Article 29 - Revocation of Driving Priveledges

Management may suspend or revoke a carrier’s driving privileges under certain specified circumstances:

• Automatically, concurrently with the suspension or revocation of the employee’s state driver’s license. Automatic reinstatement of postal driving privileges must follow reinstatement of the state driver’s license.
• Temporarily following a vehicle accident, in which case “a full review of the accident will be made as soon as possible, but not later than fourteen days, and the employee’s driving privileges must either be reinstated, suspended for a specified period of time not to exceed sixty days, or revoked as warranted” (Memorandum, paragraph 3).
• Where management can demonstrate that “the on-duty record shows that the employee is an unsafe driver” (Article 29, paragraph 1).
 

Every reasonable effort to reassign. Even if a revocation or suspension of a letter carriers driving privileges is proper, Article 29 provides that, “every reasonable effort will be made to reassign the employee in non-driving duties in the employee’s craft or other crafts.” This requirement is not contingent upon a letter carrier making a request for nondriving duties. Rather, it is management’s responsibility to seek to find suitable work.

National Arbitrator Snow held in I94N-4I-D 96027608, April 8, 1998 (C-18159), that management may not reassign an employee to temporary non-driving duties in another craft if doing so would result in a violation of other craft’s agreement. If it is not possible to accommodate temporary cross-craft assignments in a way that does not violate another craft’s agreement, a letter carrier who is deprived of the right to an otherwise available temporary cross-craft assignment to a position in another craft must be placed on leave with pay until such time as he may return to work without violating either unions’ agreement. In accordance with Arbitrator Snow’s award, in situations where city letter carriers temporarily lose driving privileges, the following applies:

• Management should first attempt to provide non-driving city letter carrier craft duties within the installation on the carrier’s regularly scheduled days and hours of work. If sufficient carrier craft work is unavailable on those days and hours, an attempt should be made to place the employee in carrier craft duties on other hours and days, anywhere within the installation.
• If sufficient work is still unavailable, a further attempt should be made to identify work assignments in other crafts, as long as placement of carriers in that work would not be to the detriment of employees of that other craft.
• If there is such available work in another craft, but the carrier may not perform that work in light of the Snow award, the carrier must be paid for the time that the carrier otherwise would have performed that work.