Find Your Branch

A Holiday Season Like No Other

A Holiday Season Like No Other
By Ivan D. Butts
NAPS Executive Vice President

Greetings, NAPS brothers and sisters. This is the issue of The Postal Supervisor in which I like to take time thanking you for your continued hard work and dedication to completing the mission of the USPS. I also want to wish you and your family the very best of the holiday season—times we can, indeed, hold on to and cherish into the new year.

This year has proven to be the most challenging time in our lives as employees of America’s Postal Service. We are the managers who are the backbone of binding America together through the delivery of mail service.

We have worked for a more fair and equitable pay system with continuing litigation to correct a pay system that has been broken for years. A pay system, I might add, that a fact-finding panel of three mediators unanimously found has created a severe break in the relationship with executive leaders who use the high pressure of words to acknowledge the brokenness of the pay system, but the anemia of deeds in correcting it.

You have faced the task of providing essential supplies and medical prescriptions for America during a worldwide pandemic that is devastating to our country. As of this column’s writing, the pandemic has taken the lives of over 220,000 Americans, including 92 of our fellow postal employees. As essential personnel, you have continued to ensure that America’s mail keeps moving.

We’ve had to face the challenges brought about by decisions from the USPS Executive Leadership Team that has diminished service and threatened our status as America’s most-trusted federal agency. We now see a gloomy light cast on our agency on virtually every news show and in every news article regarding the Postal Service.

Through it all, you continue to be the backbone of this agency. You do all that is necessary to keep America’s mail moving. I have been proud to voice your praises to every legislator with whom I have had the pleasure of meeting on the numerous Zoom conference calls in which I have participated.

Now we come to the holiday season. The holidays bring extreme challenges to some in dealing with prior losses in life. Know that you are not alone and there are resources available to help you through these times. Whether you use the USPS Employee Assistance Program or your healthcare provider through your FEHB, support is available to help you make it through.

Your tremendous achievements this year demonstrate the total commitment of EAS employees to the vital and necessary task of leading employees in moving America’s mail daily—regardless of whether you are on the front lines in the field or serve in support positions at plants, districts, areas or USPS Headquarters. Collectively, your efforts keep proving this phrase to be true: We Deliver!

Thank you for the work you are doing. Your consistent work in leading the USPS is validation that our fight for fairness and equality is well-rooted with the dedication of NAPS men and women who are the USPS leaders. I am continually humbled to serve you and voice your needs to the USPS Executive Leadership Team.

As we move into the new year, I wish you and your family a genuinly blessed Christmas season and a happy, prosperous New Year in 2021.

In solidarity…