USPS Misrepresentations Lead to Barrage of Criticism
Greg Bell
Executive Vice President
(This article by first appeared in the May/June 2012 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
The Postal Service’s top management, including Postmaster General Donahoe, has been drawing fire from all sides in recent months, after a series of disturbing and embarrassing revelations.
Criticism of postal management started mounting after the USPS filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) for an advisory opinion on plans to degrade service standards — to eliminate overnight delivery of most first-class mail and periodicals, and generally slow delivery. Prior to the September request, postal managers had been telling legislators and affected communities that consolidating mail processing facilities would not affect service.
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APWU-led protests at town hall meetings, along with rallies and other activities throughout the fall and winter, demonstrated the depth of public opposition to USPS plans to consolidate mail processing plants, and prompted a storm of criticism from lawmakers.
The heat intensified in March when Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) took to the Senate floor to criticize Donahoe for “proceeding with a disastrously flawed plan” to close hundreds of mail processing plants.
“This coupled with the still-pending closures of almost 4,000 mostly rural post offices and the Postmaster General’s push to eliminate overnight and Saturday delivery, tells me that the current Postal Service leadership is gravely underestimating the consequences of lesser service on revenue from customers who depend on the service as it is provided today,” she said. Read more
The Postal Service Under Siege
By Chuck Zlatkin
You can’t blame the average citizen if they believe that the Postal Service is on its last legs. It is not just Fox News that is spreading the hysteria. In the May 18, 2012 edition of the New York Times, Ron Dixon wrote a column on the Postal Service’s desire to close 48 mail-processing centers beginning in July, but neglected to mention that the Postal Service’s problems were directly related to Congressional mandates that had turned the Postal Service into a cash cow. Dixon didn’t mention the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the Postal Service to fully prefund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and to do it within a 10-year window. This meant that the Postal Service was required to write a check to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $5.5 billion every September 30 before they sold one stamp or money order. No other government agency, corporation or organization is required to do so. Because of this legislation, the agency was required to fully prefund the retirement health benefits of people who hadn’t even been born yet, let alone worked for the Postal Service.
What Fox News and the New York Times both choose to ignore is the fact that the Postal Service has over-funded the Civil Service Retirement System by billions. In 2009, the Office of Inspector General of the Postal Service commissioned a study done by the Hay Company, which concluded that the Postal Service has overpaid into the pension funds by $75 billion since 1971.
In 2010, the independent Postal Regulatory Commission contracted its own study conducted by Segal and Company, which concluded that the Postal Service had overpaid by only $50-60 billion. The study recommended that the agency immediately get credited with the overpayment. Such an action would mean that the Postal Service could meet all its obligations, pay off its debt, and not have to close post offices and postal processing centers or reduce its workforce by 100,000 workers in the middle of a recession.
The argument that the Postal Service has become irrelevant because of email and the Internet is not born out by the facts. The three years with the largest volume in its 236-year history were 2006, followed closely by 2005 and 2007, well into the Internet era.
What hurt the Postal Service was the economic collapse of 2008 and slowness of the recovery since. Without the Congressional mandates, the Postal Service would have been fine, even with the problems with economy and the advent of email.
The rush to shrink the Postal Service and eliminate 100,000 living-wage union jobs is unnecessary. Congress could have corrected the problems facing the agency without costing the taxpayers anything. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) introduced such legislation last year, H.R 1351, which had 226 co-sponsors, including 30 Republicans. Even though the bill was supported by a majority of Congress it never got to the floor for a vote. Instead, the rightwing chair of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, Darrell Issa (R-CA), and his one co-sponsor, Tea Party-backed Dennis Ross (R-FL), put forth H.R. 2309, which would destroy the Postal Service as we know it, and it passed the committee.
This year in the Senate a bipartisan bill, S. 1789, introduced by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Scott Brown (R-MA) passed the Senate. While the legislation gives temporary relief to the Postal Service by extending the period for payment of the retiree prefunding to 40 years, it ignores the massive overpayments of $50-75 billion into the pension fund.
The prospect of the House and Senate coming to an agreement that will save the Postal Service long term is severely diminished by the deeply flawed S. 1789 and the destructive H.R. 2309 as the starting points. The manufactured financial crisis that has plagued the Postal Service was not an accident. The Postal Service routinely does over $60 billion in business each year and that is very appealing to those who want to privatize it. Some of the earliest “studies” of the financial crisis of the Postal Service were commissioned by think-tanks financed by the billionaire Koch brothers. The Koch brothers also supported the election campaigns of 11 members of Issa’s committee.
The media rarely mentions that the Postal Service is the second largest employer in the United States, second only to Wal-Mart. What is the biggest difference for working people between the Postal Service and Wal-Mart? The Postal Service is unionized and Wal-Mart isn’t.
As damaging as all of this is to postal workers, the media virtually ignores the people who would be damaged most by any cutbacks in the Postal Service. Elderly people, disabled people, poor people and small-business owners are totally dependent upon the Postal Service. They simply can’t afford the alternatives.
Before the moratorium on post office closings, the Postal Service was holding a series of “hearings” to determine which post offices to close. These “hearings” were poorly publicized and held in remote locations, as inconvenient as possible for people to attend.
But no matter how difficult the Postal Service made it for people to attend, the people attended. Even if was pouring rain, the people turned out. Seeing senior citizens with walkers and breathing tubes up their noses struggling to get to the hearings despite the weather made it clear how important keeping their post offices was to them. And when they got up to speak with fear in their voices, dreading the possibility of their post office closing, it was evident that they were the collateral damage in this war on working people.
Chuck Zlatkin
Legislative and Political Director
New York Metro branch of the American Postal Workers Union
USPS Reports Net Loss Of $1.6 Billion For Month Of April –YTD Retirement Pre-Funding Expense Reaches $7.1 Billion
The USPS reported a net loss of $1.6 ($1.592) billion for April 2012 according to preliminary (unaudited) data submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). USPS is attributing $1.017 billion of that amount to the Postal Service’s Retiree Health Benefit pre-funding expense. USPS is also reporting a year-to-date fiscal year loss of $8.1 billion ($8.056). The same period last year (SPLY) USPS reported a net operating loss of $3.304 billion– a difference of $4.752 Billion.
According to the report, ” The $7,117 Billion Year-to-date Retirement Health Benefit expense represents 7/12 and 7/10 of the $5.6 Billion due on September 30, 2012 as required by Public Law 109-435 and the $5.5 billion due on or before August 1, 2012 as required by Pubic Law 109-435 as amended by Public law 112-74. “
In previous months USPS reported a loss of $795 million in March 2012; $1.108 billion in February 2012 ; $1.262 billion in January 2012; $1.422 billion for the month of December 2011, Nov. $1.267 billion and Oct. $139 million).
USPS Unaudited financial results for April 2012.
House to Tackle Postal Bill After July Fourth
Filed under: GOP, politics, postal, postal news, postal reform, usps
From National Association of Postmasters of the US (NAPUS)
Today, in a memorandum to Republican Members of Congress, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) indicated that he “will be working” to bring H.R. 2309, the Issa-Ross postal bill, to the floor of the House of Representatives between Independence Day and the August summer recess. The summer break is scheduled to begin after the close of business on Friday, August 3.
In his memo, Cantor recognizes that: “Our constituents have been — or soon will be — impacted by the closure and hours of operation changes to U.S. Postal Service facilities across the country.” Nevertheless, the GOP notice lays blame on “yet another government backed entity that cannot meet its financial obligations”. Regrettably, Cantor fails to acknowledge that the inequitable legislatively-required retiree health prefunding requirement and the accumulated pension over-payments have contributed greatly to the USPS’ present situation. Also, Cantor neglects to mention that a viable, bipartisan, consensus postal relief bill is pending before the House. The House received S. 1789 from the Senate, on April 26, at 10:54 AM EDT; the Senate-passed measure is currently being held at the desk of the Clerk of the House.
This past Monday, during a regularly scheduled legislative teleconference, NAPUS Chapter Legislative Chairs discussed the implementation of a June strategy to push for House consideration of S. 1789 and to amend H.R. 2309.
APWU and USPS Agreement Will Protect Maintenance Staffing
Floor Deduction Dispute Resolved, Duty Assignments Restored
(5/25/2012) The APWU and the USPS reached a settlement on May 25 that will protect staffing, Maintenance Craft Director Steve Raymer has announced. The agreement prohibits the Postal Service from deducting square footage of floor space, including under mail processing equipment, in developing a Building Inventory. The agreement resolves Case #Q06T-4Q-C 10269698, which was scheduled for arbitration next week.
Management began deducting the square footage as a ploy to reduce staffing.
The agreement requires the Postal Service to inform USPS representatives and to have restored the deducted square feet of floor space within 30 days. The settlement does not permit “new” staffing packages to be created.
“Local management needs policing by local unions to ensure that the only adjustments made are in fact restoration of the square feet of deducted space,” Raymer said. The agreement stipulates that all other entries on the inventory and the frequencies of work remain the same.
Duty Assignments
The settlement also provides that local postal management take immediate action to restore any duty assignments established by the return of the deducted floor space. Such duty assignments must be posted and filled within 60 days of the settlement, which is in accordance with Article 38.4.A of the 2010-2015 Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The initial vacancies and all following vacancies are to be filled with career employees. The Postal Service may fill any of these vacancies with PSEs.
All other issues and remedies regarding, for example, posting and filling of other duty assignments; other reasons for challenging the current staffing package; or anything outside of the returning of the deducted floor space; which may be in grievance cases that were held pending the outcome of this case, will be sent back to the field for resolution or arbitration.
NALC: New ‘Guide to Route Inspections’ now available
From The National Association of Letter Carriers:
New ‘Guide to Route Inspections’ now available:
The 2012 NALC Guide to Route Inspections was created to assist shop stewards and branch officers in identifying contractual violations that take place during management’s unilateral six-day route counts and inspections / adjustments, and with filing successful grievances on those violations. The sections in this guide take you through the inspection in chronological order and provide an easy reference to various provisions and related national settlements that govern route inspections. There is also a section with detailed descriptions and advice on how to read the various forms, reports and screens used during the route count and inspection process. Once you learn how to read one of our examples, you will be able to understand every one of the same type of form, report, or screen you will ever see. Click here to download the guide.
USPS extends Postmaster Retirement incentive decision deadline
USPS is providing Postmasters additional time to take advantage of their Special Incentive Offer. Postmasters who meet the criteria now have until July 2, 2012 to take advantage of the offer.
The new timetable gives Postmasters the opportunity to apply for one or more of the approximately 1,600 vacant Postmaster positions posted today on the eCareer website. Postmasters should visit eCareer —located on LiteBlue — to review the posted vacancies and to apply online.
Frequently Asked Questions on the Postmaster incentive offer — including information on how incentive date changes may affect Postmasters who opted in after the May 9 original announcement — are available at the Workforce Connection website on LiteBlue. Postmasters can expect to receive formal communications outlining these changes by mail within the next week.
Postmasters with questions not covered at the Workforce Connection website can call the Human Resources Shared Service Center (877-477-3273).
Video: 12 arrested in Occupy Portland, OR protest to support post office
Twelve people were arrested Thursday evening during an Occupy Portland protest to support the U.S. Postal Service, according to Portland police.
About 80 people gathered at the post office on Southwest 6th and Clay. They sounded off about a large-scale layoff announced by the postal service in February.
Press Release
Ten arrested in Occupy action at University Station post office
Portland, OR – Police arrested ten members of labor unions, faith groups, neighborhood organizations, and Occupy Portland who refused to leave the University Station post office at closing time this evening. Unfurling two ten foot banners, reading “Occupy the Post Office” and “No Closures! No Cuts!” the protesters blocked the closure of the retail window while a rally of over a hundred supporters chanted outside. Earlier a line of demonstrators had marched through the office, delivering postcards addressed to the Postmaster General.
“The Postmaster General’s plan to close processing plants, delay mail delivery, and cut hours in the nation’s post offices will not fix the postal service’s financial crisis,” said Jamie Partridge, an arrestee from Occupy Portland. “Congress manufactured the crisis and Congress or the President will fix it. If the PMG can’t wait, he should step down and allow in someone who will protect the postal service.”
“People from across Portland are coming out to show that we value our public services and we will not allow those services to be sabatoged by corporate interests. Today we defend the Post Offices, but we know that these public services – our Post Offices, our libraries, our parks, and even our schools are all the target of corporate interests profit-driven machines, says Laurie King, organizer with Occupy the Post Office. “We are coming out to say that all communities deserve access to the mail service, and we will not have it handed over to the highest bidder.”
The Postmaster General is poised to close half the nation’s mail processing plants, including Portland’s Main Office, while reducing hours from 25% to 75% at 13,900 post offices. Donahoe is also pushing for an end to door-to-door and Saturday delivery. Organizers say that the financial problems that USPS is experiencing is due to a funding mandate passed by Congress in 2006 that requires the USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years in advance. This law was a product of ALEC and its Congressional members who focus on shrinking and privatizing public services. Community members are pressuring Congress to pass bills HR 3591 and S 1853 which will repeal the pre-funding mandate and protect the Postal Service.
“USPS is financially sound, the Congressional mandate to pre-pay benefits for 75 years is shackling the Post Office. This is clearly a part of Wall Street’s plan to privatize and destroy an honored institution of our community,” says Lataya Dailey, an organizer with Occupy St Johns. “The Postmaster is complicit in this plan to gut and cut our community Post Offices. We demand he resign immediately.”
Postal Employees Retreat Rights FAQS
USPS: This document contains frequently asked questions (FAQs) regarding the process and activities related to employee retreat rights. Read more
Mail Handlers To Be Offered Retirement Incentive
(May 24, 2012) After in-depth discussions between NPMHU and management officials at the headquarters level, the Postal Service is offering financial incentives during a new round of retirement and separation opportunities for most Mail Handlers.
Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by both parties on May 22, 2012, eligible Mail Handlers who choose to leave employment with the USPS on or before August 31, 2012 will each receive incentive payments totaling up to fifteen thousand dollars (for full-time employees). The MOU also provides a moratorium on excessing in all facilities until at least August 11, 2012 (unless excessing was already scheduled). This provision should eliminate excessing in some facilities that will now have vacancies due to retirements, and may provide vacancies closer to home for other employees who have to be excessed after August 11.
The monetary incentives included in the MOU will be available (with certain restrictions) to all Mail Handlers who are currently eligible for regular retirement, voluntary early retirement, and all other employees who may wish to separate from the Postal Service. Any Mail Handler wishing to participate in this retirement incentive offer must do so no later than July 2, 2012 — which date, as detailed in the MOU, is the deadline for accepting this incentive offer, and also is the deadline for revoking a submitted acceptance. Read more