NALC agrees with Mail Handlers: Collins is misinterpreting PAEA
Tha National Association of Letter Carriers, in comments filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission, agrees with the Mailhandlers Union in suggesting that Maine Senator Susan Collins is misinterpreting the postal reform law she helped to write. The union points to a letter Collins attached to her comments discussing the possible grounds for an exigent rate increase”
The letter cited “terrorist attacks” as an example of an event whose impact on mail volume could qualify under the statute as an exigent circumstance. In her comment, Senator Collins now explicitly embraces the idea that “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, or the anthrax attacks later that year could serve as the basis for an exigent rate case.”
The September 11, 2001 and anthrax attacks, as horrific as they were, caused a drop in mail volume of no more than 2.2%. The drop in mail volume that USPS has experienced since the onset of the current economic crisis has been nearly ten times worse: a 20.1% decline from first quarter FY 2007 through second quarter FY 2010. If the September 11, 2001 and anthrax attacks, which caused a 2.2% decline in mail volume, qualify as exigencies, certainly events producing a mail volume decline ten times deeper must qualify as well.
The union also take issue with comments filed by the Alliance for Affordable Mail, that argued that “current circumstances cannot qualify as an exigency because, it claims, USPS’s private-sector competitors weathered the economic storm while USPS, burdened by purportedly above-market labor costs and other inefficiencies, has floundered.” The NALC responded:
This argument ignores the fact that, unlike USPS, its private-sector competitors have no universal service obligation nor do they bear the unique burden of having to pre-fund retiree health benefits.4 Moreover, AMA’s argument is based on highly contested assertions that raise issues that are beyond the scope of the instant rate proceeding and unsupported by anything in the evidentiary record in this case. For example, AMA’s assertion that USPS pays wages above wages paid for comparable work in the private-sector, see AMA Comment at 30-31, raises complex legal and economic issues regarding the meaning and application of the comparability standard in the Postal Reorganization Act (“PRA”).
NALC and its economic experts have argued elsewhere that proper application of the comparability standard requires comparing letter carrier pay to the pay of employees in large, comparable firms such as employees of other parcel delivery enterprises — not, as others have argued, to the pay of all employees throughout the private-sector. In any event, the legislative history makes clear that the comparability standard leaves ample room for differences over how it is to be interpreted and applied and that such differences are to be worked out in collective bargaining between USPS and the postal unions or, failing that, in interest arbitration. That comparability is beyond the Commission’s purview is only confirmed by Congress’ never having considered, let alone enacted into law, the recommendation expressly made in 2003 by the Presidential Commission on USPS that the Postal Regulatory Commission be authorized to determine comparability.
