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The Challenge of Never-Ending Changes

The Challenge of Never-Ending Changes
By Jimmy Salmon
Postmaster of Clarkdale, AZ, and Member of Phoenix Branch 246

Hello, NAPS postmasters. There are a lot of activities and changes happening in our jobs lately. There has been a renewed emphasis on compliance with CRDO, RADAR and others as the centerpiece for quick access to everything happening in an office with a couple clicks of the mouse.

PowerBI, Triangulation and Fiscal Stewardship are just a few things being talked about regularly. If you haven’t already taken the opportunity to discover all you can about these applications, please do so. These, and other applications like them, appear to be the way of the future for compliance and regular oversight of your office.

Postmasters and other EAS employees delivering mail continues to happen in a lot of offices. If EAS employees are delivering mail, it’s important to get that time entered in the survey.

The survey was created to see hours being worked delivering mail that weren’t trackable. There are changes coming our way that will help with making it less necessary for EAS employees to be delivering mail.

NAPS has been working a long time to make changes to the SWCs program. The calculation finally was updated and the ratio of supervisors to employees was changed from 1/35 to 1/15. This will create a lot of new supervisor positions.

There also is talk of a new Substitute Supervisor position in all functions, with a 1 substitute supervisor to 5 supervisor ratio. With those new positions, there will be less reliance on 204 (b)s.

That should result in fewer understaffed carrier operations and less reliance on EAS employees delivering mail. Until those changes get into place, it is important to continue to complete the survey.

MDD Timekeeping is something else new. RRECS for rural routes went into effect recently. There is lots of “new” in our jobs.

Sorting and Delivery Centers (S&DCs) are continuing to be implemented. They are opening a few at a time and are the beginning of a new-looking network with new types of facilities with new acronyms.

We need to keep our eye on the rollout of these facilities. As delivery leaves an office, let’s try and communicate with each other how these changes affect our offices and our jobs.

There is an emphasis on “Postmaster in the Community” for offices that lose delivery. It will be important to keep up with how these changes are being implemented and what we’ll need to do as our jobs are affected in the short and long term.

These are just some of the items that I have noticed recently. I’m sure there are many others. It will be important to stay aware of these new changes as they come and try to adapt as quickly and seamlessly as possible.