APWU President Issues Challenge To PMG Over Mailers Postage Discounts
APWU News
The Postal Service’s precarious financial condition has prompted APWU President William Burrus to issue a challenge to Postmaster General Potter:
Discontinue the exorbitant postage discounts that are offered to large mailers — which are currently as high as 10.5 cents per letter — and allow members of the APWU to perform all mail-processing functions at the rate of 10.4 cents for every letter and flat.
“Postal rate-setters continually defend excessive ‘worksharing discounts,’ suggesting that they are good for business,” Burrus said. “But in reality, they are subsidies for big business.
“With the economy faltering, the USPS simply cannot afford to offer giveaways,” he said. “Mail volume has declined in response to the nation’s tough economic climate, so this is a perfect time to return the work performed by private pre-sorters and mail consolidators to postal employees.”
Since the union offer would save the Postal Service one tenth of one cent on each letter and flat, the challenge is a win-win proposition, Burrus said. “I hope that the postmaster general gives it serious consideration.”
Changing the Rules
In 2006, before the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) was passed, the APWU persuaded Congress to amend the law so that it would restrict workshare discounts to amounts equivalent to “the postal cost avoided,” the union president noted.
“The Postal Service and its allies in the mailing industry waged an all-out effort to weaken this provision, and the final law was weakened by exceptions. But even the limited restrictions have come under persistent attack before the Postal Regulatory Commission during its rate-setting process,” he said.
“Facing the reality that ever-increasing workshare discounts can no longer be defended, they are working to change the criteria.”
Since 1976, the postal cost of processing bulk metered letters has been used as the benchmark for determining the USPS-cost-avoided for workshare discounts. “With the continuing efficiencies in postal processing the mailing industry is attempting to persuade the Postal Regulatory Commission, which sets rates, to abandon this 30-year old standard,” Burrus noted.
“Apparently, the mailing industry executives think they can’t win playing by the rules, so they are trying to change them.” The APWU has “intervened” in the proceedings in an effort to stave off the attempt to make the process a sham.
Advocates of Postal ‘Reform’ Attempt to Misdirect the Public’s Attention
Burrus Update
Advocates of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) — legislation that has brought the USPS to the brink of insolvency — are now asserting that labor agreements are a major contributor to the agency’s expected deficit of $7 billion in Fiscal Year 2009. Such a suggestion would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high.
The PAEA requires the USPS to make payments of more than $5 billion each year for 10 years to prefund retiree healthcare benefits during the worst recession in 70 years — a requirement no private company or federal agency bears. But rather than correct the problem, supporters of the legislation are now attempting to shift the focus from the colossal blunder: They prefer to discuss reducing mail delivery to five days per week and management strategies for employee assignments.
These subterfuges seek to shift attention from the decision to impose unreasonable costs on the Postal Service during an economic crisis that has caused mail volume to decline at historic rates. The PAEA payment schedule would have required the Postal Service to increase revenue and savings at an unreasonable rate of 7 percent per year just to avoid a deficit. No public or private entity has achieved such a high level of growth during this difficult economic environment.
To redirect the public’s focus, attention is now shifted to five-day delivery, despite the fact that in testimony before Congress the postmaster general said that no savings would be generated from five-day delivery until 2011, and even then savings would be mitigated by the cost of inviting competition on the abandoned delivery day.
The most recent distraction is a focus on the reported $50 million in costs associated with compensating employees for non-productive “standby” time. Postal management and the unions have responded to the imbalance between workers and mail volume through an agreement to offer incentives over two fiscal years to encourage employee complement reduction.
APWU proposed the use of incentives in 2007 when mail volume began its descent, but management wasted two years and thousands of hours in unproductive time before deciding to invest modest amounts today to generate major savings tomorrow. Attrition achieved through these incentives will help eliminate the imbalance between human resources and mail volume.
The creators of the deficit dilemma also seek to turn the delay in complement adjustment into evidence that postal arbitrators are to blame for workers’ job security. This ignores the history of contractual agreements between union and management on the issues of job security. Of the six instances of contract arbitration, not a single arbitrator rendered a decision that restricted the Postal Service from complement adjustment on a day-to-day basis. The arbitrated contracts were achieved through the give-and-take of free collective bargaining, including items favorable to both parties. I invite the critics of postal arbitrators to review those six arbitration decisions before arriving at faulty conclusions.
The most egregious omission in this blame game is the silence on postal rate policies that forgive postage in amounts as high as 10.5 cents per letter for mailers to perform the exact functions that would be performed by underutilized postal employees. The very workers who process mail at a cost of less than one cent per letter are replaced by 10.5 cent workshare discounts, yet pundits focus their attention on postal workers and arbitrators.
Something is wrong with this picture.
William Burrus
President