Episode 2, A Surprise Guest, Mapping, and Union Participation

Rural Route Realities

Host James Brennan welcomes special guest Bill May to discuss critical issues facing rural carriers, focusing heavily on the RECS mapping pr

Key takeaways

• Bill May serves as secretary-treasurer for his local association and fields six to eight calls daily from carriers nationwide seeking guidance on union rights and mapping disputes.
• Management frequently avoids participating in mandatory RECS mapping, forcing carriers to lose traffic control point credits that directly impact drive speed matrices and route evaluations.

Main topics

• RECS Mapping & Traffic Control Points
• Union Facilitators vs Management Training

Notable quotes

"Management would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground to tell the truth."

Conclusion

The episode serves as a practical guide urging rural carriers to stop rel

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (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 Rail Route Realities, Mr. James Brennan. Speaker 2 (1:20) Welcome back, everybody, to episode two. A surprise visitor has joined us. We're going to talk about mapping and why our union or association, however you want to call it, actually matters. So firstly, let's introduce our special guest tonight. And it is the one, the only, the Big A. Speaker 2 (1:46) Bill May Speaker 1 (1:51) Oh, such a fine lead off there. Well, I'm happy to make a surprise visit. Speaker 2 (2:01) And we appreciate that very much. I'm sure all the audience members appreciate it as well. So tell us, what have you been up to since you were on United We Scan? And then what brought you to this point here of joining us here on Rural Route Realities? Speaker 1 (2:19) Well, since I wasn't invited back to United We Scan, I've been on the sidelines. Speaker 1 (2:26) I could say nationally because I've been still getting phone calls across the country, mostly Midwest and down South. Speaker 1 (2:38) Excuse me. as well as in my local areas. Speaker 1 (2:44) I average probably about six to eight calls a day and even getting some from management. And I have been active in our local association, of course, I'm the secretary treasurer, and we just had our meeting back on the 29th of September. And... Speaker 1 (3:06) State convention. I did not attend the national convention this year for personal reasons. And I just keep busy being a grandfather. You know, I babysit several times a week for two of my grandsons. Speaker 1 (3:24) I've got the house that we bought back in April and still doing little odds and ends here and there to get it to where we want it to be. A lot of little items, nothing really major. You know, now I've got grass to cut. That's a two-hour, you know, adventure for a day. And then, you know, another hour and a half to two hours, you know, trimming it up and blowing the grass and this and that. And it's like, you know, today we actually went to Home Depot and got a spreader and some lawn insects aside because we have a boatload of gnats in the backyard or just, you know, nasty little biting gnats. So I have to put some of that down there to get them under control. But, you know, being a house husband per se and grandfather babysitter, that's about it. Be a good husband, be a good grandfather, continue to help my carriers in my area as well as, like I said, the Midwest, down south in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida. a couple out of Missouri, a couple out of the Northwest. I mean, you know, I get these calls, you know, left and right, and I just sit down and spend the time, you know, answering and looking up the questions. Speaker 1 (4:50) Which kind of raised an eyebrow on our state president because she attended our local meeting on the 29th. And we were raising the topic of applying binders to each office in our local that would have the contract, the RCAM maps, AMS mapping, which we had a district manager at our state convention who provided the most perfect address management printout. in the world in color highlighted and everything and i went up and if you know me at all you're hard pressed to do impress me okay I thought I went up and shook her hand. I told her I've heard of unicorns. I've never met one. And I says, and you're an absolute unicorn. The way she presented this intellectually, verbally, professionally. I was amazed that anybody in management would provide us with this type of turnout. And like I said, it was a colored printout, you know, four-color printout, and was absolutely perfect. And, you know, that's the type of thing we want to put in the binder as well as, you know, the... Speaker 1 (6:09) I will say the daily MOUs that people are concerned with, you know, working off the clock, you know, your EOS time, you know, working your ELM 432-32, working over 12 hours, all these things. So I, you know, presented that at our local meeting and our local president kind of raised an eyebrow. Of course, you know, we have, you know, questions to answer. Are non-union people going to have availability to this? And if we put them into the binder, people take the sheets out, don't replace them. Do we make them sealed sheets or what? A lot of questions that we have to answer. But I think it's a great resource for each office to have, especially if they have no local steward. But we have to turn around. find a trusted individual who won't leave the book laying around for management to confiscate. Speaker 1 (7:11) So that's the kind of things we're doing right now. Speaker 1 (7:16) We did have an incentive program to attend this local meeting, and we got three new members to actually show up. I was hoping to get some non-union members to show up and sign the 1187, but we weren't that lucky. I'll take three new members. Yeah, fine by me. The more the merrier. That's awesome. The greater the input, the greater input from people. the more you can be able to look at a situation and gain a perspective on there that balances the needs and the wants. of the carriers in regards to doing their job. So it was an awesome night. We didn't get done until, oh, it was 940. So it was a good two and a half hour solid meeting. And we provide food every meeting. Speaker 1 (8:11) You got your choice of five different pizzas, and then you had desserts including tiramisu, raspberry drizzled cheesecake, and a lemon cake. Speaker 1 (8:23) So not only do we feed your mind, we feed your body too. Speaker 1 (8:29) And we are going to explore before the end of the year utilizing Zoom meetings. Speaker 1 (8:36) Of course, we got the precautionary warning on trying to control that too. But, you know, like I said, if our local steward meetings can be, you know, done on Zoom, I'm pretty sure we can handle the local meetings. Speaker 2 (8:52) Yeah, and I agree with you on all of that. That's very important. I'm glad that you got three union members to actually show up. It's very difficult. To get people to show up to these things because they're working their butts off a lot of the times. A lot of the times these meetings are during the time that they're actually working instead of after they're done working. Like I know mine starts at like 6.30 and there are still carriers out on the street as I'm going to 6.37 sometime around that. And I'm driving to this place and passing carriers still out in the LLV. And it's very difficult for them to travel to places, especially if they get done at 5.30. at night to get to that meeting two hours away. And the carriers, like in the UP of Michigan, have a long way to go sometimes to go to their meetings. Speaker 1 (9:46) We have a sort of centralized meeting area. It's easy access. And when I say centralized, I mean most people have the ability to get there within half an hour to 45 minutes. And that's why we feel it's important to provide meal form or food. Speaker 1 (10:07) however you want to term it, provide food and refreshment for them so that they don't have to worry about. you know, running home and grabbing something or stopping on the way, we provide that for you. Speaker 1 (10:21) We sit down and eat before the meeting. Speaker 1 (10:25) You know, everybody gets their plate filled and everything like that. Then we do our pledge of allegiance and we start the official meeting. But the fact that you show up is more important to us. And like I said, you know, you got to feed your body as well as feed your mind. I wish more people. who complained about the union or complained about the post office actually got involved. So they would learn, you know, what their avenues of, you know, recourse are. Speaker 2 (10:56) That's going to be our second topic today, Bill. We're going to be talking about all of that stuff on our second part of this episode. But let's get into the first part of it first before we get there. And that is the fact that. Speaker 2 (11:13) I posted about doing mapping, and the reason why I posted about doing mapping on my page, James Brennan for USPS Rural Carriers, hashtag shameless plug, is because I was doing my mapping, and I go through and I check my boxes, I check random addresses to make sure the plots are pointed correctly. Sometimes I go through all of them. And then when I do the LTM... After I do the... Speaker 2 (11:45) partial review, I then go through and check every single one of my traffic control points. It's very important that you do that because this time I found I was missing a single stop sign. Now, sometimes a crosswalk will be missing. Sometimes a yield sign will be missing. Sometimes a traffic light will be missing. But you have to keep on top of that. Otherwise, you lose that credit for that traffic control point you had. And what really got under my skin, most of all, was the number of people who have mapping done by management without them present. Speaker 2 (12:34) Some of them mapped the first time and haven't mapped since. Some of them have mapped maybe once in the last six months. Speaker 2 (12:46) You need to be doing mapping daily. Right, Bill? All the Speaker 1 (12:52) time. Speaker 1 (12:56) I'll let you finish your little clip on this, and then I have a story about our meeting that... May or may not shock you, but, you know, it's what was. Speaker 1 (13:11) expressed at our union meeting. Our state president was president. The ADR is the one that made the comment. And we all just sat there and looked at her like, you really didn't say that. But you continue on with your train of thought before I jump in on that. Speaker 2 (13:30) Oh, I can't wait to hear your story on looking at somebody like they grew three heads. Speaker 2 (13:38) You know, the fact is there are carriers out there that management chooses not to map with. There are carriers out there that management makes the decision that it's faster, easier for them to map without the carriers. And what that does is that cuts your route evaluation. I don't care. how good you think you are at your route, how you think GPS breadcrumbs are working perfectly on your route, how the scanners never make a mistake, or anything like that. Mapping is one of the most important assurances that your route is getting taken care of, that your route is giving you all the credits it can. Not only does it show you where the GPS breadcrumbs think, your route's supposed to go, but it also shows you every single traffic control point. And these are very important, not just for the credits that they give you, but they also adjust your drive speed matrix. Every time you hit a traffic control point, it's a reset of the drive speed matrix. Every time you turn a corner, every time you hit a traffic control point, it resets the drive speed matrix. So if you have a mile and a half that you travel down a road, but there's a stop sign in the middle, instead of getting the almost a mile speed on the drive speed matrix, you get a lower speed on that instead. Because it's based on the footage all the way up to, I think it's just over 5,000 feet, 5,020 feet or something like that. I don't remember off the top of my head. But it's important that you have every single traffic control point mapped. Because if you don't, you don't get the credit. You don't get the credit, you put the money back in management's pocket. And I'm telling you, I want every single credit I deserve. I put every single traffic control point I am legally allowed to have in my mapping. Speaker 2 (15:44) And these carriers that are sitting here saying, well, I don't map with management because management just does it or management's not available when I get back from the route, stuff like that. That is a management excuse. Management needs to make themselves available for the mapping. If management can't make themselves available, they need to designate someone. When this first started, we had mapping facilitators. There are still mapping facilitators out there, but there are some areas that are saying they're not allowed to have mapping facilitators anymore. I would rather have a carrier mapping with a carrier than management because a carrier is going to ensure that that other carrier is getting every credit that they deserve. But if management's going to do the mapping, they need to let the carrier do the mapping and just be there to answer questions. They can watch and see what they're doing and ask questions. But the carrier knows their route better than management does. If management is not letting you map, you need to contact your designated union representative because that is something you can grieve. But your representative can guide you further