Western States Conference 2024
Colorado/Wyoming delegation: An impressive gathering of CO/WY members, including 7 first-timers to the Western States Conference. Back row: Greggie Byrd (WY), Jean VanOrdstrand, Brian Lane (First-timer), Todd Hohn (First-timer), Jacob Lechner (First-timer), Candie Dyer, Charles Harper, Les Hawkins, Natalie Gardner, Tammy Smith, Shayne Horne (First-timer); Front row: Pam Smith, Andrea Leal (First-timer), Rosie Coria (First-timer), David Aldridge, Magdalena de los Santos (First-timer), and Cortney Clark.
Not pictured Amy Stauffer (First-timer), George Halcomb, and Lesa Routh-Halcomb.
Editor's note: Due to lack of space, not all of the articles from the Colorado attendees to the Western States Conference were able to be printed in the May issue of the Colorado Rural Letter Carrier. The articles not in the state paper are published below.
The facts you missed
Candie Dyer, WSC Delegate
We missed a lot of you at the Western States Conference; hopefully we will see you all at the state convention in June.
Here are some highlights from what you missed at the conference. Following the last Mini-Mail Survey 70% of the routes went up by an average of 45 minutes, 29% went down. Letter volume is down 60%, flat volume is down 40%, and parcel are up 7%.
There are several bills in congress that are of interest to rural carriers and if you would like to write your representatives about them and have them get on board, that would be great.
The times you get actual time paid are:
Do you know what to do if you take an express out in the afternoon after you get back off your route? – Do everything like you usually do, put away your soup and put all the mark ups away. Instead of clocking out after all your duties, go in to pm casing and keep track of your miles, weather you are using your own vehicle or the post office vehicle. You want to write this down in the comment section on the 4240 (A.K.A Trip report). This is where you will be getting paid for 3 minutes a mile.
Back together again
Natalie Gardner, WSC Delegate
This year's Western States Conference was held in Cripple Creek, Colorado. We had around 114 rural carriers attend, including RCAs/PTFs. We had several first-timers, which we are always happy to see and welcome. There were about 20 carriers from Colorado in attendance, it would have been great to see more, but I imagine there were several offices short staffed. Maybe next year when the WSC will be in Helena, Montana April 16–18. Watch for more details in the coming months, but mark your calendars now and be sure to put in for it 60 days prior.
All the employees that worked at the brand-new Hotel Chamonix were very helpful, even though they were still learning how things were to be done. There were areas in the hotel that were still being worked on and there were several workers with hard hats on, but they did their best to stay out of everyone's way. Everything was brand new, tables and chairs included. Carriers even made comments on the carpet.
Most of the national board were there, which is common for the WSC. NRLCA President Don Maston spoke about where we are going, which is more parcel delivery. Most of us have already been experiencing that. He also spoke on contract negotiations since our contract expires in May. RRECS was still a topic and Director of Labor Relations Bridget Boseak presented a power point on the relationship of the 4241A and 4241M and their role in the RRECS program and how to understand them! We had a question-and-answer session with the national representatives. After the main session on Thursday night, we had a retirement seminar.
The meet and greet was Wednesday night with snacks and card games for prizes. It was a fun time and enjoyable to meet and visit with fellow carriers from other states and visit with those we haven't seen in a year.
In all, the WSC was a success! I hope to see more of our rural family next year.
A benefit for all
Tammy Smith, WSC Delegate
Hi from the Lower Arkansas Valley. We made it through and back from WSC in Cripple Creek. I think it was a success and I am so glad it is over.
A lot, I mean a lot, of work and time by a lot of people went into putting it on. Thank You to you all. There were over 100 carriers there. The meet and greet on Wednesday was fun. We played "Match" card game and some good prizes were given away. The food was quite the spread with veggies, dips, breads, dried fruit, and so many different cheeses. Very good and very pretty.
Thursday started with call to order at 9 a.m. Colorado Chaplain, Anna Harrington, was unable to make it, so a gal from Oregon, Tennora Hale, stepped up and was wonderful, thank you.
We had legal counsel, legislative representative, and six national officers in attendance. NRLCA Auxiliary and six vendors were in the hall with information that was a benefit to all. CORLCA PAC Chair Candie Dyer had a silent and live auction that raised a lot of money and had many carriers leaving with smiles on their face with their new acquired goodies.
Friday was the WSC business meeting. New officers were elected and sworn in. WSC will be held in Bozeman, Montana in 2025. They are excited and hope to see even more there. If you could not make it this year, really try to make it next year. It is an adventure.
Helpful information for everyone
Pam Smith, WSC Delegate
The Western States Conference was a great conference this year. A big thanks to Tammy Smith for all the hard work she put it to make help make it a success. From the meet and greet playing card games and getting gag gifts or, if you won, you might have picked a good gift.
It was a good time meeting carriers from other states and hearing about the problems they are dealing with in their offices. Most of the common issues dealt with hiring and retention. Although, management was also a big problem almost everywhere and treating relief carriers poorly, which also might provide some explanation on the retention problems. This needs to stop and we need our national officers to take some responsibility to get it fixed! If this is happening at your office, please call your steward or district representative.
The retirement seminar with John Embleton was great; even though I am retired, I learned a few things. A lot of you, like me, may have thought that the high-3 is the last three years you worked, but that is not necessarily true. The high-3 average is of your base pay you earned in any 36 consecutive months. It is usually the last 3 years you worked, but it can be an earlier period, and it does not include overtime.
John handed out a booklet with all you need to know about retirement, from how to compute your retirement and all the steps along the way, including several phone numbers and helpful websites. I found this very educational.
A good and interesting fight
Charles Harper, WSC Delegate
The 2024 Western States Conference had a very different feel to it than in the past. Of course, it might have been mainly because of the altitude of 9,494 feet! We received more data than normal too, including detailed information about RRECS. This article will have information from more than one speaker.
The RRECS time standards have eliminated sector/segment mail and have replaced this with a raw mail count. Random letters are now 15.46 cased per minute, the old-time standard was 18. Random flats are now 11.6 cased per minute, while the old standard was 10. For boxholders, we now receive credit for 1 minute for every 15.48 boxholder flats. Letter sized boxholder receive a minute for every 33. The old standard was 25 no matter what size the boxholder was. Another reason to make sure that you are entering in the boxholder and WSS activities properly in RRECS is because either of these scans will provide a 100% coverage for that day.
The new average mileage standard is 3 minutes per mile as opposed to the old of 2 minutes per mile. This mileage factor is to be used for detours, second trips, deviations for expresses, and any other activities that fall underneath second trips. Parcels receive a minimum of 24 seconds, which is the case if a parcel is scanned delivered to the box. The time awarded increases if the small item is delivered to a parcel locker, an additional 11 seconds, or to the door. These times include organizing small parcels. If driving is involved, or the parcel is not small, more time is credited. Parcels delivered to the door must be scanned at the door. One must cross the geo-fence for the “scanned at the door” not be credited at the box. In other words, scans not close enough to the address door in the mapping will receive the same credit (24 seconds) as just putting in box. This is one more reason mapping must be done and correct. Scanned delivery at mailroom/front desk has been eliminated and we are to scan as delivered to door.
Returning to coverage factor; if WSS or Boxholder activity is not used that day, the system will use breadcrumbs picked up. Thus, one just has to drive by the box within 35 feet for that box to be counted in mailbox factor. If neither situation is applicable, informed visibility can be used to determine coverage factor.
Ken Mericle, the association’s work study engineer, has been busy. He recently has been checking the Post Office’s new rural route cutting program. He has found an error in an equation in the lasted version of the program. This is the fifth version and he is confident that the error can be fixed and the program will work as designed. Are you awaiting a route cut? Well, in Colorado, there are 300 routes with evaluations of 47K or 48K which require a cut. We have 1200 routes so that is a quarter of our routes. The Western/Pacific Area has 10,174 routes of which 3,308 are evaluated over 55:48 standard hours (overburdened). My understanding is that Colorado/Wyoming District has certified four managers to run the route cutting program. Management in Colorado is expecting the cuts to take approximately four months. Similarly, the program to provide interim adjustments should be up and running very soon. We will not have to wait for the next mini-mail survey to get our one hour increases in evaluations if we keep our edit books up to date.
We will need more relief carriers for all those new routes from the upcoming cuts. Although the Postal Service in Colorado has hired 286 RCAs/ARCs since January, we have had more leave than that and are at a negative 35 pre-career carriers in our craft. The PTF hiring situation is much better. During the same period, we had an additional 139 PTF new hires remain with the service. Nowadays, the main reason craft employees, including city, clerk, and mail handlers, leave is the lack of schedule flexibility. The NRLCA views this reason as a wage problem.
The next reason employees are leaving is management and the third reason is pay. Most craft employees leave during their second to sixth month of employment. Strangely, the Postal Service can keep rural carrier relief through the Christmas season, but lose them just after. This appears to be an issue with the way management is treating RCAs. Gold during the holidays and rust in the new year! Management is also trying to give carriers more training to keep the new relief carriers around.
Our union does not believe the Postal Service pays entry level employees enough. Contract negotiations are concentrated on fixing this. Not much new information was provided on those negotiations. However, our attorney Gisler finds the climate “exciting” for labor negotiations and President Maston has said that the craft unions are pooling resources and experts to battle the Postal Service in negotiations. It should be a good and interesting fight!
In conclusion, I want to also mention that the Postal Service has no plans to make super centers involving rural in Colorado.
Western comparison
George Halcomb, WSC Delegate
Last year, I had the honor of going to all five area conferences. Generally, I recommend that carriers go to area conferences because you will get to talk to all the union people personally. This means the health insurance, banking, and even the national officers. Area conferences have all these people at them, and you can make arrangements to see most of them one on one. Most of these folks do not go to the state conventions and at nationals they just do not have time to see you.
The first thing that you notice that makes the Western States different is a truth about living in the west compared to the rest of the United States. There are fewer people in the wild west we live in. There are 11 states in the Western Area and none of them have huge number of rural carriers. We had about 120 rural carriers at Western States and some of the conferences have close to 300 carriers.
Western States also rotates so every state gets their turn to host. Cripple Creek seemed to be a difficult destination for some to get to this year, but next year in Montana will hopefully be less difficult to get to. It seems to be a year-to-year thing, but the western area did not have a banquet this year. This is a tough one, as banquets are a lot of work to arrange, but it always seems to be a unifying moment and getting to see these people in a different light. Also, they are usually a lot of fun.
When comparing this year’s Western States to the five area conferences I attended last year, there were two conferences that did not have a banquet. Western States and South Atlantic Area were the two that did not have banquets. I felt that these two conferences did not share in the unity amongst carriers that the other three conferences had. You spend quite a lot of time and money to go to your area conference. Having a banquet and sharing fun times with other carriers seems to help offset the time and money you lose to show you are interested in your job.
Not pictured Amy Stauffer (First-timer), George Halcomb, and Lesa Routh-Halcomb.
Editor's note: Due to lack of space, not all of the articles from the Colorado attendees to the Western States Conference were able to be printed in the May issue of the Colorado Rural Letter Carrier. The articles not in the state paper are published below.
The facts you missed
Candie Dyer, WSC Delegate
We missed a lot of you at the Western States Conference; hopefully we will see you all at the state convention in June.
Here are some highlights from what you missed at the conference. Following the last Mini-Mail Survey 70% of the routes went up by an average of 45 minutes, 29% went down. Letter volume is down 60%, flat volume is down 40%, and parcel are up 7%.
There are several bills in congress that are of interest to rural carriers and if you would like to write your representatives about them and have them get on board, that would be great.
- H.R. 5995 is the Federal Retirement Fairness Act and would allow carriers to buy back their RCA years to count towards retirement. To buy back your Sub years it would cost you 1.3% of your basic pay. Right now, they have 88 co-sponsors, but they need 290 for the bill to hit the floor and be voted on. It is up from years past, so please write a letter and make some phone calls to your congressman. There are form letters on the national website, nrlca.org.
- H.R. 3721 is the USPS Shipping Equity Act. It is to allow the USPS to ship alcohol like our competitors. There are currently 17 co-sponsors.
- H.R. 82 is the Social Security Fairness Act and should be going to the floor because there are 311 co-sponsors.
- H.R. 7679 is the Protect Our Letter Carrier Act. This is a relatively new bill with only 14 co-sponsors, but this one is specifically designed to protect us from violence on our routes so reach out to get the support of your representative. Again, we need 290 to get it onto the floor.
The times you get actual time paid are:
- Start Load - End Load – You can do this more than one time during the day.
- Once you hit Return to DU till you either Clock out or go into PM Casing.
- Doing deviation to go do an express – Start it when you leave to go deviate, end it when you get back to the spot where you stared at.
Do you know what to do if you take an express out in the afternoon after you get back off your route? – Do everything like you usually do, put away your soup and put all the mark ups away. Instead of clocking out after all your duties, go in to pm casing and keep track of your miles, weather you are using your own vehicle or the post office vehicle. You want to write this down in the comment section on the 4240 (A.K.A Trip report). This is where you will be getting paid for 3 minutes a mile.
Back together again
Natalie Gardner, WSC Delegate
This year's Western States Conference was held in Cripple Creek, Colorado. We had around 114 rural carriers attend, including RCAs/PTFs. We had several first-timers, which we are always happy to see and welcome. There were about 20 carriers from Colorado in attendance, it would have been great to see more, but I imagine there were several offices short staffed. Maybe next year when the WSC will be in Helena, Montana April 16–18. Watch for more details in the coming months, but mark your calendars now and be sure to put in for it 60 days prior.
All the employees that worked at the brand-new Hotel Chamonix were very helpful, even though they were still learning how things were to be done. There were areas in the hotel that were still being worked on and there were several workers with hard hats on, but they did their best to stay out of everyone's way. Everything was brand new, tables and chairs included. Carriers even made comments on the carpet.
Most of the national board were there, which is common for the WSC. NRLCA President Don Maston spoke about where we are going, which is more parcel delivery. Most of us have already been experiencing that. He also spoke on contract negotiations since our contract expires in May. RRECS was still a topic and Director of Labor Relations Bridget Boseak presented a power point on the relationship of the 4241A and 4241M and their role in the RRECS program and how to understand them! We had a question-and-answer session with the national representatives. After the main session on Thursday night, we had a retirement seminar.
The meet and greet was Wednesday night with snacks and card games for prizes. It was a fun time and enjoyable to meet and visit with fellow carriers from other states and visit with those we haven't seen in a year.
In all, the WSC was a success! I hope to see more of our rural family next year.
A benefit for all
Tammy Smith, WSC Delegate
Hi from the Lower Arkansas Valley. We made it through and back from WSC in Cripple Creek. I think it was a success and I am so glad it is over.
A lot, I mean a lot, of work and time by a lot of people went into putting it on. Thank You to you all. There were over 100 carriers there. The meet and greet on Wednesday was fun. We played "Match" card game and some good prizes were given away. The food was quite the spread with veggies, dips, breads, dried fruit, and so many different cheeses. Very good and very pretty.
Thursday started with call to order at 9 a.m. Colorado Chaplain, Anna Harrington, was unable to make it, so a gal from Oregon, Tennora Hale, stepped up and was wonderful, thank you.
We had legal counsel, legislative representative, and six national officers in attendance. NRLCA Auxiliary and six vendors were in the hall with information that was a benefit to all. CORLCA PAC Chair Candie Dyer had a silent and live auction that raised a lot of money and had many carriers leaving with smiles on their face with their new acquired goodies.
Friday was the WSC business meeting. New officers were elected and sworn in. WSC will be held in Bozeman, Montana in 2025. They are excited and hope to see even more there. If you could not make it this year, really try to make it next year. It is an adventure.
Helpful information for everyone
Pam Smith, WSC Delegate
The Western States Conference was a great conference this year. A big thanks to Tammy Smith for all the hard work she put it to make help make it a success. From the meet and greet playing card games and getting gag gifts or, if you won, you might have picked a good gift.
It was a good time meeting carriers from other states and hearing about the problems they are dealing with in their offices. Most of the common issues dealt with hiring and retention. Although, management was also a big problem almost everywhere and treating relief carriers poorly, which also might provide some explanation on the retention problems. This needs to stop and we need our national officers to take some responsibility to get it fixed! If this is happening at your office, please call your steward or district representative.
The retirement seminar with John Embleton was great; even though I am retired, I learned a few things. A lot of you, like me, may have thought that the high-3 is the last three years you worked, but that is not necessarily true. The high-3 average is of your base pay you earned in any 36 consecutive months. It is usually the last 3 years you worked, but it can be an earlier period, and it does not include overtime.
John handed out a booklet with all you need to know about retirement, from how to compute your retirement and all the steps along the way, including several phone numbers and helpful websites. I found this very educational.
A good and interesting fight
Charles Harper, WSC Delegate
The 2024 Western States Conference had a very different feel to it than in the past. Of course, it might have been mainly because of the altitude of 9,494 feet! We received more data than normal too, including detailed information about RRECS. This article will have information from more than one speaker.
The RRECS time standards have eliminated sector/segment mail and have replaced this with a raw mail count. Random letters are now 15.46 cased per minute, the old-time standard was 18. Random flats are now 11.6 cased per minute, while the old standard was 10. For boxholders, we now receive credit for 1 minute for every 15.48 boxholder flats. Letter sized boxholder receive a minute for every 33. The old standard was 25 no matter what size the boxholder was. Another reason to make sure that you are entering in the boxholder and WSS activities properly in RRECS is because either of these scans will provide a 100% coverage for that day.
The new average mileage standard is 3 minutes per mile as opposed to the old of 2 minutes per mile. This mileage factor is to be used for detours, second trips, deviations for expresses, and any other activities that fall underneath second trips. Parcels receive a minimum of 24 seconds, which is the case if a parcel is scanned delivered to the box. The time awarded increases if the small item is delivered to a parcel locker, an additional 11 seconds, or to the door. These times include organizing small parcels. If driving is involved, or the parcel is not small, more time is credited. Parcels delivered to the door must be scanned at the door. One must cross the geo-fence for the “scanned at the door” not be credited at the box. In other words, scans not close enough to the address door in the mapping will receive the same credit (24 seconds) as just putting in box. This is one more reason mapping must be done and correct. Scanned delivery at mailroom/front desk has been eliminated and we are to scan as delivered to door.
Returning to coverage factor; if WSS or Boxholder activity is not used that day, the system will use breadcrumbs picked up. Thus, one just has to drive by the box within 35 feet for that box to be counted in mailbox factor. If neither situation is applicable, informed visibility can be used to determine coverage factor.
Ken Mericle, the association’s work study engineer, has been busy. He recently has been checking the Post Office’s new rural route cutting program. He has found an error in an equation in the lasted version of the program. This is the fifth version and he is confident that the error can be fixed and the program will work as designed. Are you awaiting a route cut? Well, in Colorado, there are 300 routes with evaluations of 47K or 48K which require a cut. We have 1200 routes so that is a quarter of our routes. The Western/Pacific Area has 10,174 routes of which 3,308 are evaluated over 55:48 standard hours (overburdened). My understanding is that Colorado/Wyoming District has certified four managers to run the route cutting program. Management in Colorado is expecting the cuts to take approximately four months. Similarly, the program to provide interim adjustments should be up and running very soon. We will not have to wait for the next mini-mail survey to get our one hour increases in evaluations if we keep our edit books up to date.
We will need more relief carriers for all those new routes from the upcoming cuts. Although the Postal Service in Colorado has hired 286 RCAs/ARCs since January, we have had more leave than that and are at a negative 35 pre-career carriers in our craft. The PTF hiring situation is much better. During the same period, we had an additional 139 PTF new hires remain with the service. Nowadays, the main reason craft employees, including city, clerk, and mail handlers, leave is the lack of schedule flexibility. The NRLCA views this reason as a wage problem.
The next reason employees are leaving is management and the third reason is pay. Most craft employees leave during their second to sixth month of employment. Strangely, the Postal Service can keep rural carrier relief through the Christmas season, but lose them just after. This appears to be an issue with the way management is treating RCAs. Gold during the holidays and rust in the new year! Management is also trying to give carriers more training to keep the new relief carriers around.
Our union does not believe the Postal Service pays entry level employees enough. Contract negotiations are concentrated on fixing this. Not much new information was provided on those negotiations. However, our attorney Gisler finds the climate “exciting” for labor negotiations and President Maston has said that the craft unions are pooling resources and experts to battle the Postal Service in negotiations. It should be a good and interesting fight!
In conclusion, I want to also mention that the Postal Service has no plans to make super centers involving rural in Colorado.
Western comparison
George Halcomb, WSC Delegate
Last year, I had the honor of going to all five area conferences. Generally, I recommend that carriers go to area conferences because you will get to talk to all the union people personally. This means the health insurance, banking, and even the national officers. Area conferences have all these people at them, and you can make arrangements to see most of them one on one. Most of these folks do not go to the state conventions and at nationals they just do not have time to see you.
The first thing that you notice that makes the Western States different is a truth about living in the west compared to the rest of the United States. There are fewer people in the wild west we live in. There are 11 states in the Western Area and none of them have huge number of rural carriers. We had about 120 rural carriers at Western States and some of the conferences have close to 300 carriers.
Western States also rotates so every state gets their turn to host. Cripple Creek seemed to be a difficult destination for some to get to this year, but next year in Montana will hopefully be less difficult to get to. It seems to be a year-to-year thing, but the western area did not have a banquet this year. This is a tough one, as banquets are a lot of work to arrange, but it always seems to be a unifying moment and getting to see these people in a different light. Also, they are usually a lot of fun.
When comparing this year’s Western States to the five area conferences I attended last year, there were two conferences that did not have a banquet. Western States and South Atlantic Area were the two that did not have banquets. I felt that these two conferences did not share in the unity amongst carriers that the other three conferences had. You spend quite a lot of time and money to go to your area conference. Having a banquet and sharing fun times with other carriers seems to help offset the time and money you lose to show you are interested in your job.