[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that, in his role as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (FSGG), he has inserted language in the committee’s annual appropriations bill that would help protect jobs at the Processing and Distribution Annex in Quincy, Illinois and ensure community involvement in the study regarding consolidation and closure of the facility. The legislation was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee and awaits a vote by the full Senate. Read the rest of this entry »
Postcom has published what appears to be the outline of the Obama Administration’s postal reform package:
The Administration recognizes the enormous value of the U.S.Postal Service (USPS) to the Nation’s commerce and communications, as well as the urgent need for reform to ensure its future viability. USPS faces a long-term, structural operating deficit that has been exacerbated by the precipitous drop in mail volume in the last few years due to the economic crisis and the continuing shift toward electronic communication. Absent legislative intervention, USPS will be insolvent by the end of September 2011 when it will be unable to make the statutory $5.5 billion Retiree Health Benefit prefunding payment to the Office of Personnel Management, will have exhausted its cash reserves, and will have hit its cumulative statutory Treasury borrowing ceiling of $15 billion. Bold action is needed to ensure that USPS can continue to operate in the short-run and achieve viability in the long-run. To that end, the President is proposing a comprehensive reform package that would:
1) restructure Retiree Health Benefit pre-funding in order to accelerate moving these Postal payments to an accruing cost basis and reduce near-year Postal payments;
2) provide USPS with a refund over two years of the $6.9 billion surplus in Postal contributions to the FERS program;
3) reduce USPS operating costs by giving USPS authority, which it has said it will exercise, to reduce mail delivery from six days to five days;
4) allow USPS to offer non-postal products and increase collaboration with State and local governments; and
5) give USPS the ability to better align the costs of postage with the costs of mail delivery while still operating within the current price cap, and permit USPS to seek the modest one-time increase in postage rates it proposed a year ago.
These reforms would provide USPS with over $20 billion in cash relief over the next several years and in total would reduce the Federal deficit by $19 billion over 10 years.
Source: Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service
The APWU has launched Phase 2 of its television ad campaign, in conjunction with the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, APWU President Cliff Guffey announced. Spots will air on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. The ad will run for approximately two months.
This APWU TV ad will air on CNN, MSNBC and Fox.
The ad is designed to explain – in just 30 seconds – the true cause of the Postal Service’s financial crisis.“The Postal Service has been recording financial losses, but not for the reasons you might think,” the ad says. It quickly identifies the problem – a 2006 law that imposes a $5 billion annual burden on the Postal Service that no other agency or company bears. At the same time, the Postal Service is forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts, it says.
The ad concludes with a simple message, “Congress created this problem, and Congress can fix it.”
“The USPS’s difficulties have gotten the attention of legislators and the news media,” Guffey said. “But, unfortunately, the cause of the problem is frequently misunderstood. It is crucial that we tell the real story.”
The ad is intended to help win support for legislation that would address the Postal Service’s crisis. H.R. 1351, which was introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), would do that, Guffey said, without cutting pay, reducing benefits, eliminating collective bargaining rights, or slashing service. It has more than 200 co-sponsors.
However, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has blocked consideration of H.R. 1351. Instead, he introduced H.R. 2309, which would be devastating for the Postal Service, the American people, and postal employees, Guffey said. Rep. Issa’s bill would order $1 billion worth of post office closures in the first year and $1 billion worth of facility closures in the second year. It also would empower a board to unilaterally cut wages, abolish benefits, and end protection against layoffs.
In addition to the ad campaign, the postal unions have joined forces in an effort to Save America’s Postal Service. Rallies are set for Sept. 27 in every congressional district. For more information, visit www.apwu.org or SaveAmericasPostalService.org.
From the National Association of Postal Supervisors:
Today the Postal Service formally announced that they would be conducting a study of the current mail processing network with the goal of eliminating about half of the processing facilities in the distribution network.
National Association of Postal Supervisors President Louis Atkins stated that “the current processing network employed by the Postal Service provides for overnight delivery of First Class Mail in virtually every corner of the country.
Today, if you mail a letter across town or to a destination that is within a distance of 60 miles or so from the point where you mailed your letter, that letter will be delivered the next day. The Postal Service measures their performance on this delivery and this year they are delivering this type of mail on time at a 96.3% success rate”. This important overnight service will be lost if the Postal Service’s plans are implemented to drastically cut the network capabilities they now have in place.
Atkins added: “We are now in this financial crisis because the Postal Service has a requirement to pre-fund future retiree health benefits in a plan that is so bizarre that they are actually setting money aside for employees who will retire seventy-five years in the future. We are setting aside funds for people’s retirement that are not even born yet! ”.
Many employee groups and the mailing community have pointed out that the Postal Service has been overpaying both of the retirement systems that provide annuities to postal employees to the tune of $55 to $75 billion dollars. Those within the postal community have sought to have these overpayments used to satisfy the pre-funding requirements that were mandated by the last Postal Reorganization Bill that was passed in 2006.
Because of stalled legislation in the United States Congress that could easily correct the current financial struggles of the Postal Service, they have had to resort to making drastic reductions in the number of post offices and other operational changes to try to balance the costs of running the Post Office in line with revenue.
Atkins, who was a career postal employee and former postal manager, is sympathetic to the dilemma facing the Postal Service. He understands that no one in the leadership of the Postal Service relishes the idea of dismantling the institution that has served this country, even before the country was founded.
“Since the Congress cannot take the responsibility that they have to resolve this serious problem, the Postal Service is attempting to do it on their own. We have already cut 1,000’s of positions and closed administrative offices, all of which did not affect the customer. These changes will be the first to be directly felt by the mailing community and the American public”, said Atkins.
Congress could resolve this problem by passing HR 1351, a bill that has already received wide support from both democrats and some republicans. Atkins stated that the Postal Service is an American institution that works for all Americans and there should be bi-partisan support in
the Congress to keep the Postal Service in good health.
NAPS members will be joining with the members of the four major employee unions on September 27th to highlight our mutual efforts to convince the Congress to pass HR 1351 in this session of Congress. NAPS members, along with the employees they manage, will be making personal visits to local offices of every member of the Congress to deliver petitions and the message to act immediately on the passage of HR 1351
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On Wednesday, Sept. 21, in Tampa, FL, Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Donahoe will salute more than 80,000 members of the Postal Customer Council (PCC) on the organization’s golden anniversary. The PCC was formed 50 years ago to help build cooperation and communication between the Postal Service and business mailers.
At 12 noon, ET, more than 160 PCC organizations across the country will host local events to tune in and hear Donahoe’s remarks — live by satellite. Participants also will hear about new postal products and services and the revamped Postal Service website, usps.com — all designed to make it easier for customers to do business with USPS.
A much-anticipated highlight of the annual event will be the awards presentation, which will recognize outstanding achievements of PCCs around the country in categories including Industry Member of the Year, Education Program Excellence and the new Business Partner of the Year.
New York, NY, September 15, 2011 – In the face of the financial crisis that the United States Postal Service is facing, the New York Metro Area Postal Union, APWU, AFL-CIO, led by President Clarice Torrence, has called upon the Postmaster General and CEO of the United States Postal Service, Patrick R. Donahoe, to step down from his position immediately. If Postmaster General Donahoe refuses to resign, the union calls upon the Postal Board of Governors to fire him.
Postmaster Donahoe took the oath of office as the 73rd Postmaster General of the United States on January 14, 2011 after having been appointed to the position by the Board of Governors on December 7, 2010. He had served as Deputy Postmaster General under Postmaster General Potter since 2005. In April of this year, Donahoe successfully negotiated a new four-year collective bargaining agreement with the American Postal Workers Union. Donahoe praised the agreement, “We worked together to negotiate a responsible agreement that is in the best interest of our customers, our employees and the future of the Postal Service.” He took credit for the agreement which he claimed would save the USPS $3.8 billion in labor costs. Less than three months after the agreement was signed, Donahoe called upon Congress to nullify part of the contract to allow him to layoff 120,000 postal workers.
The New York Metro Area Postal Union concludes from his actions that Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is either a well-meaning incompetent or a duplicitous agent of forces who actively want to destroy the Postal Service and have it privatized. Whichever case is true, Donahoe is violating his oath of office and failing to meet the requirements of his position to be responsible for the overall operation of the Postal Service. Donahoe has contracts remaining to be negotiated with the three remaining postal unions. NYMAPU questions how the other postal unions can bargain in good faith with Postmaster Donahoe after his actions following the contract with the APWU.
New York Metro Area Postal Union is also calling for an independent investigation into the unprecedented sweetheart retirement package that was given to Donahoe’s predecessor, former Postmaster John E. Potter. Potter stepped down on December 3, 2010. He was retiring with $3.1 million in pension benefits accumulated during his 32 year career. Potter was also able to use a separate pension established for him by the Postal Board of Governors in 2001 based on performance goals that was worth $1.35 million when it was frozen in 2007 in favor of direct performance incentives. Potter’s base salary in 2010 was $273,296 but he had already built up $881,000 in deferred compensation in awards and incentives that he could draw out in annual installments once retired.
If the Postal Service is in such dire straights, as is being reflected by Postmaster Donahoe’s recent testimony, there needs to be an investigation into why former Postmaster Potter received such elaborate performance bonuses and awards in his retirement package while leaving the Postal Service on the brink of failure.
It is the position of the New York Metro Area Postal Union that the current financial crisis in the Postal Service is caused by mandates imposed by Congress in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act and the overpayments into the CSRS and FERS retirement plans that have been expropriated from the Postal Service by the Treasury. H.R. 1351 introduced by Representative Stephen Lynch will correct those inequities and enable the Postal Service to carry out its functions without closing post offices, cutting back on delivery and eliminating hundreds of thousands of living wage jobs in the middle of a recession.
WASHINGTON – Today, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the U.S. Postal Service, released the following statement on the U.S. Postal Service’s announcement regarding changes to its distribution network:
"Obviously I am deeply saddened to learn that the Hares Corner processing center in Delaware has been included in the U.S. Postal Service’s list of nearly 250 distribution centers around the country – including two others in our region – that will be studied for closure. It is painful any time the possibility emerges that a community could lose a postal facility – be it a post office or a distribution center – and I know that communities in Delaware and around the country are struggling with the ramifications of the Postal Service’s proposals.
"Like the recently released list of 3,700 post offices also being studied for closure, today’s announcement is just the start of an official process that must be reviewed by both the Postal Service and the Postal Regulatory Commission. This review process involves a public comment period and additional studies on the impact this decision could have on the affected community before it can move forward. I will be following the review process closely to ensure that it is transparent and fair to employees and customers – both business and residential – in Delaware that depend on the Hares Corner facility.
"Today’s announcement is part of an ongoing effort by the Postal Service to streamline its business operations to reflect reduced demands for its services. This dramatic step of proposing to close hundreds of distribution centers around the country underscores again the very dire financial challenges it faces. The hard truth is that, if nothing is done, the Postal Service is going to lose $10 billion this year. Congress and the Administration must act quickly to help the Postal Service save itself. Failure to act will result in the Postal Service being insolvent within a year, if not sooner, bringing more pain to communities across the country and wreaking havoc on our already fragile economy."
The Direct Marketing Association today sent a letter to its members urging them to call on Congress to allow the US Postal Service to renege on the contracts it has negotiated with its employees.
The only way to ensure that the Mail remains a viable marketing channel is for Congress to remove USPS’ shackles and let it operate as a real business. The Postmaster General has lots of ideas about how to put USPS on the right track while keeping the Mail affordable for your business. All he needs is the authority to make those changes.
The Postmaster General’s “ideas” include ignoring the no-layoff clause he agreed to just a few months ago, and eliminating federal health and pension benefits for postal workers.
Ironically, the DMA claims to be concerned about jobs, saying “This is not the time to lose American jobs.”
That concern apparently doesn’t extend to the jobs of postal workers.
Update: The DMA’s Jerry Cerasale posted the following comment in response to our story:
For full disclosure, I am a Senior Vice President at DMA. The article makes an incorrect conclusion. DMA did not call for the abrogation of union contracts. The DMA call to action says to “remove USPS’ shackles and let it operate as a real business. I don’t recall that real businesses can “throw out union contracts.”
The Postmaster General (PMG) has asked for authority to help him avoid insolvency for the USPS. He needs the tools that private sector CEOs have to control pension and health care costs their employees and retirees, and to eliminate excess capacity in mail processing plants, retail outlets and employee complement.
Congress should grant the PMG’s request. It is vital that the USPS eliminate its excess capacity because its customers – including my company – cannot afford to continue paying for that excess capacity in light of shrinking mail volume.
The PMG’s request was very specific: “Allow the Postal Service to establish its own health benefits program, Allow the Postal Service to administer its own retirement system, Give the Postal Service the ability to adjust the size of its workforce to match operational needs and the changing marketplace.”
All of those items are covered by provisions in the contracts the USPS has with its unions, including the APWU contract that is just a few months old. The PMG isn’t asking the unions to renogotiate the contracts- he’s asking Congress to throw them out. How can you say “Congress should grant the PMG’s request”, and then turn around and say you’re not calling for the abrogation of union contracts?
