The Inside OSHA Newsletter reports that “Industry and union stakeholders are sharply divided over an unprecedented move by the Department of Labor calling for the U.S. Postal Service USPS to fix electrical violations at 350 facilities, as it is the first time that DOL has executed such an enterprise-wide effort and could portend the way it responds to such findings in the future.”

Not surprisingly, the newsletter says reaction broke down on labor vs. management lines: “Union officials lauded the action. A union source said that taking action on a broad basis is positive and employers with multiple locations should be dealing with safety and health concerns at all of them. She noted that OSHA has taken related action through corporate-wide settlements.”

Meanwhile, an industry lawyer

questioned the legality of DOL’s “ground-breaking” move. “One of the touchstones of the OSHA statute is that OSHA can cite what it sees,” he said. Though OSHA found the hazard in multiple USPS facilities, it hasn’t seen it in all 350 against which the order has been issued. As a result, the industry attorney said he thinks the DOL action is problematic, from a legal perspective… Furthermore, he noted that the action couldn’t have been taken without the USPS contesting the violation. “It’s a penalty for contesting — for exercising your legitimate due process rights,” he said.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Brenda Powell feels she’s been violated not once, but twice. First, by the US Postal worker who sexually assaulted her on the job. And then, by the US Postal service that failed to protect her from an employee with a history of inappropriate sexual behavior.

Brenda says USPS "allowed him to do what he did, time after time after time."

Full story: Postal worker convicted of assault was accused before – KDVR.

Senator Susan Collins, the principal author of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) has told mailers that the US Postal Service is not entitled to an emergency rate increase under the terms of that law. In a letter to the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a mailing industry lobbying group, Collins said:

I agree…that the exigent rate case filing is not justified under the terms of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). Rather than help restore postal solvency, an exigent rate increase will worsen the decline in mail volume and revenues. I have expressed repeatedly my strong concerns to the Postal Service that reducing service and increasing prices are not the means to raise mail volume and restore fiscal balance. In fact, these steps are likely to erode further the Postal Service’s customer base. Raising the rates for catalogs by more than five percent will cause some businesses to reduce their mailings and to direct more of their customers to websites for information about their products. This is exactly the wrong direction, and the Postal Service should be looking at initiatives that will increase volume, not drive it away.

I recognize that pricing increases have a considerable impact on your businesses. This is why I included mechanisms in the PAEA to help provide predictability and stability to pricing. Specifically, the PAEA provided the Postal Service pricing flexibility while requiring, for market-dominant products, that the Postal Service live within an inflation-based rate cap. These protections were designed to promote increased demand from the mailing community and to support long-term planning.

…

As the author of the PAEA, I can unequivocally state that the law does not provide for an exigent rate case based merely on poor economic circumstances or on increased utilization of electronic or other alternatives to traditional mail. Neither of these circumstances are exceptional nor extraordinary as required by the law. As then-Postal Rate Commission Chairman George Omas stated in a hearing before the Committee on Governmental Affairs in 2004, "…exigent increases are limited to extraordinary circumstances, and are not appropriate simply because revenues are misestimated or cost reduction programs are not as successful as planned. These types of events are normal in business, and postal management must be expected to adjust to normal business fluctuations." The PAEA adopted this standard.

via PostCom: Postal News and Information from Around the World.

Washington, DC, July 26, 2010 — The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the DMA Nonprofit Federation (DMANF) today asked the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to dismiss the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) request to increase postal rates by ten times the rate permissible by law. The petition was filed by the Affordable Mail Alliance, of which the Direct Marketing Association and the DMA Nonprofit Federation are supporting members. The Affordable Mail Alliance’s members are commercial and nonprofit organizations. Commercial mail accounts for 85 percent of the Postal Service’s revenues.

The Postal Service seeks to raise prices by an average of 5.6 percent — more than ten times the current rate of inflation — claiming as “exigent” circumstances the recession of 2008-2009 and electronic diversion of First-class mail. This action by USPS comes just three years after Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006, which was supposed to prevent rate increases that exceed the rate of inflation. USPS claims that there are “exigent circumstances” that necessitate an increase, and that one of those circumstances is the shift of mail to the Internet.

The motion filed by the Affordable Mail Alliance asserts that “the Postal Service’s most fundamental problem is not the Internet, or the recession, but a lack of effective cost control.”

“Businesses across the country have had to make difficult decisions due to the recent recession – tightening their belts, increasing productivity and in some cases, cutting their workforces as their revenue fell by 20 percent or more,” said Jerry Cerasale, DMA’s senior vice president of government affairs. “Because of this highly efficient management, many of those same businesses – including UPS and FedEx – have managed to return to profitability within a quarter or two. The Postal Service has not taken the same difficult steps. Instead, its unit costs rose by six percent in 2009 as prices fell across the economy. The Service has a lot more work to do to bring their costs under control before turning to its customers for yet another rate increase.”

In the motion, the Alliance holds that “raising prices above the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in this case would nullify the single most important safeguard for mailers and the public in PAEA. If the increases are approved, the central regulatory constraint of PAEA will be dead.”

Cerasale also said, “The things that Congress envisioned as ‘exigent circumstances’ were events like September 11th, Katrina, or the anthrax crisis. Mail shifting to the Internet and the economic downturn just don’t rise to the same level as those other events.”

The Affordable Mail Alliance includes charities, large and small businesses, American household names and the customers who use the Post Office every day – customers that will suffer if USPS successfully raises rates again.

For more information or to speak with a representative from the Affordable Mail Alliance, please visit www.affordablemailalliance.org.

ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta police say a supervisor at a bulk mail center was stabbed and a co-worker is under arrest.

Police say the attack took place about midnight Sunday.

Full story: Atlanta postal supervisor stabbed, hospitalized : News : WFXL Fox 31.

It’s not just letters, bills or greeting cards that Joan Sherman of Ronan brings to her postal customers on her daily 110-mile jaunt through rural Lake County. Try checks from cattle sales, prescription medicines, parts for farming equipment — even live chicks once.

She won’t be making those deliveries on Saturdays anymore if the U.S. Postal Service has its way.

Full story: Plan to scrap Saturday mail delivering angst | greatfallstribune.com | Great Falls Tribune.

Click here to download this week’s podcast, or click the play button below to listen online. [audio:http://postcom.org/postalweek/07.23.10.twip.mp3]
Previous podcasts in the series are at thisweekinpostal.info.

HOUSTON – It was the story of a U.S. Postal worker turned bandit.

Rodney Niel Harvey, 35, pleaded guilty to stealing public money back in June 3.

The former letter carrier was arrested following an investigation into a robbery at the Roy Royall Postal Station in the 4200 block of West Little York.

Full story: Letter Carrier Pleads Guilty to Stealing Public Money.

FRANKLIN (SOMERSET) — A former letter carrier was placed Friday on two years probation on a charge of having drugs in a Postal Service truck.

Calling it “one of the most bizarre stories” he has heard, Superior Court Judge John Pursel also ordered 48-year-old township resident Carelesta Blount to perform 75 hours of community service.

Pursel said the case reminded him of the lyrics of “Casey Jones,” a Grateful Dead song, “Driving the train, high on cocaine.”

Blount was arrested Feb. 20 after members of the Franklin Township Police Crime Suppression Unit saw Blount receive heroin from township resident George M. Jackson, 56, while she was in the Postal Service truck near the intersection of Matilda Avenue and Phillips Road, authorities said.

Full story: Former Franklin letter carrier given probation for drugs on Postal truck | mycentraljersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com.

Federal investigators said Friday that a former postal clerk in the Rutland office has been indicted in the rash of mail thefts reported in the area earlier this year.

A federal grand jury handed down a one-count indictment Thursday charging that Michelle Donahoe “intentionally embezzled letters, mail and articles contained therein” over a four-month period in 2009.

A dozen people contacted the Rutland Herald in March saying they got letters from the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General telling them mail they sent was found in the possession of “someone other than your address.” The reports frequently accompanied stories of missing greeting cards and holiday checks, though nobody described a missing check being cashed.

Full story: Former Rutland postal clerk charged with mail theft: Rutland Herald Online.