The National Association of Letter Carriers were first out on the hustings, from April 12-15, with demonstrations at senators’ offices and at post offices. The Postal Workers and the Mail Handlers followed on April 17. APWU scheduled leafleting from Oakland, Los Angeles and D.C., to Boston, Minneapolis and elsewhere.
The unions’ objective: to sidetrack legislation on both sides of Capitol Hill that NALC says would let the USPS cut up to 220,000 jobs, reduce delivery from six days to five, slow first-class mail service and drive away clients.
Instead, NALC wants to substitute an alternative plan, pushed by 27 senators, to open up new money-making fields by letting the Postal Service enter new lines of business, while preserving its basic core services.
The action revolves around S1789, a bill pushed by the top two senators on the committee that handles postal legislation. The measure would let postal management cut the jobs but slow down some of the other measures that agency executives say they need to eliminate billions of dollars in red ink by 2016. Debate on it started on April 17.
NALC President Fredric Rolando repeatedly says the way to solve the USPS’ financial ills is not to cut its way to prosperity – that’s not do-able, he contends – but to enact positive measures while ridding USPS of a $5.5 billion yearly health care pre-payment requirement imposed by the GOP Bush government’s 2006 postal bill and to let USPS retrieve the money it overpaid into its workers’ pension fund in past years.
The health care pre-funding alone forces USPS to sock money away for the next decade to cover costs for future retirees for the next 75 years. No other entity, private or government, must do that, Rolando says. But the House postal legislation, HR2309 pushed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and introduced in the Senate by GOPer John McCain, is even worse, he told a Rutgers University seminar n April.
“Everyone understands the fundamental business problem — First Class volume is declining as the direct and irreversible result of the Internet. And the 2008-2010 recession did not help,” Rolando said.
“Everyone also understands the immediate financial and cash flow problem. On its current course, the service will run out of cash within a matter of months. But the major driving force creating this cash crisis is not the Internet.” It’s the health care cost provision, “draining the service of $21 billion, cash, over the last five years.
“I want to confront very directly why we have made no progress in addressing the problems. First, we have a postal management that, at the highest levels, has thrown in the towel. The Postal Service response to the crisis is to simply shrink — to close hundreds of facilities, cut thousands of rural post offices, cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, cut service standards, reduce the number of days of delivery and to discontinue door-to-door service. In short, to try to save the Postal Service by degrading its most valuable asset, its unmatchable last-mile delivery network.
“The Postmaster General publicly embraced Issa’s postal ‘reform’ bill, which would effectively dismantle the Postal Service. The PMG said at a hearing that he supports practically all of HR 2309. At this late hour, plain speaking is necessary. In our view, that bill is a recipe for total disaster.”
But the Senate bill is only a band-aid over an open wound, Rolando said.
“Something often gets overlooked in debates over the Postal Service: It uses no taxpayer dollars. I cannot emphasize that too much: In talking about reducing its work force and cutting back its services, no tax dollars are saved.
“Closing post offices, eliminating Saturday delivery, dismissing thousands of hardworking employees — many of them veterans and minority group members — and other such drastic measures would not save the taxpayers any money. But all those cuts would inflict irreversible and terrible damage on a great American asset — and on the homes, businesses and communities that lost its services,” he said.
The new business plan Rolando pushes – and he said the unions would be the first at the table to try to reconstruct the USPS – would expand its package delivery services, which Internet-based firms rely on. It also would increase the kinds of items USPS can deliver and would “give the Postal Service more flexibility in pricing.”
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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The National Association of Letter Carriers were first out on the hustings, from April 12-15, with demonstrations at senators’ offices and at post offices. The Postal Workers and the Mail Handlers followed on April 17. APWU scheduled leafleting from Oakland, Los Angeles and D.C., to Boston, Minneapolis and elsewhere.
The unions’ objective: to sidetrack legislation on both sides of Capitol Hill that NALC says would let the USPS cut up to 220,000 jobs, reduce delivery from six days to five, slow first-class mail service and drive away clients.
Instead, NALC wants to substitute an alternative plan, pushed by 27 senators, to open up new money-making fields by letting the Postal Service enter new lines of business, while preserving its basic core services.
The action revolves around S1789, a bill pushed by the top two senators on the committee that handles postal legislation. The measure would let postal management cut the jobs but slow down some of the other measures that agency executives say they need to eliminate billions of dollars in red ink by 2016. Debate on it started on April 17.
NALC President Fredric Rolando repeatedly says the way to solve the USPS’ financial ills is not to cut its way to prosperity – that’s not do-able, he contends – but to enact positive measures while ridding USPS of a $5.5 billion yearly health care pre-payment requirement imposed by the GOP Bush government’s 2006 postal bill and to let USPS retrieve the money it overpaid into its workers’ pension fund in past years.
The health care pre-funding alone forces USPS to sock money away for the next decade to cover costs for future retirees for the next 75 years. No other entity, private or government, must do that, Rolando says. But the House postal legislation, HR2309 pushed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and introduced in the Senate by GOPer John McCain, is even worse, he told a Rutgers University seminar n April.
“Everyone understands the fundamental business problem — First Class volume is declining as the direct and irreversible result of the Internet. And the 2008-2010 recession did not help,” Rolando said.
“Everyone also understands the immediate financial and cash flow problem. On its current course, the service will run out of cash within a matter of months. But the major driving force creating this cash crisis is not the Internet.” It’s the health care cost provision, “draining the service of $21 billion, cash, over the last five years.
“I want to confront very directly why we have made no progress in addressing the problems. First, we have a postal management that, at the highest levels, has thrown in the towel. The Postal Service response to the crisis is to simply shrink — to close hundreds of facilities, cut thousands of rural post offices, cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, cut service standards, reduce the number of days of delivery and to discontinue door-to-door service. In short, to try to save the Postal Service by degrading its most valuable asset, its unmatchable last-mile delivery network.
“The Postmaster General publicly embraced Issa’s postal ‘reform’ bill, which would effectively dismantle the Postal Service. The PMG said at a hearing that he supports practically all of HR 2309. At this late hour, plain speaking is necessary. In our view, that bill is a recipe for total disaster.”
But the Senate bill is only a band-aid over an open wound, Rolando said.
“Something often gets overlooked in debates over the Postal Service: It uses no taxpayer dollars. I cannot emphasize that too much: In talking about reducing its work force and cutting back its services, no tax dollars are saved.
“Closing post offices, eliminating Saturday delivery, dismissing thousands of hardworking employees — many of them veterans and minority group members — and other such drastic measures would not save the taxpayers any money. But all those cuts would inflict irreversible and terrible damage on a great American asset — and on the homes, businesses and communities that lost its services,” he said.
The new business plan Rolando pushes – and he said the unions would be the first at the table to try to reconstruct the USPS – would expand its package delivery services, which Internet-based firms rely on. It also would increase the kinds of items USPS can deliver and would “give the Postal Service more flexibility in pricing.”
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.