Mail Handlers President Diane Libby Discusses Challenges Facing Workers at Hampden Mail Distribution Center

This past March Diane Libby was elected as interim President of the National Postal Mail Handlers (NPMH) Branch 205, succeeding former President Jeff Anderson at the Eastern Maine Mail Processing and Distribution (P&D) Center in Hampden. But Libby isn’t new to the job, having previously served for six years as the local’s president.

“Jeff and I kind of kind of hand it off to each other once one of us gets burned out in the position,” she says. “So after he told me he was thinking about resigning in February, I put my name in and I was elected by the executive council as interim president until the next election.”

Libby did not originally envision a career in the postal service. She grew up in Massachusetts and came to Maine in the 1990s to attend Husson College in Bangor. She first began working for the postal service as a Christmas casual letter carrier in Portland in 1997 and started as a career employee in 2001. She then decided to transfer to a supervisory position at the Hampden P&D facility. She describes the letter carrier position as "the most difficult job in the postal service." She had developed cold-induced asthma, which prevented her from being able to carry when it was below freezing.

But after working as a supervisor, she got burned out and decided the pay wasn’t worth it for the headaches. In 2011, Libby became a craft worker at the Hampden facility and then became a steward.

“I think it was management that actually pushed me towards the Union really,” she said. “They have their favorites and if you're not their favorite, you’re a target. It was like, ‘Well if you guys are going to come at me anyway I might as well join the Union so I have some way to fight back.’”

NPMH Branch 205 includes 54 members, comprising the entire workforce of eligible union members at the facility. It’s not easy to organize 100 percent of workers in a federal workplace to join a union since paying dues is optional in the federal sector, but Libby says it helps to have toxic management.

“We’ll have people come in and join the union, but unfortunately a lot of them don’t last because of the hostile work environment,” she said. “It's like nothing you've ever experienced if you haven't worked for the postal service.”

Libby said that a combination of bullying, harassment, favoritism and intimidation by supervisors is a major problem at the facility. She is currently handling grievance over a supervisor acting inappropriately.

“We have a couple of hotheads that come in there and that's what causes the problem," she said. "They were hotheads as employees, but because nobody else raised their hands to take the supervisory positions, they got the promotion and then they continue to be like that."

Over the years, mail handlers in Hampden have also faced the threat of layoffs as the USPS has attempted to merge processing with the other distribution facility in Scarborough. Fortunately postal workers and the labor movement have worked closely with our Congregational delegation to strongly oppose such efforts, most recently pressuring the USPS to cancel a merger plan last year.

Currently, the Mail Handlers are pushing back on management's move to shift schedules. The new policy creates a “zero day,” which means that all of the mail that is picked up from mail carriers and post offices on a certain day will not be stamped with the date until the next day.

“Their intent is to actually have it so that the mail sits at the post offices overnight, so truck drivers will pick up the mail in the morning,” said Libby.

Typically, when mail comes off the trucks,  mail handlers between 5pm and 9pm bring it in and separate it into different work areas or different containers to be shipped to southern Maine. The new policy shifts those hours to a 3am to 9am schedule.

“The whole schedule is going to be changed for those mail handlers and they may not even be able to bid those jobs back,” said Libby. “Everything would have to be reposted and it would go by seniority at that point.”

The Mail Handlers are also opposing management’s plan to move mid-afternoon  to late night shifts to run from the early morning to late morning. In April, the Mail Handlers brought up the issue to Senator Susan Collins after tax filings that arrived on the Tax Day deadline of April 15 were not postmarked until April 16. Currently, NPMH is in national negotiations for a new contract with USPS. Like other postal unions, the union is focused on raising pay and eliminating a two tier system imposed by an arbitrator that divides workers into two separate pay scales.

As far as advice for young members, Libby says, “Be involved from the get-go. A union is only as strong as its membership.”