I honestly don't have confidence that the union can really perform much differently. Leadership is sympathetic to post office financial losses, and to them it makes sense that our craft has to help with stemming that, especially since mail volume is declining. ALL of USPS senior management is from the city side, and knows only that craft. They cater to city as they're the largest and most visible by far. Every PR piece for public consumption shows uniforms, LLV's, satchels, things that most rural carriers don't have. Every contact I have within the post office believes that we are moving closer to city methods of operation (percent to standard, maximum time standards for every function from load to deliver, minimize office time and take everything to the street, sharing routes on heavy days with other regulars, etc)
One huge problem is that we are salaried employees, who will be treated as hourly. I'd venture to say with much more of this implemented we have a great case to present to Federal DOL Wage and Hour that we are being micromanaged as hourly employees and not freedom of operation like salaried and they issue a directive to force hourly on the rural craft.
The city craft is GUARANTEED eight hours, ODWL for those who want overtime, so any contractual changes or route realignments do NOT affect their income for the most part. City uses fewer part timers, attrition by retirement to maintain work and compensation for carriers. They don't HAVE to give anything back at contract negotiations.
Any close to realistic proposal any of us has, when met with union leadership or board members, is shrugged off as "the post office won't ever agree to that so it's pointless to even pursue that"
A few priorities "off the top of my head" for our union to not consider (because they never will):
--merge tables into one and increase compensation for lower levels too
--pay RCA's hourly and start their pay $2-4 higher to get people who can follow directions
--align route lines of travel predicated upon safety and customer service instead of just financial
--open the "engineered standards" that are top secret and allow for review and revision of the most hideous and unrealistic ones. (86 ppm of DPS? under 3 minutes to fuel? to start)
--make the USPS system (RADAR, etc) accurate and transparent so carriers can MATCH their letters and flats with what they actually have at their case
--STOP the practice of a carrier making one mistake and they get their file papered for it. Force change of negativity by management which is forced upon THEM from the top
The core problem is we are dealing with top tier post office executives, and their subordinates down through District, who hate their employees and believe most are stealing time or even paper clips. It's tough to change an environment that has such a huge dose of negativity.