America’s message to Congress: We want first-rate mail delivery service, six days a week
Yesterday, NALC President Fredric Rolando formally welcomed members of both chambers of Congress back to Washington for the second session of the 112th Congress. Both the House and Senate have legislation pending before them that could shape the future of the United States Postal Service.
The American people want Congress to take action to save the service network. As President Rolando states in his letter, Congress should take action to “strengthen and build the Postal Service, not weaken and slowly destroy it.” As Congress debates the future of the Postal Service, it should pause and take into account the will of the people. More than 1 million Americans signed an open letter to their senators and representatives urging them to preserve six-day mail delivery service. Read more
Letter and Rural Carriers Collect One Million Signatures to Save 6-Day Delivery
In October, members of the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association were asked to collect signatures in support of protecting the future of the United States Postal Service—and you have delivered.
From active and retired letter carriers, from big cities to small towns, more than 1 million signatures have been collected.
The message is clear: Americans support first-rate mail delivery service, six days a week, and they will do everything they can to protect it.
By reaching this goal, it is our hope that it will help prevent passage of two major bills pending before Congress that are designed to dismantle the Postal Service—H.R. 2309 and S. 1789. Read more
NALC Video Ad: Letter Carrier veterans—Their service never ended
Neither should yours.
About one-quarter of letter carriers have served in the military. Your carrier might be one of them.
Of the 280,000 members of the National Association of Letter Carriers, about 70,000 are veterans of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or Coast Guard, including recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This Veterans Day, the NALC recognizes these brave men and women for the vital service they have provided—and continue to provide as letter carriers.
“Six days a week,” NALC President Fredric Rolando said, “letter carriers help bind this vast country together while also unifying individual communities, serving the needs of small businesses that provide two-thirds of new jobs and helping residents keep in touch with loved ones.” Read more
Republican Congressman Re-Introduces Resolution to Continue 6-Day Delivery
Congressman Samuel Graves (R-MO) re-introduced a resolution yesterday calling for the continuation of 6-day delivery. Rep Graves introduced the same resolution , H. Res 173, in February 2009 to continue 6-day delivery. Although adoption of the measure would not create new law, it would send a strong signal that lawmakers oppose the elimination of Saturday delivery. The House resolution is a non-binding measure.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
March 2, 2011
Mr. GRAVES of Missouri submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Postal Service should take all appropriate measures to ensure the continuation of its 6-day mail delivery service.
Whereas the United States Postal Service has announced that it may need to reduce the frequency of its mail delivery service from 6 days a week to 5 days a week;
Whereas 6-day mail delivery service is an essential service that the American people have relied on since 1912, particularly working families that depend on the Postal Service for the timely delivery of their paychecks;
Whereas Social Security is the primary or sole source of income for many senior citizens, and any delay in the delivery of their Social Security checks would make it difficult for them to purchase even essential items, such as food and medicine; and
Whereas reducing mail delivery service to 5 days a week would inevitably cause not only delays in the delivery of mail, but higher postal costs, due to the many hours of additional overtime that the Postal Service would require in order to handle the resulting back-up of mail: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Postal Service should take all appropriate measures to ensure the continuation of its 6-day mail delivery service.
AFL-CIO Adopts Resolution To Save Saturday Mail Service
APWU Web News Article 079-2010, Aug. 5, 2010
The AFL-CIO adopted a resolution written by the APWU in support of retaining six-day mail delivery at its Aug. 4 Executive Council meeting. The motion to adopt the resolution expresses the labor movement’s opposition to the USPS proposal to eliminate Saturday delivery.
APWU President William Burrus urged the Executive Council to endorse the resolution and to go on record as “supporting the preservation of six days of postal services per week.”
“Denying Americans six days of mail delivery will weaken their confidence in the [Postal Service’s] ability to meet their personal and business needs and lead to the ultimate demise of this important government service,” the resolution states.
The motion to Save Saturday Servicewas unanimously adopted by the council, which is comprised of leaders from the 56 labor unions governed by the AFL-CIO.
source: AFL-CIO Adopts Resolution to Save Saturday Service.
PMG Potter’s Response To White House On Pilot Test For Five-Day Delivery
Excerpts from PMG John Potter letter regarding Pilot test on Five-Day Delivery:
From an operational standpoint a pilot test conducted on a regional basis would increase some of our costs in the short term. For example, we either would have to make manual changes to mail processing sorting schemes and payroll or utilize information technology to program such changes for a limited time or geographic area. We believe that our information technology programming changes, estimated to cost $10 million-$12 million for a national, full-time implementation, would grow significantly to accommodate a test, as would administrative costs if we decided to forego programming changes in favor of performing manual processing for the defined test period. We also would have to communicate the pilot’s parameters to the public and employees. During such a test we would be unable to make the permanent, necessary changes to our delivery workforce, transportation networks, and mail processing operations that would yield the projected $3.1 billion savings. The largest financial impact of a pilot would be the fact that many career employees in the pilot area would have to be paid not to work or be relocated, white many of our non-career and part-time employees would see their wages reduced or eliminated. Any savings in wages that the Postal Service would realize during the test would immediately disappear at the test’s conclusion.
It may be helpful for me to offer a distinct example of the internal challenges that a test would present. In City Letter Carrier operations, full -time, regular City Carriers generally are assigned to a single delivery route that they service five days per week. These Carriers are scheduled to have Sunday off as well as one other day of the week. A category of full-time Carriers, known as Carrier Technicians. also are scheduled to work five days per week; but instead of servicing the same route each day, they cover the day off- and the route–of five different carriers. The five-day delivery proposal anticipates the reduction of approximately 25,000 full-time City Carrier assignments and $2.2 billion in annual savings in City Carrier operations. The savings are generated primarily by the fact that under a five-day delivery model, regular Carriers assigned to a single route would have Saturday and Sunday off, eliminating the need for the Carrier Technician and Relief Carrier assignments. We plan to transition full-time Carrier Technician assignments into Carrier positions (that cover a single route) that become available through attrition (a significant percentage of our current workforce is eligible for retirement between now and 2014). Under a pilot test we would be unable to carry out this Carrier alignment, and during the test itself, we would have a surplus of Letter Carriers for whom we would have to find productive work within their craft, and if unsuccessful, pay them to perform no work because our contract with the National Association of Letter Carriers guarantees full-time, regular Carriers a 40-hour work week. Under our national proposal for five-day delivery we Intend to preserve the employment of our career City Carriers.
read letter from Postmaster General John Potter submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission
Black Postal Workers Brace For Proposed Cuts
From National Public Radio:
For decades, the U.S. Postal Service has provided many communities of color with a reliable career option with steady benefits. But proposed budget and service cuts — including eliminating Saturday deliveries — threaten the livelihoods of many career postal workers. To get a sense of how communities of color will be affected by these proposed cuts, host Michel Martin speaks with William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union. Also joining the discussion is Philip Rubio, the author of There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice and Equality. click here to listen to the story
City Carrier Work Years and Workhours, by Employee Type FY 2009
The Postal Regulatory Commision requested that USPS provide the following:
For each of the city carrier employee types indicated in Attachment 1 of USPS-T-7, please provide the distribution of total city carrier work years, indicated in the third column of the first table, by day of the week, for FY 2009.
Here are the charts:
USPS RESPONSE:
Time and Attendance Collection System (TACS) data for FY 2009 were obtained for the city carrier employee types listed below to determine the percentage of workhours by day of week, as shown in Table 1 on the next sheet. These percentages are applied to the “Work Year” and “Total FY Workhours” data
below (which is from my testimony, USPS-T-7, Attachment 1, page 2) and are reported in Tables 2 and Table 3 respectively.
Schedule of PRC Hearings On USPS Request for Rate Increase and 5-Day Delivery
Filed under: mail delivery, postal, postal news, rate increase, usps
From the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC)
Schedule for Hearings on Postage Rate Increase
HEARINGS in Docket N2010-1:
July 14 at 9:30 am …
July 16 at 9:30 am …
July 20 at 9:30 am …
July 21 at 9:30 am
July 22 at 9:30 am /
Five-Day Delivery Would Mean 40,000-50,000 Fewer Letter Carriers
The least painful option
Al DeSarro, spokesman for the western area of the United States Postal Service, said surveys show that elimination of Saturday mail delivery is by far the most favored option for trimming the post office’s losses
Cutting Saturday delivery also wouldn’t be the first time the agency has tried that option. Back in 1957, according to CNN.com, the postmaster general implemented five-day service — but the change lasted just one Saturday. Public furor was so great that additional funding was immediately allocated and mail was delivered the very next Saturday.”
Down the road, and we’re talking years from now, we won’t need as many carriers because we won’t have to support that sixth-day delivery,” “It’s estimated that probably between 40,000 and 50,000 fewer carrier positions nationwide will be needed.”