STAFFING & BYPASSED ROUTES

By Bill Pick, Maintenance Craft Director

Another factor that can have an impact on maintenance craft staffing is preventive routes completion and bypass rates.  If you have any questions regarding these issues, seek the counsel of a Union steward; they can get you the info needed.  One thing you should never do is pencil whip the routes.

Section 531.1., of the MS-63, the Maintenance Operations Support Handbook states: ". . . Routes must be accomplished within the retention period as defined in Exhibit 531.2.  After the retention period, no attempt should be made to perform the route since it will be automatically bypassed."

Below are the retention period of routes.  Daily and weekly routes have no retention period, they expire on the due date and should be bypassed if not completed as scheduled.  The automatic bypass of the VMARS system is suspect and seems to allow for a fudge factor.  Be wary.

Frequency        Retention (in days)

B - Biweekly            5

M - Monthly            14

C - Bimonthly         21

Q - Quarterly          42

S - Semi Annual       42

A - Annual               90

The following are the bypass codes to be used if the route cannot be completed in the time frame allowed.  Contrary to management's opinion there should hardly ever be a code 9 used except for possibly a daily route over a three day weekend.

PM Bypass Codes    Description

        1                    Non-Availability of Resources (not enough manpower)

        7                    Operational Requirements

        8                    Equipment Down Due to Maintenance

        9                    Equipment Not Operational Since Last Scheduled Maintenance

Section 666.51 of the Employee Labor Relations Manual (ELM) states: "Employees must obey the instructions of their supervisors.  If an employee has reason to question the propriety of a supervisor's order, the individual will nevertheless carry out the order and immediately file a protest in writing to the official in charge of the installation, or appeal through official channels."

If management instructs you to bypass the preventive maintenance routes with a code 9 (the machine has not run since the last route was performed) and you know this to be false, you need to request to see a shop steward to grieve that management is instructing you to falsify records.  You will need to make a copy of your completed employee assignment worksheet, and get copies of the machine's end of run reports to support the fact it was run after the last route was completed on that machine.

DO NOT LET MANAGEMENT INTIMIDATE YOU INTO FALSIFYING RECORDS!

If you are issued work in excess of 7.3 hours and not instructed to complete tasks on overtime, but management tells you to do a little on each route, you need to ask your supervisor for clarification on what part of the routes management wants completed.  Make management earn their keep, put them on the spot, it's maintenance craft positions that are lost because of nonsense like this.

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Last modified: July 13, 2007