Word: postally
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Just a month ago, when a similar threat loomed, the Administration applied intense pressure and the problem seemed settled. After 17 weeks of talks, negotiators for the U.S. Postal Service and three postal unions announced tentative agreement on a new three-year contract. The two key compromises: the Postal Service abandoned its effort to abolish a contract's ban on layoffs; the unions accepted relatively moderate pay and cost-of-living increases of 19.5% stretched over three years. It was the only major union contract this year to be settled on such mild terms, and Administration officials hailed...
...bureaucracy is now trying to teach itself better manners. The autodidactic exercise began after West Germany's Postal Minister, Kurt Gscheidle, suffered a frustrating run-in with his own employees while trying to buy stamps. Gscheidle was treated so rudely that he vowed to bring about a change. He ordered the post office, West Germany's biggest federal employer (480,000 workers), to start three-day courses in better behavior for its counter clerks. Among the lessons: no grimacing or staring; keep a "friendly, open facial expression"; "nod your head to show approval and consent"; avoid...
...public response to this onslaught of civility in the civil service has been mild astonishment-and gratitude. One woman, flabbergasted as a solicitous postal employee repacked a badly parceled piece of mail, could only stammer, "Danke, danke." In Bavaria, a local department store took Behörde und Bürger to heart and started its own courtesy campaign. The wave of Teutonic tact even seems to be paying dividends for the civil servants. Says one graduate of the postal service deportment course: "Somehow, I feel much less insecure...
...Jimmy Carter thought that that would soothe A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, he was mistaken. Meany grumbled that the 6½% postal workers' settlement, rightly hailed by the Administration as an example of wage moderation, had been too low-and on hearing that, Carter flew into a rare rage. At a press conference, Marshall said that Meany's remarks had "personally disturbed" the President and that his stand could lead to "more inflationary demands." Meany's response was immediate: "I've called it as I saw it. I don't intend to change...
Last week, the Brennans were told that the federal court of appeals had denied a stay, and they sadly closed. Mrs. Brennan will make a final appeal to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, but a reversal seems unlikely. The last Postal Service competitor who tried to deliver first-class mail, in Pittsburg, Kans., was forced out of business in March, when the Supreme Court denied a rehearing...