NAPS Membership Has Its Benefits
NAPS Membership Has Its Benefits
By Chuck Mulidore
NAPS Executive Vice President
One of the many great benefits of your NAPS membership is the NAPS Disciplinary Defense Fund (DDF) that represents working members, as well as retired members who were in good standing at the time of their retirement. This is found in Article 9 of the Bylaws portion of the NAPS Constitution & Bylaws:
“Section 1. NAPS is committed to representing its membership in all areas, including adverse action. The Disciplinary Defense Fund (DDF) was established by the membership, for the membership, to provide representation for NAPS members in appealing adverse actions, RIFs and debt collection actions taken against them.”
The DDF will represent you in any type of adverse action, reduction in force (RIF) or debt collection notice you might receive in your managerial career, as long as you maintain your NAPS membership. The fund represents more than financial assistance or representation. It reflects the organization’s commitment to standing beside its members when challenges arise.
An adverse action is defined under the Employee and Labor Relations Manual (ELM) Section 651.71 as “… discharges, suspensions of more than 14 days, furloughs for 30 days or less, and/or reductions in grade or pay.” This means that, if by chance, one of these unfortunate actions might happen to you, NAPS will be there to defend you. Best of all, that defense will not cost you a penny out of your own pocket!
Your right to be defended by the NAPS DDF is a benefit of membership. Now, compare that to the other management organization that asks you to pay thousands of dollars up front to even be considered for representation under its disciplinary fund.
Imagine being in a removal situation or RIF and you must pay that organization several thousand dollars out of your own pocket just to be considered for representation! That’s not right.
Plus, we take all cases. We do not selectively choose only those cases we believe we have a chance to win.
One of my duties as your executive vice president is to administer the DDF on behalf of NAPS members, so I thought I would provide you an update on the types of cases and our NAPS DDF successes in defending our members in those cases. The average cost of these cases is just under $3,000; again, none of that cost is borne by the member we are representing.
Our positive results are reflected in the debt collection and ELM 650 cases we have, as well. So, not only does NAPS represent you in these types of actions, but we also do an excellent job in getting positive outcomes for our members!
You may be wondering what types of DDF cases NAPS receives. I encourage you to protect yourself from these types of issues in your career. Sexual misconduct and performance are prevalent, but violence, finance issues and falsification also are significant. In any of these situations, you can keep yourself out of the way of adverse actions simply by following one rule: Always do the right thing!
You know what that is; you know what is right. Do not allow your manager or co-worker in any way to influence you to compromise your integrity. I can promise you, when push comes to shove, they will not stand by you — but NAPS will, now and always.
In a demanding postal environment where accountability pressures continue to grow, the DDF provides security, confidence and support for every EAS employee.
Thus, as you can see, NAPS membership is the best insurance policy you ever will have in your career. We hope you never will need the NAPS DDF. But, if you do, the DDF stands ready to fight alongside you to protect the careers, rights and futures of the dedicated postal leaders who keep America’s mail moving every day.