CCA Corner — A CCA Mindset

00:06 BADMOUTH: Hey guys, it's Badmouth. I'm here with Mallory.

00:10 MALLORY: Hi, guys.

00:11 BADMOUTH: And Cole Billups.

00:14 COLE: Hey, everybody.

00:15 BADMOUTH: And we're doing a little bit of an interview — a sit-down talk with none other than Alan Gegax of Classes of Mail.

00:23 ALAN: Hey, thanks, Badmouth. I'm really pleased to be on this episode. You guys know CCAs have a very special place in my heart, and I love being a part of this.

00:31 BADMOUTH: Thank you so much for joining us. What we really wanted to do here was touch base with you and talk about your perception of how CCAs are treated in your neck of the woods. You're Pacific; we're far East Coast, ranging from Texas to the Carolinas, so we have very little idea of how things are going out there. I'm sure it's relatively the same everywhere, but I would love to hear your perception of how people are treated there.

01:16 ALAN: Yeah, no problem. I'm in a fairly large installation — my branch has like 1,500 members and maybe 18 stations, something like that. In my own experience it varies widely from station to station, and the big difference from one station to another is whether the supervisors and management recognize — for lack of a better term — the basic humanity of CCAs. It's kind of bad everywhere, but there are some places with decent supervisors who will try to work with them and keep things fair. And there's two parts to that. One is the supervisor themselves, or the station manager, setting the tone. But there's also the role of the steward in keeping management in check. A good example is the CCA schedule: there is no obligation to equalize overtime or to equalize hours with CCAs, but there is an obligation buried in the ELM to treat people equitably and fairly. In my opinion a steward can use that to approach management and be like, dude, what are you doing here? This isn't productive. So that's where the variation comes from. But yeah — you can have two stations in the same small city, and one treats the CCAs poorly and the other one treats the CCAs horribly.

02:39 BADMOUTH: I love the dichotomy there. Wherever you go, it's going to be poor treatment.

02:47 ALAN: Yeah, pretty much.

02:51 BADMOUTH: I appreciate you bringing up that fair-and-equitable piece, because that's something I've heard stewards talk about. Looking at Reddit and Facebook, where people are asking for help, someone will say, well, there's no equitable treatment. What you just cited in the ELM — yeah, it's not directed at CCAs specifically, but in general there should be equitable treatment. That's a great argument.

03:14 ALAN: And you can file a grievance on that. It's not as easy to win as something that's black and white, but — I've been beating this drum on Classes of Mail for a while now — at a minimum it puts management on notice that we're not just going to take it. And number two, even if you lose that grievance, your CCAs are getting treated like s*** anyway, so nothing is harmed by trying to fight that fight.

03:38 MALLORY: It's at least showing your CCAs that they do have a dog in the fight — you're their dog. And it empowers them, because now they know, exactly to your point, there's another dog in this fight with me. I can assert my rights and the union is going to have my back.

03:58 BADMOUTH: One of the things I wanted to ask about — all these podcasts are coming out, and you just did a recent episode on the democratization of information, which is an amazing point. Could you talk a little more about that, and how it helps bring people into this fight for a better life for all of us?

04:25 ALAN: Yeah, a hundred percent. Where it first really hit home for me was when I went to the national convention in Boston. What I saw there I found absolutely shocking — because almost everybody there is a steward or some other form of union activist. So I go in thinking we're all fighters, we're all like John Murphy. That's where I met John Murphy, and that's what I was expecting. Then I got there and saw that on essentially every vote, people just deferred to leadership. There was very little dissent, very little argument. And for me the most shocking vote — I mean, there were plenty of shocking votes — was when somebody made a motion that every resolution the executive board suggests, we should just pass all of them. And I'm like, dude, that's insane. Most people haven't even read them. There's no discussion, we don't know what's in there. And it passed overwhelmingly.

05:27 ALAN: That's the old way, where people had to just rely on upper union leadership because they were the only ones who had the information. Whenever we wanted information it had to come from the Postal Record, or from whatever our branch president happened to say if you went to the meetings. That was your only source, and that's where this attitude comes from. But now — thanks to social media, thanks to podcasts, thanks to Reddit and Discord and all these different sources — we have different avenues where we can get information. And you see it in this tentative agreement: if we were still under the old regime, this tentative agreement would pass easily, because all you're getting is the information from Renfroe. And some of it is outright misrepresentation, because he wants his agenda to move forward. But now we've got all these other sources, other people who can analyze that contract, other ways we can read the contract. That gives us all a much stronger voice. It increases our efficacy within the union. And in my personal experience, the good old boys don't like it.

06:42 MALLORY: No, of course not. Why would anybody like it when you challenge their cushy status quo for the betterment of other people?

06:57 ALAN: And that's why I love that there are all these other podcasts and resources coming in. From A to Arbitration — obviously that's the big one, the one everybody listens to. But it's not for everybody. You hear Corey reference that people don't like all the swearing, or how angry he is. Then there's a podcast like mine, which until pretty recently focused almost entirely on education. And there's all these other ones — the Branch 458 podcast, Delivering Solidarity — whatever you like, you can get that information from that source. And now, here with the CCA Corner, these are niches that need to be filled. I think it's fantastic.

07:36 BADMOUTH: And I love that — we all talk to each other a bit, and we're not walking in lockstep, but we're all kind of organically moving in the same direction in different ways. People are getting the same good information, just in a flavor and presentation that appeals to them the most, where they'll actually hear it.

08:05 COLE: I think it all comes down to the fact that, in some way, shape, or form, all of us are motivated to help letter carriers. We want to give back. We want to help educate and unite people — whether that's starting a podcast, helping with a podcast, getting the word out, or just being there for people. All of that's important if we're going to do what's right for everybody. Not just regular carriers, not just everybody who's been here forever and ever — every single city letter carrier who wears blue needs to have basic rights that benefit them. And right now, that's not how things are.

08:51 ALAN: That's exactly right. And you'll notice on these podcasts that we actually cite the ELM, the M-41, the M documents — wherever we're getting this information. There's this knock against social media — now, Facebook is a separate issue — but on the A to Arbitration Reddit page and on these podcasts, we're going directly to the source and spreading the exact primary information, so you don't have this bad misinformation problem. If you go on Facebook and say, hey, I'm a steward and I have this issue, what should I do? — you'll get twenty different answers and none of them are cited. That's a problem. But that's not the problem I'm seeing on podcasts. Podcasts seem to really take care to make sure they're speaking accurately.

09:36 BADMOUTH: Yeah — because the last thing you want to do is spread misinformation in an official form like a podcast and then have to go back and eat your words, issue a public apology, take the episode down, whatever you've got to do.

09:49 ALAN: With that in mind, I'll do that now. One of my first episodes was called "For the CCAs," and I talked about CCAs getting sent to other stations. I read directly from the JCAM about the rules for sending CCAs out, and I said if they send you to another station, they've got to send the least senior person and they have to take volunteers. Turns out that's for going to a separate installation — and installation and station are different. I didn't know that at the time. So, you know, I set the record straight. When people call me with corrections, or when they email me, I really make an effort to get the correct word out there. And I see that happening on other podcasts as well.

10:35 BADMOUTH: We've done that as well. We're three episodes in — we're still smoothing out the kinks, figuring out how to make all this work and what works best for us. It's all a work in progress. But we definitely want to, to the best of our ability, give information that is true and factual and that will benefit everybody, regardless of what pay status you are.

11:06 ALAN: And we're all pulling on that same rope. That's one of the things I find really frustrating: the people who are pushing back — the good old boys — it's like they don't want the rules to be put out there. They don't want that information to be known. Because exactly as Mallory said earlier, they're comfortable in their positions and they're not interested in being challenged.

11:28 BADMOUTH: Yeah. At my branch I've had such a hard time getting anything moving. I've gone to the Dallas branch, I've gone to the Arlington branch — those are great. But at my own branch, I've had to ask my officers six different times for information on how to pass a resolution, and they just want to talk about, "well, what are you trying to pass?" It's like — no, bro, just give me the information so I can bring it to the floor. I end up having to go research it online instead. They don't even like the thought that some new jack coming in might want to try and change something.

12:07 ALAN: That's exactly right, and it's really wild. At my own branch, when I asked my union president, hey, can I get my hands on the bylaws? — he says, "what do you need them for?"

12:18 BADMOUTH: That is just so f***ing frustrating — pardon my language.

12:23 ALAN: No, dude, you're right. And in our bylaws, it's actually required that everybody gets a copy of the bylaws. So it's doubly painful to get that answer.

12:33 COLE: Well, see, if they just don't give them out, no one will know that.

12:36 ALAN: Yeah. And it seems like that is by design.

12:43 MALLORY: It's so unfortunate to hear that, because I am incredibly blessed to be in a very well-functioning, though small, branch — shout out Branch 383, Paducah. My branch president's the GOAT. I'm very happy with all of the people I work with, and I wish that could be the same everywhere. But unfortunately, it is not.

📯 HONK! — skipping ahead in the episode

13:04 ALAN: I'm in Region 1. And I think the NBAs make like $130,000 or $150,000, something like that, and they have staff and RAAs who work for them. If they can't get it done — our union's got plenty of money, they could always hire another person. They really need to be more proactive in their jobs, in my opinion.

13:25 BADMOUTH: One question I had — my main one. All this "this is how it's always been" bulls***, "it is what it is," all of that stuff. I have people in the DFW area that I respect greatly, and they're awesome at their jobs, but they'll even do some of it sometimes. I immediately can feel my heartbeat in my eyes when someone says s*** like that — my blood pressure goes through the roof and I've got to take a deep breath to have a good conversation about it. That's something we talk about a lot on the CCA Corner, because a lot of CCAs are dealing with this "well, I had it bad when I was a CCA, so you've got to have it bad" type of nonsense. One of the things we're trying to do is ingrain in our CCAs this attitude of making sure we leave things better than we found them.

14:27 ALAN: Absolutely.

14:28 BADMOUTH: And another part of that is: how do you upset the apple cart? I can make sure that all the CCAs who come in after me are taken care of by me, right? But what about when we're swimming in the sea of status-quo nonsense? What advice would you give to new jacks who show up and want to upset the status quo and sidestep some of that gatekeeping? I know that's kind of a vague question.

14:58 ALAN: It's a very good question. And my answer is: knowledge is power. If you know what the actual rules are — including the bylaws for your local union, including the NALC Constitution, including management's rules… now, this is a lot for a new person to take in. But if you make it a mission to learn the job, to learn the right way to do things — first, you make yourself untouchable. And two, you can now hold people accountable. Well, maybe that overstates it — it depends on the position you're in. If you're a steward, you can hold management accountable. If you're a rank-and-file member, you're supposed to be able to hold your own union officers accountable, and that's what the bylaws are for. To change the status quo, one of two things is happening: either they're not abiding by the bylaws — which is what's happening in my branch — or you need a change to your bylaws, because you have bad bylaws. There are things in our bylaws I want to see changed so that it empowers the members more, so there are better avenues to hold leadership accountable — whether it's union leadership, or contractual provisions for management. To me, when you're in a leadership position, that's not a privilege. It's a responsibility. And you owe it to the people below you to treat them well and treat them fairly.

16:30 ALAN: Let me give you guys a quick anecdote, by analogy, to make this point. I used to be the commissioner of a fantasy football league — back in the day when you had to do everything by hand, with the sports page. Before I took over the league, the commissioner would win the championship, or be in the championship, pretty much every year — because they had all the information. They knew who was traded to whom, they knew all the free agents, all that stuff. So as soon as I got in, I started putting in rules to level the playing field, to make sure everybody had access to the exact same information I had. And one of the things I'm most proud of in that league: I never won the championship. That's the responsibility of a leader. You're given this privilege to be able to help the most people possible, and that becomes your obligation. That's your duty.

17:22 MALLORY: So I'm the steward of my office and my sister office — there's three offices in my branch — and I've got a grievance in my sister office right now, a past-practice, no-lunch kind of thing. I called all of them yesterday and today and was talking to them about it. Like, listen — I know this doesn't seem like a big deal. But you have to think: I'm not getting any younger, and you're not getting any younger, and there will be people who come after us. Your postmaster and your supervisor are not going to be here forever either. By filing these grievances on things we know we can win, not only are we setting ourselves up for success in the future — we're setting up everyone who comes after us, because they'll already have these settlements and grievances that they can build cases on. That's why it's so important to get involved and make changes. Not only are you making things better for your people now, but there are going to be more CCAs — hopefully not, hopefully more PTFs — but there are going to be more new carriers, and status-quo changes, and even the way we deliver the mail will change. By doing what's right now, we're doing what's right for everybody, both now and in the future.

19:03 ALAN: Absolutely. And that dovetails with a point Badmouth made earlier — this attitude of, "oh well, it sucked for me, so it should suck for you too." No, man — it sucked for me, and I want better for you.

19:14 BADMOUTH: Good job, Mallory.

19:17 MALLORY: It comes down to doing what's right versus what's easy.

📯 HONK! — skipping ahead in the episode

19:26 ALAN: Cool. So — this is from the ELM. I did a whole series on my podcast where I went through the entire ELM and basically condensed it, read the highlights. To do that I had to read the entire ELM cover to cover and take notes — and dude, that was quite a process. But some of the stuff in there was so good, and I want to share some of it with you. This is ELM Section 370, titled Performance Evaluation. 371, Introduction: "Postal Service employees are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that reflects favorably upon the organization and perform their duties in the most efficient manner. Both the supervisor and employee have a mutual responsibility to achieve these goals. When properly used, performance evaluation strengthens the daily supervisor–employee relationship in working toward this end." Okay — performance evaluation. This is like at any other job, where you get quarterly evaluations and they sit you down and tell you how you're doing. This section is also used as a bludgeon on carriers when they're getting disciplined — "employees are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that reflects favorably on the organization." Management will use that in discipline: what you did didn't reflect favorably. So that's part one — there's this tool, performance evaluation, and it's supposed to be used.

20:56 ALAN: All right — 372, Sound Supervision: "The principles of sound supervision require that supervisors evaluate employee performance daily. Supervisors should counsel and instruct their employees as necessary, giving attention to evidence of good performance as well as to areas where the employees need improvement." When is the last time your supervisor told you you're doing a good job? Tell me.

21:29 BADMOUTH: I've never f***ing heard it.

21:37 MALLORY: I read it on my Christmas card — but that's the first I'd heard it in a long time. Occasionally they say "I appreciate you," but it's very few and far between.

21:45 COLE: "You're doing great. You're doing so good. I'm so proud." When do I get that?

21:51 BADMOUTH: At a stand-up talk, they'll say "thank you for coming in" — before they bitch the whole floor out for something stupid.

21:56 ALAN: That's exactly right. And so this is something that's citable. Even if you're not a steward, you can still show this to your supervisor — that's ELM Section 372 — and be like, hey man, what about this? There's another provision I didn't pull up for this, about qualitative step increases — and I would bet your supervisor's never even heard of it. If you have CCAs or low-step full-time regulars at your station who are just ass-kickers — they deliver the mail fast and do a great job — they can actually get step increases ahead of schedule as a reward for doing a good job. The supervisor just has to put them in for it.

22:38 BADMOUTH: Holy s***. I've never heard that.

22:42 ALAN: Yeah — a qualitative step increase. And it's never used. There are all these attaboys that are never used. There's a whole section of the ELM about awards — getting cash awards and prizes and event tickets and stuff like that for doing a good job. When I brought that up to my station manager, he laughed. He's like, oh, I could never get approval for this. And I said, well, it's in the ELM. And he says, oh, we don't have the budget for it. And I said, dude — a certificate costs like three dollars. I will give you three dollars to do a certificate. And of course, it never happened.

23:17 MALLORY: I see the cars they drive. They aren't out of money.

23:22 COLE: It'd be funny to print those out and just tape them above the urinals in the bathroom.

23:28 BADMOUTH: Just hide them around the office. I mean, at the post office I've realized that the reward for super hard work — if you're the best at digging ditches, the only reward they're going to give you is a bigger shovel.

23:41 MALLORY: I had no idea there was a carrot to go with the stick. The most I've ever gotten — I got this certificate for submitting a lead on my scanner, that was like a five- or six-thousand-dollar lead for that business and the Post Office.

24:05 ALAN: Nice. All right — I know this is going out on audio, so since you guys can't see: Mallory held up this certificate of appreciation. "Leading Together," with a capital L. Certificate of appreciation, presented to Mallory Sutton in recognition of their support of the Leading Together program. Thank you for helping generate new revenue to ensure the future of the Postal Service.

24:29 MALLORY: And it wasn't even signed by the MPOO. The district manager and the customer relations manager signed it — but not the MPOO. I could talk about our MPOO… so let's just not.

24:43 ALAN: Right. So in my station, once I had that disagreement with my station manager about awards — we have this custodian at our station. His name's Rob, and he is phenomenal. The dude completely turned our station around. He does all these little projects — an absolutely amazing custodian. And I brought up, like, dude, at least give Rob an award. That guy is rebuilding our station from the ground up. Nothing. So I went out with my own money and bought a trophy. It was intended to be a fantasy-football-league trophy for the last-place team — it had a little garbage can on top — but I repurposed it and put on there "Custodian of the Year." At one of our morning stand-ups I gave a little speech and presented Rob with his Custodian of the Year award. And he loved it. He built a little mantle in his office to put it up on. It cost me like forty bucks — and it was so good for morale. This is where management is failing. They could so easily do stuff like that, and they just don't.

25:49 MALLORY: There's supposed to be a carrot and a stick. But with them, it's all stick.

25:53 ALAN: That is exactly right — and that's why I wanted to read from the ELM, because the carrot is in the ELM. They're supposed to actually look at how you're performing, what you're doing. This idea in 372 is sound supervision — "you need to go faster" is not sound supervision. That's not instructional, not corrective, not anything useful.

26:17 BADMOUTH: Send me those cites, by the way, so I can put them on this episode.

26:22 ALAN: Yeah, I can do that. Then 373, Performance Evaluation Systems. 373.1: "Postal Service Headquarters prescribes formal evaluation systems for a variety of purposes. A formal evaluation consists of defined standards of performance, instructions for establishing a measure of where an employee fits within the standards, and a form to record information." This is really why I bring all this up: when management tries to tell you that you're not doing a good job, that you need to go faster, that they're not happy with your performance — they're supposed to be doing this. They're supposed to be documenting what's going on, what steps you need to take to improve, talking with you about the ways you need to improve. And management doesn't do any of that stuff. Then 373.2, Informal Evaluation: "Informal evaluation is based on the supervisor's day-to-day observation and is characterized by the absence of forms and instructions. The supervisor should make use of available human resources and give personal encouragement and guidance as a part of his or her daily practice. These practices must be a part of a continuous formal and informal process." So — is "you need to go faster" personal encouragement? No. They're failing in this basic obligation. And this is what gets CCAs tripped up, in my opinion: management will lean on them — hey, if you don't get this mail done by five o'clock, you're going to get disciplined. Because of provisions like this, that discipline would not stand, because management's not doing their part. CCAs don't have to fear that kind of discipline.

28:11 BADMOUTH: That's perfect. One of my coworkers came up to me after they were divvying up the handoffs, and he said — I'm not going to use my manager's name — "I asked which CCAs we had here, and he didn't say your name. And I said, well, what about Morris? And he said, oh, he doesn't count." And the reason I don't count is because I know the rules. I hand in a 3996, and I'm not going to skip my breaks. That's what we're trying to give all our CCAs. Thank you so much for that, Alan.

28:52 ALAN: Well, I've got one more on here — but it needs a caveat. And all of this is caveated with: management controls your schedule. So there is always the fear that even if they can't issue you a letter of warning or a seven-day suspension, they can stop scheduling you. That's where you need that strong union representation to step in and be like, hey, this is not right — and at least lean on management not to do that. Because that's really the ultimate retaliation tool management has. Have any of you guys experienced that as a CCA?

29:23 MALLORY: Yes. I was a CCA for four years — we can get into that if you want — but basically, I transferred twice. I transferred back to the office I started at, and we hired another CCA below me. Well — I took my time. I wasn't rushing on the street, I wasn't a runner, none of that. Because of that, I wasn't as fast. And I'm not going to bust my ass for a company that's going to treat me like dog s*** anyway. But the other CCA was just a little bit faster. So what they ended up doing — they said, well, we're going to equalize your hours, but we're going to have her do the full-time route on its scheduled day off, and we'll just give you a handoff from that to make you equal. When I first started at this office, I didn't get that at all — I was bottom of the totem pole. And that's not to say that because it was that way when I started, it should be that way for anyone else — it shouldn't. But it was just an example of how management was screwing me over for the purposes of numbers, just being s***ty, because I wasn't "fast enough," quote-unquote. And they said they would equalize us — it never ended up equalized. It was never how it should have been, in my opinion. And that's not to say I didn't want the other carrier to have hours. I did. I just didn't like the way management was handling things. It seemed unfair, because they claimed to equalize but did not.

31:33 ALAN: Right. And that's one of those things where there's not really a contractual remedy for it — but a proactive union can sit down with management as equals and be like, hey, what's going on here? What can we do to make this situation better? My approach to management is always: look, you're cutting this person down to this many hours per week — are we trying to get rid of them? Because we've got another carrier who we're working sixty hours a week, and they don't want those hours. If you keep going this way, you're going to wind up losing both of those carriers, and that doesn't benefit anybody. Sometimes talking sense works. Sometimes it doesn't.

32:09 ALAN: All right, the last item on here. 374, Discussing Performance with Employees: "The supervisor must discuss job performance with each employee. If the employee's performance is unsatisfactory, the supervisor suggests constructive measures for an employee to follow to improve his or her performance to a satisfactory level." This is the defense I would use against any discipline any CCA gets for not performing to expectations. Well — did you sit them down? Did you give them suggestions? Because again, "just go faster" — that's not a suggestion.

32:47 BADMOUTH: That saved my ass once, and I didn't even know it.

32:50 ALAN: I call it the Homer Simpson defense: "It's my first day." It'll always work once.

32:59 BADMOUTH: Yeah — it does work. And one thing that's come up in the CCA Corner channel, and on Reddit, is people talking about how they'll do these stand-up talks and then pass around a piece of paper they want everyone to sign, and then they'll call that a "training." I tell people: do not sign that s***. Don't sign it. That's not an official document. What did they say in that stand-up talk that had any substance? Did they give you a printout of what was talked about? Because they're going to use that to jam you up later. And the other thing I wanted to bring in — you talked about how management's big move is icing you out of hours. One of the episodes we have coming up is going to be about mini-bids. Outside my ninety days — and I've got a year and eight months in at this point — I have been on a hold-down all but maybe four days of that time. So they haven't been able to ice me out. And one of the other tricks: when they loan you out to other stations, make a good relationship with the supervisor there — because if your station's icing you out, you might be able to call them up and hustle to get work. Is there any other advice like that off the top of your head?

34:27 ALAN: That's the number-one advice — you nailed it exactly. When I have CCAs who are worried about the hours they're getting, the number-one thing I tell them is: you have to get an opt. You have to do a hold-down and get yourself a vacant route. Now, you may have provisions in your local agreement about how opting is supposed to be handled — you probably do. But the national agreement says carriers can learn about opts or vacancies by word of mouth. In our local, there's a provision that opts are supposed to be posted and advertised. But if a carrier is going to go out on medical or something, as a steward I don't necessarily know that. If that carrier pulls you aside as a CCA and says, hey, I'm going to be out on medical for like three months and I'd really like you to carry my route — that's perfectly valid contractually. If you put in a valid opt, unless there's something specifically against it in your local, that opt should be accepted. So don't just rely on who's on the vacation board next week. Keep your ears open. Somebody goes on a detail and they're working in Washington, D.C. for the next three months? Their route's available for opt, and that's not on the vacation board. If you don't have a diligent steward, even vacation bids get missed sometimes, or when people bid to other stations. There are all kinds of ways you can get opts if you just hustle.

35:58 ALAN: I'll tell you another one. If you have vacation-relief or reserve carriers — a full-time regular without their own assignment — they are at the top of the list when it comes to opting. But when they opt onto a route, their reserve assignment is now available, and it comes with its own regular schedule. So — "oh no, I just got beat out for this three-month assignment by the vacation relief." Well, now you can opt on the vacation-relief spot, and at least you have a regular schedule for the next three months, even if you don't have a route.

36:18 BADMOUTH: Oh, no s***. That's awesome.

36:32 MALLORY: Another thing we should write down to hit at some point: when I first started in my office — one full-time regular route, one three-hour aux route, and there was already a PTF. So as the CCA I was only working Saturdays and getting pimped out to other offices. I kept getting sent to an office thirty minutes away because they were understaffed. Eventually I was like, you know what? What would I have to do to just come here — to just be an employee here? Because I'm not getting enough hours, and I'd like to transfer. And eventually, I just transferred. CCAs can just transfer.

37:13 ALAN: Yeah, it's true. You just need permission from both installation heads — and they can't unreasonably deny you. That's one of those things where there's no harm in asking, because the worst they're going to tell you is no. And if they tell you no, you're in the same position you were in before.

37:31 BADMOUTH: That's all awesome — I've already been taking a s***-ton of notes. So let me ask you this. Give me your opinion on the way CCAs are being treated now, how things can change, how you would like to see things change, and what kind of things should change.

38:01 ALAN: So, to me — CCAs need to be empowered. Even within the first ninety days. This, to me, is a prime example: when you're in your first ninety days, the union is not supposed to be able to file a grievance if you get fired. But every other part of the grievance procedure is open to CCAs. It's not like in the first ninety days management can just do anything. The only thing they can do without a grievance is fire you — and even that, sometimes the union can still file a grievance and get you your job back. So right from the beginning, CCAs have all the same rights as any other carrier. Another good example is the hours you work: a CCA is limited to eleven and a half hours in a day, all year long. That's the limit in management's handbook — I think it's in the ELM, actually. So there are no fourteen-hour, sixteen-hour days. Those are contractual violations. And I'll tell you — you're supposed to obey now and grieve later, and I get that. But in my own experience, and from talking to stewards around the country: if you are coming up on that eleven and a half hours and you're like, dude, I'm exhausted, I can't keep going, I'm going home — and management tries to instruct you to keep delivering — if they try to issue discipline for failure to follow that instruction, there's no way that discipline can stand. Because A, they're openly violating the contract, and B, you're citing a legitimate safety issue. There's a reason those limits are in place.

39:35 BADMOUTH: There was also an NLRB case about that — where the National Labor Relations Board said, nah, you can't do that, fam.

39:48 ALAN: Right, exactly. And so management preys on CCAs' ignorance. They prey on everybody's ignorance — and in many cases, management is just as ignorant. I can't tell you how many times I've brought these rules to management and they had no idea the rules existed either. Because just like management never gives you the time to read the M-41, their bosses never give them the time to read the ELM. And so if there's going to be an information imbalance, you want it to be in your favor as a carrier. And that's really easy to do — it starts with the M-41. To me, as a CCA, the number-one thing you can do — number one is opt, obviously. But then number two: read the M-41 and learn the proper ways to do the job. Let's say you're really afraid of management continuing to say "you need to go faster," so you start taking shortcuts — maybe you're not curbing your wheels in your truck and setting the brake. If management comes out, they can say "you need to go faster" — but what useful advice are they going to give you? Whereas if they come out and see that your wheels aren't curbed and you're doing safety violations, you're going to get discipline for that, guaranteed. Knowing the right way to do the job, knowing what your rights are — that turns the balance of power in your favor. And to me, that's the path forward for CCAs.

41:13 ALAN: I'll wrap up here. It used to be: there was the four-day Carrier Academy, then three days of on-the-job instruction, and then that's it. The next time there's instruction of any kind is never. That was all the training for your entire career. But now, with all these resources — with Classes of Mail, with From A to Arbitration, with the CCA Corner, and the list goes on and on — the resources are available to make you more empowered in your career. All you've got to do is use them.

41:45 BADMOUTH: Well said. No better place to wrap up than that.

41:52 COLE: Yeah — I don't want to follow that.

41:56 BADMOUTH: Well, Alan, I really appreciate you.

42:00 ALAN: It's been a real pleasure. I love seeing what you guys are doing — I think it's incredibly important, and you have my full support. It was a great pleasure being on with you guys.

42:10 BADMOUTH: Thank you, man. And if there's anything we can ever do for you, you know where to find us.

42:16 ALAN: I appreciate that. We've all got to stick together on our path toward unity and solidarity.

42:28 MALLORY: Well, I guess that's it for us. We'll have another episode coming out here soon — we usually record and have episodes out every other Wednesday, if not every Wednesday. Keep an eye out for more episodes from us. You know where you can find us: on Discord and on Reddit, you can send us an email, or you can go to fromatoarbitration.com. Alan, where can people find you?

42:56 ALAN: Classes of Mail is the name of my podcast. You can also email me — classesofmail@gmail.com — and I'm on every social media as just Alan Gegax. And I accept messages from strangers.

43:11 BADMOUTH: Sounds good. All right — we'll catch you guys next time. Solidarity forever, guys.