Do Not Let the Postal Service Take Your “Pulse”
The USPS notified the APWU that they will be attempting, again, to take your “Postal Pulse.” The survey period is scheduled from May 11, 2021 to June 11, 2021. The APWU leadership urges you to not let the Postal Service take your Pulse!
Postal employees can expect to have postcards promoting the Postal Pulse survey sent to their homes. Copies of the survey will be sent to employees at work and home. Employees with usps.gov email addresses will be blitzed with messages to take the survey. Messaging monitors, bulletin boards, etc. will make sure you see something from the Postal Service encouraging you to participate every day during the survey period.
Management may hold “stand up talks” to push the survey on employees. Some supervisors and managers may even insist employees take the survey. You are not required to take the survey and you cannot be forced to take the survey!
Local supervisors and managers are no rewarded for how well they score on a survey, but for how many take it. Even if you do the survey and answer every question negatively as allowed, your “participation” counts the same as the employee who gives them a perfect score. Sending in a blank survey is considered a “participated” survey!
The surveying of employees has been going on for years. And has it led to improvements at worksites? Has it led to better wages, hours, or working conditions? The answer is simply ‘no’. Management is still cutting staffing, and demanding postal workers work faster and harder with less resources.
Only union organizing, mobilizing, negotiating, filing grievances, and fighting for adherence to our contract has improved our wages, hours, and working conditions.
The Postal service in the past has tried to use the surveys to argue in arbitration to gut your wages and benefits. Past surveys included 27 questions. The first 26 were about listening to you and making the workplace better, while the 27th was about your wages and benefits. They ignored the first 26 questions, and then used the 27th question against employees in interest arbitration.
Now, in 2021, the survey is being pushed immediately before our contract negotiations are set to begin.
All postal workers should not assist management in stripping your pay, benefits, and working conditions by participating in the survey. Stand with your union and boycott the surveys!
Stand united and do not be fooled by these “trojan horse” initiatives to divide us.
Management may also ask people to join focus groups and participate in management-initiated events to make the workplace more “engaging” or more “efficient.” They may even resort to cheap incentives like pizza, gold stars, or pictures in magazines to get you to participate. These are not sanctioned, negotiated or approved by the union. Survey participation does not benefit you. It only benefits management.
We have negotiated grievance and labor-management cooperation processes and national negotiations to address workplace issues. Management needs to follow our contract, deal with the grievances already filed and make sure hostile frontline supervisors are dealt with.
The members united are the beating heart of our union. Do not let management attempt to take your “Pulse.” If a local supervisor or manager cannot see the problems without a survey, then they are part of the problem!