Republican Onslaught Against Post Office Kicks Into High Gear
“While we all understand that the Postal Service is experiencing financial problems and that changes need to be made, I am convinced that substantially slowing down mail delivery and providing less service wouldn’t save the Postal Service, it would send it into a death spiral,” Sanders said. “That is why I am strongly opposed to this legislation that in the midst of a severe recession would lead to the elimination of tens of thousands of decent-paying jobs – many of them held by military veterans.”
Senator Sanders sees the actions as further destruction to the service, and questions why the bill retreats from a measure that the Senate passed over a year ago with an overwhelming, bipartisan majority.
That bill, which passed the Senate on April 25, 2012, and a vote of 62-37. 13 of the votes were from the support of Republican Senators. Senator Coburn and most Republicans, and a handful of democrats, opposed the legislation.
Senator Sanders called this new bill “weaker” than the bill that passed the Senate last year. He also added,
“It is hard for me to understand why the Senate should go backward and settle for a significantly weaker bill that, while not as strong as I would have liked, got an impressive 62 votes. That makes no sense.”
That bill eventually died in the Republican controlled House last Congress. Had it passed and became law, it would have “completely repeal the pre-funding requirement and preserve six-day delivery standards. It would also reinstate overnight delivery, which would in turn protect processing plant closures. The bill would attempt to grow revenue by expanding business opportunities at the agency.”
Some of the reforms that Senator Sanders were outlined late last month by the National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando. He sent a letter to Representative Issa and Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, over a proposal reduce mail service, insert Congress in to its collective bargaining, cut back on door-to-door delivery, among others. In it, he outlined the reform he feels would help save the postal service.
“1. Stabilize the Postal Service’s finances by reforming or eliminating unwise and unfair pension and retiree health financing policies that have crippled the Postal Service’s finances since 2006;
2. Strengthen and protect the Postal Service’s invaluable first-mile and last-mile networks that together comprise a crucial part of the nation’s infrastructure;
3. Overhaul the basic governance structure of the agency to attract first-class executive talent and a private-sector style board of directors with the demonstrated business expertise needed to implement a strategy that will allow the Postal Service to innovate and take advantage of growth opportunities even as it adjusts to declining traditional mail volume; and
4. Free the Postal Service to meet the evolving needs of the American economy and to set its prices in a way that reflects the cost structure of the delivery industry while assuring affordable universal service and protecting against anti-competitive abuses.”
A committee aid for Senators Carper and Coburn bill said the bill came together very quickly, and that the opposition is because they have not had time to rally support behind the legislation. They plan, however, to try and gain support over the August recess and move forward with the bill in September.
Senator Coburn said in a statement, “This proposal is a rough draft of an agreement subject to change that I hope will move us closer to a solution that will protect taxpayers and ensure the Postal Service can remain economically viable while providing vital services for the American people.”
Even if the Senators manage to get support, the unions are calling it a non-starter. Representative for every major USPS workers joined together in a letter to Senator Harry Reid expressing their discontent with the bill, and asking him to reject it.
The letter follows:
August 5, 2013The Honorable Harry Reid
Senate Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510Dear Leader Reid:Over the years you have been a tireless defender of working people and their families as well as a staunch supporter of a strong labor movement. Your recent skillful work to secure the appointment of Labor Secretary Tom Perez and to revive the NLRB in support of decent living standards in America is the latest evidence of this. Unfortunately, we must alert you to a serious threat coming from the Senate to these standards, S. 1486, the Postal Reform Act of 2013.
On behalf of 500,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service, who live and work in all 50 states (as well as in D.C., Puerto Rico and other jurisdictions), we wish to express our utter dismay with the introduction of S. 1486 on August 1st, just minutes before the summer recess. The bill was co-authored by Sen. Tom Carper and Sen. Tom Coburn, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. It renews a commitment to the disastrous Bush administration policy to mandate massive prefunding of future retiree health benefits and provides for major downsizing measures to pay for it.
The relief provided by its three-year moratorium on pre-funding payments is more apparent than real since the USPS has not been able to make the unaffordable payments in recent years; it won’t be able to do so in the future when the pre-funding mandate is re-imposed with both normal cost and amortization payments that other businesses do not have to make into retiree health funds.
In order to allegedly give the Postal Service the ability to afford future pre-funding costs, and to add insult to injury, the Carper-Coburn bill would give USPS tools to slash postal employees’ pension and health benefits by making these federal employee benefits subject to interest arbitration. No other federal employees face such a burden – including Members of Congress and their staffers. Our unions were not consulted about these proposed major changes to our rights as federal employees or to our collective bargaining process.
S. 1486 would facilitate the dismantling of the Postal Service’s mail processing and delivery networks, weakening both our first-mile (post office) and last-mile (delivery) capacity, in order to preserve a pre-funding policy that makes no sense. This would seriously harm the 7.5 million Americans who work in private companies that rely on the USPS. The bill would:
This massive downsizing and the bill’s assault on postal employee benefits are not necessary. They are being driven by the irrational retiree health financing policy that no other business or agency would adopt. The Postal Service has already pre-funded decades of retiree health premiums, more than any other enterprise in America. Indeed, USPS has already set aside an estimated $49 billion for such premiums, approximately 50% of total expected costs over the next 90+ years.
- destroy 80,000 full- and part-time jobs in both cities and rural areas, after a one-year delay, by eliminating Saturday mail delivery (harming millions of businesses who want it) and give the Postmaster General authority to eliminate additional days of delivery in the future;
- slash tens of thousands of additional jobs, after a two-year delay, by allowing USPS to reduce service and delivery standards and to close hundreds of mail processing facilities and thousands of post offices;
- mandate the elimination of door-to-door delivery of mail for all business and new households, and call for the phase out of door delivery to millions of established households – threatening at least 16,500 additional jobs; and
- impose cruel and discriminatory reforms to the FECA workers compensation program that would leave injured federal workers with the worst long-term injuries vulnerable to impoverishment when they reach their Social Security retirement ages.
The Postal Service had been making great progress over the past year – it has earned an operating profit so far this year, its package business is booming, and commercial mail is recovering as the housing market and the national economy show signs of revival. It should not be forced to forgo new vehicles and investments in new technology, new innovations and new products in order to put even more money into the PSRHBF. Just as the budget sequester has thwarted a strong economic recovery, the adoption of more misguided austerity though a bad postal reform bill would make things worse, not better.
We hope that you will actively work to promote postal reform that will create jobs and innovation, not more job cuts and reduced service for the American people. The 30 members of the Senate who have co-sponsored S.316, the Postal Service Protection Act of 2013, have taken the right approach. That bill would strengthen the Postal Service, promote innovation and, most importantly, resolve the retiree health and pension policies that have crippled the Postal Service in recent years.
There are many policy alternatives to the negative proposals in S. 1486 – measures to increase postal revenues, cut costs and cover future retiree health liabilities without massive service and job cuts. We pledge to work with the Senate to define and develop workable, bi-partisan alternatives.
Thanks again for your commitment to America’s hard working postal employees who serve the nation and our economy with the most efficient and most affordable postal services in the world.
Sincerely,
Cliff Guffey, PresidentAPWU Fredric V. Rolando, PresidentNALC John F. Hegarty, President
NPMHUJeanette Dwyer, PresidentNRLCA
The summation of the last story on the Post Office holds true.
It could have something to do with hoping to get a private entity in there to take over where the Post Office left off. Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Post Office has one of the largest unions, the American Postal Workers Union or APWU, with over 300,000 members. But one thing is for sure. Republicans are playing their same game of manufacturing a crisis, then promising to solve it with a solution that benefits them both finically and politically.
The solution to making the Post Office is quite simple. Repeal the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. But, Republicans would never do this, because their goal is not to save the Post Office. It is to destroy it.
http://occupydemocrats.com/onslaught-against-post-office-continues/
No comments:
Post a Comment