Episode 1 - Evaluations and News on the very first Episode

Rural Route Realities

Host James Brennan discusses the recent release of route evaluations and provides actionable advice for rural carriers to dispute discrepanc

Key takeaways

Carriers should scrutinize 4241A/M forms for zero entries in parcel counts, route length, or mapping data to ensure accurate pay.
The dispute process for evaluations is slow and requires specific documentation like radar reports and PTR reports.

Main topics

Route Evaluations
Dispute Procedures

Notable quotes

This is your money.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a call to action for rural carriers to remain vi

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) From the route to the office, this is where discussion matters most, carrier to carrier. Welcome to the Rural Route Realities Podcast, the podcast for all rural carriers. While this is an open and frank discussion about the rural craft, we must remind the listeners that the views and opinions shared on this podcast are strictly the opinions of those who are speaking and do not reflect the official positions, policies, or strategies of the United States Postal Service, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, or any other organization of which the speakers belong to. Don't want to miss an episode? Make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications. We also appreciate if you would share these episodes with your fellow rural carriers. Have a question or a show idea? Leave it in the comments below. Now, here is the host of Rural Route Realities, Mr. James Brennan. Speaker 1 (1:20) Welcome to the Rural Route Realities Podcast, everybody. As you all know, I am James Brennan, and this is going to be my podcast to you all. I'm going to slowly build it. We're going to educate. We're going to entertain. We're going to have a lot of fun doing this. And since you all know who I am already, I'm just going to get right into it. Speaker 1 (1:44) Evaluations came out today, and of course I've got mine back, and compared to the last mini-mail survey, I went up two hours. Now granted, I had an interim adjustment where I went up one hour, but I'm still a 43J. Still out here working the route. I'm 30 minutes away from being a K route. I would love to get those 30 minutes back to become a K route. But everybody should have gotten their... 42-41A and 42-41Ms from their management. And if they didn't, I hope you get them by Monday because these are your evaluations for the next six months. Now, it's important to remember, this is debatable. Speaker 1 (2:31) You can dispute items on your 4241A. There's a process for that. The union hasn't come out with it yet, but they probably will by the time you're listening to this. And if not, I'll be posting it on my page, James Brennan for USPS Rural Carriers, on Facebook. On the 4241A, there's three sections. There's the office time, the route time, and the street volume time. These are followed by the 4241M, which is something that management should be printing, but sometimes you may have to ask for it. On the union website, there's actually a breakdown of the 4241A and M, where each item comes together. Now to give you a clue, the 4241A is weekly numbers, whereas the 4241M is daily numbers. So when you're looking at the 4241A, you have to remember that is a six-day number in each of those boxes. And the 4241M is a daily value. Speaker 1 (3:47) So when you're looking at both sheets, just remember that there's a difference between the two of them. If you look at the lower left corner of the box, standard hours and minutes, that's total is what determines your evaluation at the bottom. Whether you're an aux route, an H, J, or a K, there is a division between the three different sets. So make sure you're checking which one you're supposed to be under. And of course, high option. makes the difference as well. And you should have done that documentation a week or two ago. But let's go on to the dispute process. That's a very important thing. A dispute with the Postal Service is similar to a grievance. It's treated the exact same way. Now, it's very important that you remember that anything you dispute under the process here is going to take time. Speaker 1 (4:48) They set it up so that way there is time to process every single dispute. I know carriers that haven't gotten disputes back from several mini-mail surveys before. Those have gone up the chain. They're being worked. I've seen disputes coming back from the very first mini-mail survey. I know it takes a long time, but you've got to remember, management is looking for any excuse not to increase your wages. So you have to understand that every single person in this chain is working to try and make it better. And if your steward's not, then you need to reach to the person above them and find out what's going on. Now your district representative is the first one that deals with the disputes because your local management can't actually solve your disputes with them. So you have to wait for them to do something with the district manager. And if that doesn't work, they have to send it up higher. to the regional, etc. So it does take a little while, and with a bunch of carriers filing disputes at the same time, it's going to take a while to get back to you. So hold on, breathe, you're going to get them back, it's just going to take a little bit of time. Make sure you're patient about this. Keep on your district representative, but be patient, please. Speaker 1 (6:11) Now let's talk about what you can dispute. Now this is from the April dispute language that they had with National. And it starts with, you can dispute any entry of zero or a questionable number in any data field on the PS form 4241A that would otherwise expect to have a time credit. Now this is any zeros out there. So let's say you had 40 parcels a day average and you're showing zero parcels on your 4241A. That can be disputed. Or you know you had 40 parcels and it's showing 30 parcels. That can be disputed. Other obvious errors in these data fields on the 4241A can also be disputed. That is your route length. Regular, centralized, other, or total boxes. Daily dismounts. Daily dismount distances.