POSTAL NEWS
NO.
68/2012
Formulated by UNI-JAPAN POST
In cooperation with UNI APRO, ASPEK INDONESIA
and SPPI
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- Analysis: $5.5B default fails to inspire urgency over Postal Service bill
Wednesday - 8/1/2012, 12:28pm EDT
By Michael O'Connell
@moconnellWFED
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Bernie Becker, reporter with The Hill
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Today the Postal Service will default on $5.5 billion in
pension costs that it owes to the Treasury. It will do the same next month too.
This isn't a surprise. The agency has been ringing alarm bells for more than a
year. It's urging lawmakers to pass a bill letting it cut costs and
restructure. But it doesn't seem like Congress is in any rush.
"What you're seeing in the House this week is a vote on
extending current tax rates," said Bernie Becker, a reporter with The Hill
newspaper. "That's something that all Republicans can unite behind. The
postal bill has a more controversial aspect. It doesn't go straight down party
lines. It's not an easy vote for lawmakers, so I think they're just going to push
it back to when it's a less controversial time."
While the word "default" might conjure up a sense
of urgency in most people, it doesn't appear to be making an impression on
Congress.
"USPS has said that this is not going to affect
day-to-day operations, at least in the short term," Becker told The
Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp Tuesday morning.
"What we're hearing about the economy at large is that
uncertainty is a problem," Becker said. "When you don't have
certainty with what's going to happen with the Postal Service, businesses might
be more wary about mailing with them. They might go to UPS. So it's a long term
thing and they think that getting something figured out sooner rather than
later is the best way to go. In the short term, you won't see much change in
how USPS operates."
- Post office can’t pay massive obligations
By Ron Nixon / New York Times News Service
Published: August 01. 2012 4:00AM PST
WASHINGTON — The Postal Service, on the verge of its
first-ever default today, faces a cash shortage of $100 million in October
stemming from declining mail volume that could balloon to $1.2 billion next
year, newly available documents show.
Confronting $11.1 billion in payments over the next two
months for future benefits, the post office said it will fail to pay about half
that amount, which is due today, and does not foresee making the other half,
which is due in September. An additional $5.6 billion payment due next year is
also in question.
The service is struggling for ways to cut costs, but it
cannot eliminate Saturday delivery, as it wants to, without congressional
approval, nor can it slow delivery of the mail without regulatory approval.
The Postal Service had hoped that Congress would help stanch
the losses, as it did last year when it deferred the payment that is due again
today. But the House has taken no action.
The Senate passed a measure that provided incentives to
retire about 100,000 postal workers, or 18 percent of its employees, and
allowed the post office to recoup more than $11 billion it overpaid into an
employee pension fund. The Senate declined to act to stop Saturday deliveries.
For now, the agency said its operations will not be affected
by the defaults. Mail and packages will continue to be delivered and employees
and vendors will be paid.
The Postal Service inspector general, David Williams,
reviewed the post office’s financial statements and confirmed its projected
cash shortages in a memo to the postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, last week.
The cash crunch reflects a six-year decline in mail volume,
due to businesses and individuals moving, at a faster pace than the Postal
Service expected, to online bill paying, email and other forms of electronic
communications.
The agency lost $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2011, which
ended Sept. 30. So far this year, the agency has lost more than $25 million a
day and expects to lose $14.1 billion.
- Building a powerful nationwide grassroots movement to save the people’s Post Office
August 1, 2012
by Dave Welsh
On July 27, 200 people rallied to save the Civic Center Post
Office, which is relied on by the many people who live downtown with few
resources, including those without homes. – Photo: Patricia Jackson
Without question, the big-business class – and their agents
in USPS headquarters, the executive branch and Congress – are on a path to
dismantle the Postal Service, privatize the profitable parts of it, and
neutralize or destroy the postal unions.
Their whole economic system is in crisis. It’s not working.
So the 1 percent are trying to pull their own chestnuts out of the fire by a
full-bore attack on unions, the workers and the poor – an attack on our union
contracts, our jobs, economic security, wages, benefits, conditions and social
services. Their assault on the Post Office is part of this strategy.
How can we fight it?
By itself, the legislative strategy – trying to influence
Congress – is not working. Congress is bought and sold by the 1 percent – they
won’t begin to listen to us until we’re in the streets, mobilized in all our
numbers.
The rank and file postal workers and our communities who
support us – this is the source of our real strength. We need to reach out and
tap into it, just as we did in the Great 1970 Postal Strike. That grassroots upsurge
brought about a big change in the relationship of forces between postal workers
and the bosses. What used to be work for poverty wages became a living-wage
job, with a union contract to protect the workers’ rights. Any postal worker
can see this.
A statement by the Million Worker March movement helps to
clarify the situation we face today: “All important social movements … in this
country were started from the bottom up (rank and file/grassroots) and not from
the top down …. A handful of the rich, and powerful corporations have usurped
our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies
public office to wage class war on working people. They have captured the state
in their own interests” (Oct. 17, 2011).
The rank and file postal workers and our communities who
support us – this is the source of our real strength.
When Reagan took office as president, one of his first acts
was to bust the PATCO air traffic controllers union, ushering in three decades
of attacks on the union movement and steady decline in the living standards of
the working class.
Today, the 1 percent have a much bigger target – the Postal
Service. They hate the fact that the 574,000 who work for the nation’s second
biggest employer are under union contract and making a living wage.
They hate the fact that in 1970 the postal workers took
their destiny into their own hands and shut down the entire mail system for the
better part of a week, demonstrating the power of the workers and disrupting
business as usual. And the 1970 nationwide postal strike taught another lesson:
that the wealth of the 1 percent only exists because the 99 percent creates it
for them.
The nation’s largest employer is Walmart. The employer class
would dearly love to reduce those 574,000 postal workers to Walmart wages and
non-union status. But just because they want it doesn’t mean they’ll get it.
The racist side of the campaign to demolish the P.O. and
bust the unions
There’s another side to the move to dismantle and destroy
the public Postal Service, this country’s largest unionized employer. And that
is the disproportionate effect it would have on workers and communities of
color.
This photo of the Bayview Post Office was published on July
27, 2011, the day after the plan to close 3,700 post offices in poor and rural
communities was announced, by Xinhuanet, a Chinese newspaper that gets 80
million page views a day. A photo of the Bayview Post Office also appeared in
the Wall Street Journal that day. – Photo: Xinhuanet.com
If you’ve ever seen a group picture of postal workers from
before the Second World War, you noticed that it was a practically all-white
group and mostly men. But after World War II things began to change, with the
development of the civil rights and Black liberation movements. The P.O. began
hiring Asian Americans, Latinos, Mexican Americans, African Americans and a lot
more women. So that by the time of the 1970 strike, it was a much more
integrated and diverse work force.
Today the Postal Service is the largest single source of
Black employment and, for many workers, one of the few places where living-wage
jobs are still available in our low-pay, “post-industrial” economy.
The campaign to privatize and de-unionize the USPS is a
threat to the livelihood of every affected worker and neighborhood. But it
stands to hit hardest in those communities of color that are already suffering
unemployment at Great Depression levels.
Building community-labor coalitions in every city and town
We can and must build a powerful, nationwide movement to
defeat privatization, maintain living-wage postal jobs, expand postal services
and save the Post Office as a public entity operating in the public interest.
This grassroots effort has already begun. Community-based
coalitions are springing up, with some creative tactics. Here’s a sampling:
• In New York City, Community-Labor United for Postal Jobs
and Services organized large neighborhood protests to stop the closing of
postal facilities in Harlem, South Bronx, Staten Island, Chelsea and Coop City
– as well as keep six-day delivery and preserve living-wage postal jobs. The
youth group of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network participated in a “Don’t
Close It” march and occupation of a Harlem
station. The coalition also organized a march of 500 to the Main Post Office on
the anniversary of the 1970 postal strike. See http://clupjs.com/.
• In Portland,
Oregon, a chanting crowd of
100-plus including postal union heads massed outside University Station, on the
USPS chopping block for closing. Inside the station, one retired carrier and
nine from Occupy Portland unfurled 10-foot banners reading, “Occupy the Post
Office” and “No Closures, No Cuts!” and were arrested when they refused to
leave. Great media coverage. The community coalition includes Jobs with Justice
and Rural Organizing Project, which has mounted a “Return to Sender” campaign
to preserve full-service post offices without reduced hours all over rural Oregon.
At the July 27, 2012, rally, Angela, a postal carrier, asked
what can Congress be thinking by allowing the layoff of 220,000 people, when
millions are already unemployed. – Photo: Patricia Jackson
• In San Francisco, a large
crowd with an “Occupy the Post Office” banner took over the lobby of the Civic Center
post office – one of five in the city that the postmaster general wants to
close. The station is a lifeline for the many people without homes or living in
city-supported “single room occupancy” hotels for the very poor – who get their
mail in P.O. boxes or at the “general delivery” window. Some 200 people took
part in the rally, march or occupation of the P.O. It was organized by the
Community-Labor Coalition to Save the People’s Post Office, which includes NALC
and APWU activists, Living Wage Coalition, SF Labor Council, Church Women
United, Green Party, Gray Panthers, Occupy SF Action Council, Union of
Unemployed Workers and the Senior Action Network. Contact
SaveThePostOffice@sonic.net.
• Local coalitions have banded together to form Communities
and Postal Workers United. CPWU organized a four-day hunger strike in Washington, D.C.
The 10 fasting postal workers’ message to Congress: “Stop starving the postal
service!” The fast was heavily covered by national and local media – a
breakthrough in explaining to the public about the pre-funding mandate and
other efforts to sabotage and privatize the service. The week ended with a
protest at USPS headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza. Retired mail handler John
Dennie attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of Postmaster General Donahoe for
the PMG’s criminal actions in seeking to destroy the service. Dennie charged
the PMG with violating 18 US
Code 1701, Knowingly and Willfully Obstructing Passage of the Mail, and 18 USC
1703, Delay of the Mail. When police grabbed Brother Dennie, demonstrators sat
in. Since then, CPWU chapters have sprung up in many cities and towns. See
www.cpwunited.com.
The movement is under way and growing, initiated by rank and
file letter carriers, clerks and mail handlers and aroused communities who
don’t want to lose their post office. We can no longer wait for “someone else”
to get things going. That “someone else” may very well be you.
Postal fact sheet
The postmaster general has announced devastating attacks on
the Postal Service. He’s threatened to:
• eliminate 220,000 living-wage postal jobs from our
communities
• close 250 mail processing centers and 3,700 post offices,
mostly in poor and rural areas
• degrade service standards
• delay the mail by one to three days minimum
• cut window hours to as little as two hours a day
• eliminate Saturday delivery and curtail door-to-door
delivery of the mail.
This threatens the very survival of the people’s Post Office
which for over 200 years has provided universal mail service at uniform rates
to every part of the United
States, and has the support of the great
majority of our people.
The Post Office receives no federal tax money. Its total
income is derived from the labor and skill of 574,000 postal workers who serve
millions of customers daily and also operate the nation’s largest fleet of
trucks. The Post Office is a strategic “multiplier industry,” with up to 8
million workers in related industries depending directly or indirectly on the
USPS for their livelihoods.
Today the Postal Service is the largest single source of
Black employment and, for many workers, one of the few places where living-wage
jobs are still available in our low-pay, “post-industrial” economy.
The postal system continues to thrive despite competition
from the internet and despite the severe economic downturn. Postal revenues
just about matched expenses over the last six years – until they slapped the
USPS with an unprecedented $5.5 billion a year charge to pre-fund retiree
health benefits. They also drained away an additional $50-70 billion by over-funding
postal pensions, according to government reports.
This is a manufactured crisis, providing Postmaster General
Donahoe and the richest 1 percent with their phony arguments that the postal
system is broke – and preparing the way for an attempt to sabotage, dismantle
and privatize this trillion dollar industry and run it for private profit.
The postal system belongs to the people. To safeguard our
heritage, and ensure that the interests of the people are being protected, the
Post Office needs to be publicly owned and run in the public interest.
We are Save the People’s Post Office, a community-labor
coalition in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our goal is to build a powerful
grassroots movement in this area and nationwide – to defeat privatization,
maintain living-wage jobs, expand postal services and save the Post Office as a
public entity operating in the public interest. Contact us at
SaveThePostOffice@sonic.net or (510) 847-8657. Our coalition is part of a
national network, Communities and Postal Workers United, www.cpwunited.com.
Dave Welsh, a retired letter carrier and delegate to the San
Francisco Labor Council, is an organizer with the Community-Labor Coalition to
Save the People’s Post Office. A good information source is www.savethepostoffice.com.
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