Friday, February 6, 2009

My Life

I was a little late on my weigh in this morning. I like to get it done right away in the morning before I have anything to eat or drink but this morning I got caught up in a few things and didn't realize until it was after 1000. Oh well.

10:15 AM = 138 pounds. I thought I was going to weigh in higher, I haven't had as much exercise this week as I had planned, but I think the stress from work may be helping.

I just had another case dumped in my lap on Wednesday. My last case or should I say cases, were resolved in the grievant's favor. She got her job back and full back-pay! YAY, I knew management fucked it up. It's just too bad it took so long, the woman was out of work since last July.

The case I have now is going to be even tougher, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) is involved. Under the Bush administration the OIG was put into place under the umbrella of Homeland Security to take the place of or work alongside the Postal Inspectors. Anyway, these guys will get an employee in a room and scare the hell out of him/her.

That is exactly what happened with the guy I'm representing. They took him in a room, closed the door and talked to him like they were his best friend then put down the hammer on him. By the time he realized he was in trouble and asked for a union representative he had already incriminated himself. Now I get to pick up the pieces.

This is going to be an interesting case. In all my years in the PO and as a union representative I have seen and defended a lot of people for everything under the sun. I have represented guys in fist fights, threatening co-workers, attendance violations, viewing pornography while at work, intoxication etc. and the union has been successful in saving the person's job. The one thing I have never seen success on is when someone steals from the PO, and that is exactly what this guy is accused of doing.

I thought when I represented a couple guys who had gotten into a fist fight on the docks and I was able to get them their jobs back at Step One of the grievance procedure, that was setting the bar high. It was the first time in the Mail Handler union's history that anyone had been able to get one person's job back at that level and I was able to get two people their jobs back!

Now this, wow, have I got my work cut out for me. I spent most of Thursday reading, reading and reading. The man is a 10 point Vietnam veteran, the OIG is involved and postal management. I have three avenues I have to cover. On one hand I'm happy I have the case, it will be a challenge, I get to interview Special Agents and I will learn a lot, on the other hand, this is going to keep me up at night. But as I always like to say: Bring it!

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