a stamp won't go up AGAIN. Besides, aren't unions a bit outdated?? What is the point of labor laws and OSHA if we need mob-like organizations to "oversee" their members?? Shouldn't employees get recognized based on their individual performace rather than mass-strong-arming of the hand the feeds them? Why shouldn't a union compete for the same buisness an individual can do? Isn't that the point of a free market and minimum wage labor laws??
Seems to me you have at least one HUGE inaccuracy in your data. The contract dollar amount is $12,279 for a FULL YEAR - not a 4 month contract. Meaning the four month contract Mr. Onuliak has is only $4,093, which nets $40/day. If the current union members were willing to work for that I'm sure the post office would have cancelled the need to outsource.
Can I say BFD that Chris Onuliak is the son of Mike Onuliak? And the point of NAMING the father/son? Are you at all familiar with union tactics?? Couldn't you have said the contract went to a TWENTY-THREE year old son of a current postal employee and left it at that?? Also, am pretty sure the contract posting was available to ALL postal workers (and GENERAL PUBLIC) so any famiy member could share with a compliant member. If the decision was made in Seattle and not the Beaverton PO then what is the relevance? Your point carries the same amount of relevance as Colin Powell son working for the FCC...
Seems to me WW is trying to stir up an already heated pot of water. Was the article written by a due paying journalistic union member??? A BIT one sided.