NALC and the Postal Service have agreed to several memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to establish an alternate route evaluation and adjustment process for the remainder of 2022 and all of 2023.
MOU Re: Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment Process 2022 – 2023 (TIAREAP) establishes a process that utilizes information made available using Digital Street Review (DSR) technology as the primary means to evaluate and adjust city delivery routes. As in previous alternate route evaluation and adjustment processes, TIAREAP will involve multiple teams established throughout the country, comprised of one NALC representative and one USPS representative, who will jointly evaluate and adjust routes in select zones. Once the joint teams have been selected, training and zone selection will take place shortly afterward, with evaluations beginning in September. This MOU (M-01982) can be found in NALC’s Materials Reference System.
A jointly developed supplemental document (M-01983) provides the mutual understanding of the national parties on issues related to the MOU Re: Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment Process 2022-2023. It is intended for use by the parties at all levels in properly applying the terms of TIAREAP.
Also, as in the previous alternate route adjustment process, an MOU was agreed upon that allows local parties to jointly submit for consideration a locally developed alternate route evaluation and adjustment process to the NALC National President and the Postal Service Vice President, Labor Relations. This MOU, Re: Alternate Evaluation and Adjustment Processes (M-01984) requires a proposal for such alternate process to be submitted by the NALC Branch President and the Postal Service Installation Head and must provide a detailed explanation of the process. If the proposal is jointly agreed to by the national parties, the local parties will be notified regarding implementation.
The City Delivery and Workplace Improvement Task Force in the 2019-2023 National Agreement tasked the national parties with jointly exploring the use of technology, data, advanced analytics and machine learning to improve operations, route evaluation, adjustment and optimization. Agreement to implement the Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment process comes after more than 14 months of joint exploration and testing of the utilization of DSR technology to evaluate and adjust routes.