Welcome to the first of many articles covering the consolidated casing experience at the Gahanna station. If you’re unfamiliar with the consolidated casing (also known as 6 in 1), it’s a “new” test by the Postal Service. This test hopes to capture under utilized space in delivery units. That’s the line the carriers are given by management. I call bullshit. It’s another failed test that was attempted 20+ years ago that they (the USPS management) are resurrecting. It was also attempted again in 2011. Apparently postal management believes that if they keep shoving this stuff down our throats eventually it’ll succeed.

I’ll break the whole thing down very simply. For a more detailed explanation, NALC Director of City Delivery explains it here. Six routes will be put up by one carrier. While everyone else gets to spend their time on the street. Of course, instead of doing the right thing and base the caser position on seniority or through in-office bidding, the position will be filled by the carrier whose route is “center” to other routes to be cased. Gahanna is a fairly high seniority station, so it’s quite possible we’ll have 50+ year old carriers spending 8-10 hours just delivering while some of younger carriers will be in the office most of the day (until they carry their 2-4 hours). I’m sure anyone of minimal intelligence can see how this is going to work. Injuries will be on the rise, sick calls, overtime, etc.

Start times will be another issue. Casers could come in as early as 5am, while streeters (those who aren’t fortunate enough to have a “center” route) will start in two waves. The first wave will be 8am (awesome, earlier than we are now), and the second wave will start at 9am (damn, later than we are now). Customer service is what we promote right?

Here’s the early service talk.

So, until this fiasco comes to and end, be sure to come back and see what else happens.

And here it comes...

"We don't know"