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Court Rejects White House
Quest to Drive Up Truckers’ Hours
A federal appeals court in late July struck down a Bush administration rule that loosened limits on the work hours of truck operators, concluding that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had failed to justify an increase in driving hours.
As part of a long-term strategy by the White House to reduce regulations on businesses, the agency that oversees the trucking industry increased the allowance of driver hours to 77 from 60 over seven consecutive days; and to 88 hours from 70 in an eight-day period.
Lobbied heavily by influential trucking industry leaders, officials of the FMCSA said that the increase would result in a faster and cheaper way to move goods nationwide.
The agency has tried several times to increase the driving limits, but appeals panels have consistently rejected the notion and criticized the FMCSA for its failure to insist on adequate training for drivers, and for ignoring its own study that involved a database of more than 50,000 truck accidents from 1991 to 2002. Using the data, the study extrapolated a substantially higher risk of fatigue-related accidents in the extra hours of service allowed by the new rules.
Consumer, health, and insurance organizations consistently have opposed the loosened regulations, and the agency, part of the Transportation Department, “failed to provide an adequate explanation for its decision to adopt the 11-hour daily driving limit,” said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The decision was the third in three years to go against the motor carrier regulatory agency.
A different appeals panel criticized the agency in December 2005 for failing to issue adequate rules for the training of drivers, saying it had ignored the need — based on its own studies — for more comprehensive training. And in 2004, an appeals court struck down new hours-of-service rules that were virtually identical to those at issue in the recent decision, saying they had been “arbitrary and capricious.”
At press-time, FMCSA officials were undecided about whether to make an appeal or seek a stay of the court’s order, which takes effect in September.
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![Text Box: Driver Instructor and Examiner (DIE)
DSI Positions to be Posted Installation-Wide
(03/021/08) A Feb. 21, 2008, letter [PDF] from the Postal Service confirms a long-held APWU position: Driver-Safety Instructor (DSI) duty assignments must be posted installation-wide, without exception.
The letter from the USPS manager of contract administration confirms that language of Article 39.2.B.2 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement is clear.
The dispute arose in October 2007 [PDF], when the union learned that the Southeast Michigan District and the Detroit District had posted DSI positions for bid district-wide. To make matters worse, district managers told local APWU representatives that a directive from headquarters instructed them to do so.
USPS In LLVs for the Long Haul
(This article first appeared in the March/April 2008 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
Recently I attended a very interesting meeting of fleet managers at the National Center for Employee Development in Norman, OK, that included many vendors, and front-line supervisors, as well as a few bargaining-unit employees who had demonstrated their abilities in the skills-competition test. For the most part, however, the meeting was well attended by Fleet Managers — approximately 200 of them.
The conference highlights included a number of workshops on various topics, and there was a presentation on the 2006-2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement. I was very interested in hearing the Postal Service’s presentation on the new contract, but management did not permit APWU members to attend this part of the meeting. Therefore, we do not know specifically what was discussed, but we have a fair idea that the focus was on minimizing grievances.
It’s pretty clear that the Postal Service has quite a few issues with body work — who should do it and at what level. This would be a relatively easy problem to resolve, but right now the USPS does not seem to be inclined to fix much of anything.
Putting Off the Big Buy
For one thing — and this is truly amazing — the Postal Service appears to have put off buying letter-carrier vehicles, which means that they are going to keep Long Life Vehicles (LLVs) for another 11 years or so.
Some of these trucks already are more than 20 years old, and some are approaching their third decade of use. To try to make them last another 11 years may mean that management is throwing good money after bad.
That’s the plan, however, and it ensures that Vehicle Maintenance Facilities will be well-positioned to continue to work on all of these vehicles, and not to shrink in size. With vehicles that old, it would be almost impossible for the USPS to get by with a smaller vehicle maintenance workforce.
Fleet Managers’ Views
Many of the fleet managers at the meeting seemed to agree that the Postal Service does not get the best value for its money by contracting-out repair work on their trucks — especially the LLVs and other right-hand drive vehicles. Actually, it is a better value to have the trucks repaired in-house, but upper management has prevented local fleet managers from keeping a lot of the work in the VMFs.
On the whole, it was surprising how frustrated some of the managers were with the national-level USPS decision-making. At the VMFs, supervisors would like to increase staffing: They were very vocal about it and expressed the
same bitterness toward upper management that many in the bargaining unit traditionally have shown.
The problem is that nobody above the District fleet managers seems to act independently. They get orders from above and they just blindly follow them in what really amounts to an exercise in futility. When the fleet managers ask the tough questions, they can’t seem to get any straight answers.
Wanted: Leadership and Direction
The attitude on the part of fleet managers really touched home. We, as bargaining unit workers and union representatives, complain constantly about getting double-talk or no answers at all. It turns out that the Postal Service’s own front-line managers feel the same way. No one seems to be coming forward to provide real leadership and direction.
Overall, though, it appears that the USPS is committed to keeping the right-hand-drive vehicles, and it appears that management does not plan to outsource much of the associated maintenance work. In addition, the USPS is planning on rebuilding some of these for redistribution to other areas.
It follows that one of the common complaints was that the VMFs that get the rebuilt LLVs will be getting junk. Management insisted that is was not the case – only vehicles in good working order would be shipped out, they said. When a remark was made that rebuilt vehicles could be folded seamlessly into existing fleets, it was met with derisive laughter.
It was surprising to see how close the national union and APWU-represented employees are to lower-level management in their views about the operation of the VMFs.](image551.gif)