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.
Hmmm….backbone of the agency?? Go figure…
Rural and City letter carriers are told that they are the backbone….