USPSNEWS@WORK
Open Season — Make it work for you
and your family!
Open season is underway for the following benefits:
• Federal Employees Dental and Vision.
• Federal Employees Health Benefits.
• Annual Leave Exchange Program.
• Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Thrift Savings Plan.
Now is your chance to make any changes to your health
benefits plans using PostalEASE. Just go to blue.usps.gov. Under "Essential Links," click on PostalEASE.
And this time, you can add new vision and dental
insurance coverage to your benefits baskets for 2007. Ten
providers are offering vision and dental plans during the
current Dental and Vision Open Season, which ends
Dec. 11, 2006. Look for a guide with details and costs in the
mail. In the meantime, to learn more about the plans, go to www.opm.gov/insure/DentalVision/faq.asp#b
Southern Maine PDC officially opens
The new Southern Maine Processing and Distribution
Center (PDC) in Scarborough, ME, officially opened its
doors recently. At 429,000 square feet, the facility has room
aplenty for the most state-of-the-art sorting and processing
equipment available.
There's an Automated Package Processing System and
the new DIOSS-D (Delivery Input Output Sub System-D)
for sorting mail. Add a Universal Sorter that can dispatch
bundles, parcels, sacks, trays or tubs into rolling stock or
onto conveyors. Top it off with an Integrated Dispatch and
Receipt System, which consists of overhead conveyors, inline scales, airline assignment, sleevers, de-sleevers and
de-tubbers all working together to simplify and condense
mail dispatch, and you've got the makings of a truly great
mail processing facility.
A large group of employees and customers helped celebrate the grand opening of the new building, warmly greeting Postmaster General Jack Potter, Northeast Area
Operations Vice President Megan Brennan and Maine District Manager Julius Locklear.
Customers buzzing about Free Package
Pickup
 Small businesses
are buzzing about
Free Package Pickup from the Postal
Service. So much so
that they helped
make October the
biggest month ever
for Carrier Pickup
requests - more
than 300,000 of
them - for nearly
3 million packages.
"Business customers are responding to our new fall advertising campaign and going online to try Free Package
Pickup," said Manager of Advertising and Promotion Rod
Devar. "In October we rolled out new television and radio
ads and sent out 10 million direct mail postcards featuring
Dilbert to small businesses, highlighting the benefits of
Free Package Pickup. The response has been fantastic."
Online shipping wins easy acceptance
The Postal Service has launched a new PC Postage
feature - Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice
(SCAN) - that lets online shippers, and their customers,
know their packages have been picked up and are on their
way.
Now when customers go online to ship packages, they
have the option to create PS Form 5630, Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice, at the end of the transaction.
This form has one barcode that links all of the packages in
the shipment to it. Every package in the shipment receives
an "Acceptance" event from the Post Office.
The "Package Accepted Event" is important to online
shippers because it triggers the release of funds associated
with auctions on sites such as eBay, as well as confirming
to customers that their shipments have entered our network. This holiday season, SCAN is saving time and money
for our customers - and the Postal Service.
For more information about SCAN go to http://blue.usps.gov/marketing/packageservices.
Colorado Springs, CO, PDC shows
support for the troops
Colorado Springs, CO, PDC employees
Jerry Kent, left, Sherry Blood, Fred
Harris, Sue Boyer and Katie Kolln show
their colors to support the troops in Iraq.
Colorado Springs,
CO, is the of Ft.
Carson, a major point of
departure for U.S. troops
on their way to Iraq.
So no one should be
surprised that Postal
Service employees at the
local PDC are outspokenly united about their
support for the military.
To demonstrate their loyalty, they wear red every Friday. "On Fridays, it is not uncommon to walk the workroom floor and see a sea of red,"
reports Plant Manager Secretary Jan Whitney.
The fashion statement was the creation of Whitney and
Clerk Katie Kolln. "We have a lot of employees who are veterans," Whitney said. "We wanted to do something to show
we care about them."
The plant will be mailing signed posters of the red-clad
employees to the Ft. Carson units deployed in Iraq.
USPS Light-Truck technicians compete
for skills prize
 Nashville, TN, VMF Technician
Geoffrey Farmer rolled to victory
at the Light-Truck skills competition
in Norman, OK.
"Gentlemen, fix your
engines" was the unspoken command at the
Light-Truck Technician
fleet skills competition.
Nashville, TN, Technician Geoffrey Farmer
answered the call, winning the inaugural
competition.
The contest - conducted last month by the
USPS National Center
for Employee Development (NCED) - was
open to technicians at
USPS Vehicle Maintenance Facilities who
maintain the Postal Service's 200,000-vehicle fleet.
Farmer's first-place finish wasn't easy. He was closely
pursued by Frank Zupan from Pittsburgh, PA, and Michael
Martin from Memphis, TN. Martin also was a finalist in last
summer's Heavy-Truck competition, another NCED-sponsored event.
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