The nation's postal unions blasted a Bush administration panel's recommendation to weaken--if not destroy--collective bargaining rights for the nation's 500,000-plus U.S. Postal Service employees.

Letter Carriers President William H. Young said the Bush panel's recommendations "would render Letter Carriers and other postal employees second-class citizens" by depriving them of rights other workers enjoy.

Postal Workers President William Burrus agreed, vowing his union would lobby hard against the Bush panel's plan.

NALC and the Mail Handlers also vowed to lobby lawmakers against the Bush plan, and the AFL-CIO Executive Council voted in early August to join the postal workers unions' effort.

Bush's panel released its recommendations on July 23 after almost seven months of hearings, testimony, and written statements. Burrus and Young testified several times and the unions added briefs.

In its recommendations, the panel, dominated by businesses and appointed by the Treasury Department--not USPS--had recommendations to make USPS more "businesslike."

They included ending Saturday delivery, closing many rural post offices, and weakening collective bargaining, which the unions won in 1970. The panel also wanted to institute a "pay-for-performance" plan, eliminate caps on USPS executives' bonuses and add pensions and retiree health care to bargaining topics.

Commissioner Norman Seabrook, a unionist, said pay-for-performance would produce "a good ol' boys system" of favored treatment.

One suggestion, which Young denounced, would put USPS workers under the Railway Labor Act, which now governs workers at airlines and railroads. That act curbs workers' right to strike. It also lets the president establish 3-person fact-finding boards to order settlements of labor disputes in cases he deems a threat to interstate commerce. Bush used such boards with several airline-union disputes.

Changes in collective bargaining drew the ire of the unions, especially after they cautioned the panel to go slow and make few, if any, changes to that process.

Young said Bush's panel had some positive proposals, such as streamlining grievance procedures and giving USPS greater marketing flexibility.

But they were outweighed by negative recommendations, besides the weakening of collective bargaining, Young said. Those included a two-tier wage system, which would give new workers substantially lower pay, and revocation of "comprehensive retiree health and pension benefits" now promised to former workers, he said.

"Collective bargaining has worked well under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 with an extraordinary record of labor peace" and no significant work disruptions, Young told a commission hearing in Chicago earlier this year. The 1970 law adds arbitration to negotiations in case the USPS and the unions cannot agree on a contract.

"The commission should recognize the success of postal collective bargaining over the past 30 years and acknowledge the progress that is being made in postal labor relations by treading lightly," he added.

Young noted the Railway Labor Act has not worked well for airlines. Disputes there frequently lead to management-inspired impasses, he told Bush's panel.

And they have left such a bitter legacy of labor relations that the carriers are now pushing legislation by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for baseball-style one-side-or-the-other arbitrator-chosen settlements of disputes, he noted.

"References abound to the current plight of the airlines, with emphasis on labor costs," Young said, before reminding the Bush panel of the mediation and binding interest arbitration provisions of current law governing postal labor and management.

"We in the postal community know that our system, while it may not be perfect, works. Proponents of radical changes have a very heavy burden of persuasion and the Railway Labor Act fails that test miserably."

Burrus disputed the whole reason Bush established the panel. He called it a creation of the mass mailing industry, who lobbied the Treasury Department for the panel. They used revenue figures as the ostensible reason for their concern.

Young noted the present system controlled labor costs while not hurting workers "and permitted all the key players in the postal community to share in the efficiency gains resulting from automation and other investments."

This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

For more information
Visit the National Association of Letter Carriers website, www.nalc.org and the American Postal Workers Union website, www.apwu.org