THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996 TAG: 9606200394
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GREG BURT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 53 lines
Local postal workers took part in a nationwide picket Wednesday, saying that major changes made by the federal agency to reshape its image and improve efficiency are hurting the quality of service.
Mail carriers from Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Chesapeake greeted customers at the Virginia Beach Post Office on Lynnhaven Parkway with fliers charging that management was preventing them from providing quality service in an attempt to privatize the nation's postal service.
It marked the first national ``informational picket'' held by the 100-year-old National Association of Letter Carriers, which is prohibited by law from striking.
Tim Dowdy, state president of the association, said the speed and quality of services are being affected because of what he called a ``sickness'' within Postal Service management, which he called ``tyrannical.''
The last straw, he said, was when Postmaster General Marvin Runyon eliminated the Employee Involvement Program, which gave local carriers an open forum to propose solutions to problems.
Dowdy cited the new automation of some mail-sorting processes as an area in which employees need to be involved to help work out the bugs. But, he said, they no longer have a way of providing feedback.
Fran Sansone, customer relations coordinator for the Postal Service in Virginia Beach, said the plans for automation and privatizing of certain parts of the Postal Service will improve efficiency and quality.
She pointed to a recent record the Postal Service broke, by delivering 90 percent of first-class mail on time.
Paul Thompson, a nine-year postal service worker, was among about 15 colleagues who spent the afternoon in front of the Virginia Beach station protesting his employer's policies. Thompson said he is not against automation, but added that the new system has a lot of problems that could be solved if management was more open to employee suggestions.
Dowdy said that Runyon, who became postmaster general four years ago, is out to destroy employee-management relations in order to prove to Congress that the Postal Service needs to be privatized.
Some plans to privatize are already in motion. Sansone said the Postal Service has bulk mail centers around the country that use nonunion, nonsalaried workers to sort mail. She added that 10 Priority Mail Centers are planned to be built on the East Coast and that they will employ nonunion workers. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Charlie Meads/The Virginian-Pilot
Gloria Smith and other postal workers form an "informational picket"
at the Virginia Beach Post Office on Lynnhaven Parkway. The local
picket was part of a nationwide effort Wednesday.
KEYWORDS: STRIKE PROTEST U.S POSTAL SERVICE by CNB