I am baffled by this story. Why is Town Watch at all involved in this affair on behalf of postal workers who were drinking on the job, not attending to their duties, and perhaps even being a danger to the community it they were impaired by drinking?

If neighbors wish to petition on behalf of the mailmen that is fine, but in my view the Town Watch image is tarnished by this particular activism?

I am all for second chances.. But it's not like they only drank one afternoon, it's been continuous. Many days in that bar drinking. And then DRIVE...Putting everyone in their path at risk. That's the worse part to me.

If they were involved in an accident, and someone was injured or killed, the postal service would never hear the end of it, and be held responsible for allowing it to happen. FIRE them.

We should all be allowed to drink, drive, and do our jobs, especially federal employees.

They were being paid well to do a job. They broke the law, they were not doing their job, and they put the public in harms way. They do not deserve a second chance. They are adults and know what is right and what is wrong. The Postal Service and the Union Reps need to let these guys go. It sends the wrong message.

The Union Reps have to defend all letter carriers if not then unfair labor practice laor charges could be brought against them. The charge would be non representation which could cost the local Union officials fines and jail time.

Yupp, got to defend the unexecusable. Frankly, as a member of the NALC I find these guys to be guilty, and in need of termination. There is no excuse for bringing shame and dishonor upon the hard working honest letter carriers that work hard and provide honest service to postal patrons. All of these guys knew exactly what they were doing. The know that drinking and driving is illegal on or off the job. They endangered everyone with their behavior to begin with, and in addition commited a crime in falsifying scan reports to cover thier consumption of booze while on duty and in uniform. Shred the petitions, give them due process and fire them.

The union has a responsiblity to defend these members but if and when it goes to arbitration these guys will be back working. The system is broken, I personally have seen where arbitrations have given thieves their job back because the amount they stole was considered insignificant. I have seen where carriers that have lost their licenses have been kept in the carrier craft and management had to drive the employees to their park and loop points as per union settlements. Management can't even put carriers in the clerk craft while their licenses are pulled. Unions still serve a good and useful purpose but the field is stacked in the unions favor. The employees can go through the grievance procedure, if that is not working out they can file an EEO in conjunction with their grievance and at a certain level they can opt to go the MSP route. Management basically does a lousy job at step 1 & 2 and the UMPS process is a joke the union eats managements lunch 9 times out of ten. Supervisors and managers have to do their daily job and on top of that they have to do the step 1 and 2's and for the most part they don't have the time or the necessary information to do a good job at each level. The union rep is allowed to have paid time to gather facts and put together his or her case. I feel sorry for the good letter carriers and clerks that get tarred by the unprofessional and poor employees who manage to keep their jobs because of the lop sided labor management system.

This is stupid, the NALC refuses to fight for members in situations where they've won grievances in the past and will win again, but they'll waste time ,money and energy for these BUMS. I left the NALC after 17 years and do not regret it.

The Union officials are sworn to uphold the contract, the swearing in as an official of the Union does not entitle nor require a person to be a perpitrators criminal defense attorney. These people broke the law. There is a big difference in union members breaking the law and management violating the contract. If management violated the contract based on what they did to the carriers then fine, otherwise the Union is not obligated to represent anyone!!!!

What if these were cops on thier local beat? Or Ambulance drivers?
C'mon people....lets act like adults, if they ran over a kid playing in the street what would you be saying?

The postal Service needs a good cleansing... They need to get rid of the bums and show appreciation for the good employees. They also need to get real management skills and stop promoting the flunkees.

THIS IS A NO BRAINER ... THESE MEN BROKE ALL THE RULES ... OF COURSE, THEY SHOULD BE FIRED AND APWU HAS NO BUSINESS WASTING OUR TIME AND MONEY REPRESENTING THEM BUT IT DOESN'T SURPRISE ME AT ALL. I AM NOT A DRUNK OR A LIAR AND I CAN NOT EVEN GET APWU TO FILE A LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE ON MY BEHALF. AGAIN, THIS IS WHY USPS IS IN THE SHAPE IT IS IN AND APWU IS GOING DOWN THE TOILET. LET THESE THIEVES GO PLEASE AND WASTE NO TIME DOING IT!!!

SHAME ON THE UNION. THEY SHOULD NOT FILE GRIEVANCE ON BEHALF OF THEM. CUSTOMERS ON THESE TWO ROUTES HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED AND CONSIDER THEY ARE DOING AN HONORABLE DEED FOR THEIR LIVEHOOD AND FAMILY. IT IS ALL B.S. ONCE YOU BREAK THE LAW, YOU HAVE TO SUFFER WHATEVER CONSEQUENCES THAT MIGHT HAVE COME TO YOU. WISCONSIN IS DOING THE RIGHT THING TO STRIP AWAY THEIR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHT.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IF they have any smarts they will RETIRE OR RESIGN,there isn't any arbitrators in this country that would give them a second chance.They were STEALING TIME AND MONEY,FALSIFING US POSTAL DOCUMENTS,NO WAY WILL YOU GET THE POSTAL SERVICE TO PUT THEM BACK TO WORK. THEY LET ALL THEIR PATRONS DOWN AND THEIR FELLOW EMPLOYEES,THEY ARE HISTORY...

If they allow these lowlifes to get their jobs back, then everybody else will be able to walk into a bar and have a few drinks and then say if they are caught, "well, we deserve a second chance just like the three letter carriers in philadelphia did."

Talk about being caught with your pants down - the reason FOX 29 was able to get these guys dirty was this wasn't the first time they were drinking on duty (my assumption). It makes me wonder about the amount and quality of street supervision in this office - this story is about sloppy management along with employee misdeeds. Too bad it had to make it on television - most employees don't do this crap.

All of these people who want them back are probably the ones who always complain about rate increases, yet they want to pay these losers to sit in the bar for hours a drink/ Then they go out and put peoples lives at risk.

This is just a formallity. Unions have to file a grievance in any potential termination case to protect themselves from being sued by the Union Member for lack of or failure to provide representation. Members pay Union Dues to get representation, if the Union fails to provide it, the Union can be sued for failing to provide the services the member paid for. Breach Of Contract.

Isn't it strange how Fox Murdoch is always playing 'gotcha' with working people? They talk about class warfare but they are pitting the Wal-Mart worker against the Mailman, because they want all workers to have Wal-Mart salaries. That's equalization, tea-party style. I bet Wal-Mart is loaded with tea party types, stupid asses.

It won't take long before Al Sharp and Jessie Jackson get involved. They do love the lime light.
Why do these men think they should get their jobs back? Go cry somewhere else.

Fire their drunk asses! No brainer!!!

I feel bad for the ptf's and odl's who were packing two hours of these slugs routes every day!

the unions spend all of their time and money defending those that do not want to do their job or those that get caught doing something wrong that they knew full well was wrong. I once knew a carrier who falsified a medical document when she missed a few days. She had taken a note pad from the doctor's office and wrote on the pad that she had the flu and signed the doctor's name. I had heard that she even misspelled the doctor's name.The supervisor called the doctor and and asked about the note because it looked like it had been written by a pre-schooler. What happened to her? NOTHING!!! She and the boss started seeing each other after work so I guess a deal was worked out. The ones that come to work and do their job do not need representation by the unions.

@ luvalo...for someone who had been an employee for some 30 years you sound like you should've left 20 years ago. There is no doubt that reinstating them sends a wrong message. They should be terminated, but your spew of negativity for an employer that clothed, fed and enabled you to retire sends the wrong message as well. You've done nothing but bitch about it and shot down everyone that has any type of support for their career. You obviously have nothing better to do with your retirement check than sit and type on blogs with senseless diatribe.

We’ve heard these stories before. These two mail carriers knew what they were doing was wrong and they’ll have to pay the price for that, as they should. It is a shame that this will reflect upon the thousands of mail carriers that do an honest day’s work every day.

What I found amazing was the amount of time and effort Fox News put into the investigation and surveillance of two mail carriers drinking on the job. Too bad Jeff Cole/PhillyFox didn’t invest as much effort in helping Philly police capture the Kensington strangler BEFORE he murdered his 3rd victim. No..they were busy covering the big story at McMenimam’s Bar.

This type of outrageous behavior on the part of the labor unions won't stop - filing grievances on behalf of bums - until the membership itself begins filing unfair labor practices against the union for misrepresentation and misuse of union dues. If I were a member of this union, I'd be filing with the NLRB every week and writing my congressional representatives demanding an inquiry into the union and their cozy relationship with the NLRB. The members might even attend a local meeting and pass a motion to withdraw the grievances. Evil can only persist so long as the good people do nothing - make your union represent workers instead of non-workers for a change: file unfair labor practices yourself, write the paper, call talk radio, write your political representatives, and attend local meetings to demand the union change. It only takes a second - do it now. Complete this form and mail it to your regional NLRB office http://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/documents/48/nlrbform508.pdf

The fact remains that these guys didn't run over anyone. I know that these guys did wrong. They do too. They've been out of a job for a year now and they deserved as much, but I am a fellow Postal Worker who has never drank on the job and would like to see them reinstated. We don't know how much they drank. I know Rudy, and he is a fine person who messed up.He was well liked by his customers and was a good mail carrier. Normally, according to our contract agreement,a carrier will get one chance to straighten his life out if he gets caught drinking or abusing drugs on the job, if they agree to get treatment. These guys didn't get that chance because Fox News wanted to make the Postal Service look bad.Fox News is a propaganda organization for the far right. The far right is an enemy of the Postal Service. Just check out the Fox News website and see all the bad stories they carry,i.e.,mailman did this mailman did that. They recently got a mailman fired for going to the bathroom between two houses. the poor guy probably had an emergency. Fox News has an agenda.Too bad the public fell for it. They could have chosen to wait for people outside of bars, but they didn't.These carriers did not get a second chance thanks to Fox News. =May the people involved in this Fox News crusade burn in Hell.

They were not caught driving drunk. Obviously they did drive with alchohol in them, but they were not convicted or even pulled over. They've suffered enough.

As far as you substitute co-workers that trashed your fellow carriers because you have less time in and therefore think you are entitled an easier job. Get some time Yum Yum or else become a boss. Speaking of which, I'm sure management didn't want to fire them either. The only reason they got fired was because it went public.