Largest Postal Union Calls on Senate to Reject S. 1789 As Currently Drafted
Filed under: Congress, NALC, politics, postal, postal news, usps
WASHINGTON, March 26, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — National Association of Letter Carriers President Details Union’s Concerns about Legislation in Letter to U.S. Senators
Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), has formally called on the U.S. Senate to reject S. 1789 — the 21st Century Postal Service Act — because as currently drafted, it provides only short-term fixes. He said that while the measure “might provide resources to allow the Service to limp along for a few more years, it will not change the downward trajectory of this vital institution.”
In a letter sent today to each U.S. senator, Mr. Rolando stated, “S. 1789 appears to be based on the Postal Service’s dangerously misguided business strategy, which relies almost exclusively on reducing the quality and value of its services to households and American businesses, the main users of the mail.” He added that it risks driving away customers and thereby reducing revenues. To read the letter, click here: http://www.nalc.org/downloads/fvr_senate-letter-03262012-FINAL.pdf
Mr. Rolando said NALC has “no choice but to oppose S. 1789.”
Rather than settle for harsh and counterproductive reductions in key services as S. 1789 would do, Mr. Rolando said, “What the Postal Service needs is a business plan based on a comprehensive rethinking of the institution, one that asks for shared sacrifice from all stakeholders but also allows this vital national resource to grow and prosper in the years ahead.
“Until a plan of this nature exists, it is dangerous to advance reform legislation, particularly when the legislation will do nothing but facilitate the Postal Service’s decline,” he told senators.
Mr. Rolando noted that just last week, a USPS witness before the Postal Regulatory Commission acknowledged that a study ordered — but later stopped — by the Postal Service on its own plan for service reductions indicated that the “combined effects of all the service cuts under consideration, including the elimination of Saturday delivery (and 80,000 delivery-related jobs), would reduce mail volume by an extraordinary 10.3 percent.” The practical effect of such a drastic reduction in mail volume means that the cuts could exceed the projected savings.
NALC represents 284,000 USPS letter carriers, about a quarter of whom are military veterans.
Other key points from Mr. Rolando’s letter about the flaws in S. 1789:
It fails to adequately address the single biggest cause of the Postal Service’s recent financial distress, the mandate imposed by Congress in 2006 that the Postal Service pre-fund future retiree health insurance benefits. That mandate — required of no other government agency or private business — has cost USPS $21 billion over the past five years. It is money that could have been used to restructure USPS in light of changing economic, technological and social needs. The Senate bill would reduce that funding requirement, but “any burden at all is indefensible at a time when 150,000 jobs are at risk,” Mr. Rolando said.
It fails to let the Postal Service introduce new products and services that take full advantage of its unique “last-mile” delivery network. Nor does it provide the Postal Service flexibility to price its services appropriately.
While Mr. Rolando acknowledged that some provisions in the bill have merit, such as the return of the Postal Service’s surplus in one of its two pension plans and the limited allowance for the Postal Service to use its networks to generate new revenues (e.g., the delivery of beer and wine). Unfortunately, he said, the bill is too deeply flawed otherwise and — unless fundamentally revised — should be rejected.
SOURCE National Association of Letter Carriers
NALC Letter to Senators on S 1789
Senate will take up S. 1789 after Easter recess
Filed under: politics, postal, postal news, postal reform, usps
From the National Association of Letter Carriers:
NALC: Breaking: Senate will take up S. 1789 after Easter recess: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) announced Monday evening that the Senate would not be taking up consideration of S. 1789, the 21st Century Postal Reform Act, until sometime in mid-April after Congress’ Easter recess. Lieberman is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and one of the co-sponsors of S. 1789, along with Sens. Tom Carper (D-MA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Scott Brown (R-MA). “Thank you to the more than 50,000 NALC members who took part in Sunday’s national teleconferences,” NALC President Fredric Rolando said, “and thank you to the thousands of letter carriers and allies who, over the past two days, flooded Senate offices with calls to voice our opposition to this deeply flawed bill. It’s this unparalleled level of commitment that will help us win the fight to preserve the Postal Service for decades to come. We hope that senators will now use this extra time to carefully analyze the Service’s financial problems, so that when the Senate resumes its business after the break, it will be prepared to work on a real reform measure designed to strengthen the agency, not dismantle it.” Click here to find out how you can still contact your senators and urge them to oppose the bill in its current form.
via NALC | The National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO
NALC: Flawed Postal Reform Bill Headed to Senate Floor Next Week
From the National Association of Letter Carriers:
Flawed Senate bill on the move: An amended version of S. 1789 – which the NALC has not yet seen – appears headed to the floor of the Senate next week. Based on what little we know right now, the expectation is that the amendments still do not go far enough toward addressing the major problems we have with this deeply flawed legislation.
From the Hill:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has called the postal legislation a priority in recent weeks, filed for cloture on Thursday, setting up a Monday vote on the bill from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.).
Carper said Thursday that he welcomed Reid’s decision to move the bill to the floor, and said that Congress had to move fast to help an agency that has lost billions of dollars in recent years.
via Postal reform bill to hit Senate floor next week – The Hill’s On The Money.
NALC: New USPS data indicates proposed cuts could mean greater losses in volume, revenue
From the National Association of Letter Carriers:
March 22, 2012 — The proposed cuts in service sought by the U.S. Postal Service could result in a far-greater loss of mail volume—and thus of revenue—than postal authorities previously have disclosed, new testimony indicates.
In fact, the losses—outlined in a preliminary study commissioned by the USPS but which the agency has since kept under wraps—could outweigh any savings realized by the cuts.
The Postal Service has said that implementing slower service standards for first-class mail would cause mail volume to decline by 1.7 percent. But at the March 21 hearing of the Postal Regulatory Commission, it was disclosed that market research done by the USPS on a number of its agenda items (ending Saturday delivery, closing small post offices, degrading first-class mail service standards) produced a preliminary estimate of a dramatic 10.3 percent drop in mail volume.
The USPS said it decided to pull the plug on this study before it was completed, because the results were not “reliable” (even though it was conducted by the same outfit that did the market research for this case and for the USPS’ previous five-day case). As a result, USPS told the research firm to limit its study to the impact on mail volume of service-standard changes.
PRC Chairman Ruth Goldway observed from the bench that the results of the unfinished study suggest that if implemented, the proposed cuts might produce a death spiral for the Postal Service—in which degrading service drives customers away and reduces revenue, thus requiring still more cuts—and she requested the underlying data.
“The discussion about a death spiral that people have been talking about is validated to some degree by the response that you got there,” Goldway said. “It’s a cautionary note for us all to have, and I’m glad that this information has surfaced….”
Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said: “This substantiates our concerns that the proposed cuts are counter-productive. And it shows the need for Congress to proceed carefully as it addresses the postal financial situation, and to avoid rash cuts in service to the American people that would do more harm than good to USPS finances.
“Any changes that make the Postal Service more efficient are a good idea, but they must be part of an overall business plan for the future, not merely cuts that degrade service and drive customers away. We are still awaiting such a plan from the USPS,” Rolando said.
Two witnesses testified about the research at Wednesday’s PRC hearing. Greg Whiteman, USPS’s manager of market research, testified about the estimated 10.3 percent volume decline. He was joined in testifying about the previously undisclosed market research by Rebecca Elmore-Yalch, senior vice president at ORC International, the consulting firm that did the research.
The PRC was holding hearings for its advisory opinion about the USPS “Network Rationalization” plan to consolidate some 200 mail-processing plants and to reduce service standards as a result. Whiteman said the preliminary research showed if all of the Postal Service’s contemplated changes, including ending Saturday delivery and closing post offices were taken into account, first-class mail volumes would drop by 10.3 percent.
Questioned by PRC Vice Chairman Nancy Langley whether the Postal Service had abandoned the initial research because the results were not the ones desired, Whiteman denied that, saying instead that the data wasn’t reliable.
NALC President: Ryan budget plan is path to inequality and national decline
From the National Association of Letter Carriers:
The House Budget Committee’s proposed budget for 2013 continues the assault on federal employees by calling for a freeze on federal workers’ salaries for an additional three years and for massive cuts to retirement benefits.
“Federal workers are the heart and soul of the middle class,” NALC President Fredric V. Rolando said, “but it seems that some members of Congress are determined to keep trying to use federal workers’ pay and benefits as a sort of piggy bank to finance their budget proposals.”
Under the plan released Tuesday by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), federal employees would have their salaries frozen for three more years and would face massive cuts to the retirement benefits promised when they were hired.
“As employees of the United States Postal Service, letter carriers have earned the right to bargain collectively with our employer for our salaries, which are paid for purely by postal revenues and not by taxes,” Rolando said. “But fairly or not, the salaries of our brothers and sisters in the federal workforce often are held up as examples during our bargaining discussions, so federal pay freezes—or even cuts—could wind up having a negative effect on our own salary negotiations.
“Meanwhile, all of us rely on the federal system for our retirement benefits, either through CSRS or FERS,” he said. “Cutting those benefits not only would break a promise made to us when we were hired, forcing us to contribute more money out of our own pockets to help pay for these promised benefits they would amount to a further pay cut.”
Besides, Rolando said, the recently passed extension of the payroll tax holiday already includes a provision that requires new federal employees hired after this year to pay four times as much in retirement contributions as current employees pay.
“These newest attacks on federal workers’ pay and benefit seem to follow the example set by Congressman Dennis Ross,” Rolando said. In January, the Florida Republican introduced H.R. 3813, a measure calling for the wholesale elimination of the defined benefit pension that government workers receive under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Instead, under the Ross plan, FERS annuitants would be entitled only to the benefits earned through both Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), under the misguided notion since defined-benefit pensions are disappearing from the private sector, they should be taken away from government workers, too.
Ross has tried to attach H.R. 3813 to a number of high-profile bills, most recently a measure to reauthorize national highway-funding legislation.
The Ryan budget doubles down on the strategy outlined in last year’s GOP budget: It would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program, increase defense spending when we already spend more on the military than every other nation on earth combined, cut tax rates for corporations and the rich while phasing out tax deductions for the middle class, and massively downsizing just about everything else in the government, from the FBI and the EPA to the public education and infrastructure investments. It’s not a “path to prosperity” as Ryan claims, but a path to inequality and national decline.
“The NALC strongly opposes this or any budget plan that wraps cuts to federal workers’ pay and benefits in the mantle of ‘deficit reduction,’” Rolando said. “Federal workers—and workers in general—did not cause this country’s budget problems, yet some in Congress seem hell-bent on making federal workers pay to fix them.”
NALC: Issa continues campaign to dismantle the Postal Service
This weekend, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) continued his social media assault on the Postal Service, making a case to the American people that Congress should make the cuts to begin the process of dismantling the USPS.
Coming prepared with an arsenal of misinformation, Issa claims that his “postal reform” legislation, HR 2309, would not end collective-bargaining rights for postal employees if it passed. Rather, he is satisfied that his proposals do enough to severely limit the right to bargain collectively by including the creation of an oversight authority that would have the power to unilaterally change and nullify portions of bargained agreements.
Furthermore, Issa misleadingly declared, “USPS is not required to fund 75 years of retirement benefits in 10 years.” Yet the USPS is required to put roughly $5.5 billion per year through 2016 into a fund called the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund (PSRHBF). This fund cannot be used to pay for the cost of benefits for current retirees; rather, it would fund 80 percent of the cost of USPS retirees over the next 75 years. Forgetting the fact that there is already more than $40 billion in the PSRHBF right now—half of the total cost of retiree health benefits over the next 75 years—Issa’s misinformation campaign has one purpose: To tear apart the USPS, one piece at a time.
By focusing on cutting business and service standards, busting the postal employees’ unions and ending the trusted service provided to the American people six days a week, Issa refuses to work toward a viable future for the USPS.
The right legislative solution will empower the USPS to find new ways to make money while using existing USPS resources in every community, continuing to visit every American home and business six days a week, and providing more convenience and service to the American people.
via Issa continues campaign to dismantle the Postal Service | NALC Activist Alert
NALC: Bloomberg poll is anything but ‘In The Loop’
NALC Activist Alert
Betty Liu is an anchor of the Bloomberg cable channel show “In The Loop,” which airs weekday mornings from 8 to 10 Eastern.
On her show-related Facebook page, she sometimes posts questions for viewers and followers to answer.
Here was a recent question: “Would you forgo Sat[urday] delivery of your mail to save billions of dollars in the deficit?”
Now, if you’re the average TV viewer who sees this choice presented for the first time, you’re probably thinking that taking such a bold step to help cut a so-called deficit might be a good thing, right?
But most NALC activists would probably scratch their heads and say, “Now, wait just a second.”
It’s common knowledge that the postmaster general has asked Congress to let him eliminate a day of mail delivery service, just one of his ideas to help the Postal Service save money—even though dropping a day of delivery (probably Saturday) would amount to a 17 percent cut in service that might save at best 3 percent in costs. And that doesn’t even account for the mail business—letters and packages—that such a service reduction would likely drive away from the mail stream.
Meanwhile, there’s this to chew on: In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2012 (the period covering the last three months of 2011), the Postal Service made an operational profit of about $200 million. It announced this profit during a recent Board of Governors meeting.
However—because of the 2006 postal reform law’s unfair requirement that the Postal Service spend around $5.5 billion annually over 10 years to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of future retiree health benefits, USPS showed an overall loss of $3.3 billion in Q1 of FY2012, mainly because it was forced to put aside money toward a pre-funding payment that’s unique to the Postal Service—no other government agency or private enterprise is required by law to fully pre-fund the benefits of future employees, some of whom haven’t even been born yet. And to make that payment, it had to borrow against its line of credit from the Treasury to do it.
Now, taken at face value, the answer to Liu’s question seems a no-brainer, and that’s probably why 38 of the 41 total votes cast (at last count) were for the “yes” option. But her presented choices don’t address the Postal Service actual problem—never mind that if pre-funding were repealed, the question wouldn’t even need to be asked.
So, while it’s encouraging that more and more people are “getting it”—that the real fault behind the Postal Service’s manufactured financial crisis has just about everything to do with Congress and its unfair pre-funding mandate—polls like Liu’s show letter carrier activists that we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that our message gets out.
Fortunately, 27 senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), “get it,” which is why repealing pre-funding is at the top of the listed priorities in Sanders’ reform measure, S. 1853. Our job is to make sure that the number of our supporters in Congress builds to a critical mass so we can get the pre-funding mandate repealed, which would then allow us the breathing room to work with the Postal Service to focus on building a strong business model for a truly 21st century Postal Service.
NALC: Los Angeles Letter Carrier dies after car hits him
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that a crash pinned Branch 24 member Earl Anthony Dunn between a car and his postal vehicle on Feb. 29, killing the 32-year-old carrier. Dunn was standing behind his vehicle when the crash occurred. Police said that the driver of the car was operating the vehicle under a revoked license.
The crash follows a similar accident in Columbus, OH, in January when Branch 78 member Doug Poole was hit by an SUV while unloading mail from the rear of his postal vehicle. He is still undergoing treatment and it’s questionable whether he’ll regain the use of his legs. Friends and family have set up a fund to help the Poole family and Branch 78 has asked members to donate. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of both of these men,” NALC President Fredric V. Rolando said.
NALC: Congress might try again to use our pensions to help pay for H.R. 7
Filed under: Congress, CSRS, FERS, NALC, politics, postal, postal news
From the NALC Activist Alert:
The NALC is on high alert as we await action as early as next week on H.R. 7, The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act of 2012. Once again, it looks like the bill will be offset largely on the backs of current and future federal and postal employees. Initial reports indicate that they might use $30 billion from federal pensions hits to help pay for it.
While we have no firm details at this point on what exact hits will be included, those that have been raised include:
Current employees
- Increasing pension contributions for FERS and CSRS employees 1.5 percent over three years, starting in 2013.
- Eliminating the Social Security supplement for those who retire after 2012.
- Reducing the multiplier from 1.1 percent to 1 percent per year of service when calculating the FERS annuity for those who retire at or after age 62, cutting benefits 9 percent from the current formula. (There is no change for those who retire under age 62.)
Future employees
- Increasing pension contributions an additional 0.9 percent—this on top of the 2.3 percent that was included in the recent payroll tax extension, raising future hires from 0.8 percent to 4 percent in pension contributions.
- Moving from a high-3 average salary to a high-5.
- Using a multiplier of 0.7 percent per year of service when calculating the FERS annuity.
These provisions may change and, at this point, I am only asking that you continue to check your e-mail for action alerts as we monitor the situation. Your efforts will be critical as we move forward.
Thank you for your continued activism.
In Solidarity,
Fredric V. Rolando, President
National Association of Letter Carriers
NALC: Cutbacks and closures threaten vote-by-mail
Filed under: NALC, politics, postal, postal news, usps, vote by mail
According to an article in The Hill, lawmakers across the country are growing increasingly concerned that the cutback of delivery standards and closure of processing facilities proposed by the Postal Service could threaten vote-by-mail.
Vote-by-mail is an increasingly popular way for Americans to cast their votes. The Election Assistance Commission estimated that, in the 2010 election, about 18 million voters voted through the mail. Vote-by-mail is an essential option for middle-class Americans because it offers voters the option to cast their votes on their own time. In these tough economic times, too many Americans have to choose between exercising their right to vote and taking precious time from their jobs and families to get to the polls.
Vote-by-mail could be threatened if the plan put out by the Postal Service to change delivery standards for first-class mail and close nearly half of the processing plants across the country is implemented. Under the new delivery standards, first-class delivery would be significantly slowed and overnight delivery of first-class mail would be eliminated. This could significantly change the voting process, forcing officials to mail out ballots earlier and making it harder for voters to return their ballots by Election Day.
Concerned about these changes, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen sent a letter to the Postal Service last week asking the agency to hold off the changes at least until after the general election in November. Bowen said that, in 2011, after three processing centers closed in the state, ballots took up to seven days to arrive at some local election offices. Bowen fears what could happen if the facilities closure plan is implemented because California is slated to lose the largest number of plants—a total of 14. This could significantly affect the ballots sent via mail, which in 2010 totaled nearly 5 million in California.
The concern about the affect on vote-by-mail of these cutbacks and closures also has reached Capitol Hill. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) expressed his concerns in a statement about the effect of closing five processing plants in the Oregon, a state where votes are cast exclusively by mail. “Closing these facilities carries many unintended consequences,” Wyden said. “It is not a risk worth taking.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced S. 1853, which would address both the service standards and the closure of mail-processing facilities. His legislation would prevent the Postal Service from ending one- to three-day delivery standards for first-class mail and would make it much more difficult to close mail-processing facilities across the country. Sanders also sent a letter, signed by 27 of his fellow senators, to postal stakeholders in the Senate, expressing concern about the planned mass closure of mail-processing facilitates. The letter called for any postal legislation to protect current delivery standards for first-class mail.
To read the The Hill article, click here.
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