MEMPHIS, TN – (WMC-TV) – Dozens of mail trucks were stuck in South Memphis for hours Saturday afternoon with nowhere to unload.

The holiday rush nearly doubled the mail coming through at the Memphis United States Postal Service processing center.

Some drivers took cat naps as they waited to unload Christmas mail. At one point, the line to unload regional Priority Mail was three miles long.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been backed up 12 hours,” said one truck driver.

Read more: Trucks stuck for hours waiting to unload Christmas mail – Action News 5 – Memphis, Tennessee.

Unfortunately for postal workers and their customers, however, the accounting gimmicks enacted into law by Congress and the Bush Administration in 2006 require that the USPS hand that profit over to the Treasury. Not only that, but the USPS is required to borrow another $350 million from the Treasury, so that money can also be handed back to the Treasury for the so-called “trust fund” for potential future retiree health benefits.

The end result of all of this politically inspired money shuffling is that the postal service is forced to book a net loss of $139 million. From the politician’s point of view, it’s a win-win situation- each month, the gimmickry shifts another half billion dollars of the national debt “off budget”, to the USPS; and it matches the story people like Darrell Issa and Dennis Ross like to tell about bloated bureaucracies and overpaid workers.

We just can’t have a unionized government run operation making a profit, can we?

USPS Preliminary Financial Information (Unaudited).

Update on health benefits bargaining: Some media reports have inadequately described our position on health benefits. NALC has made no agreements with the Postal Service on health care for active members or retirees, either within or outside of FEHBP. We have agreed to seriously explore mutually acceptable ways to deliver high-quality health benefits at a lower cost both to the Postal Service and to its employees. No agreement will be made that does not have the support of the NALC’s membership.

via Latest News | President Rolando speaks at National Press Club.

… and there were also protesters outside:

post office | Occupy Wall Street | Occupy DC | The Daily Caller.

(This article was first published in the November/December 2011 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Postal workers are under constant attack by the forces of privatization. Unfortunately, this group includes the Postmaster General, members of the Board of Governors, some members of Congress and others.

Privatization is a clear and present danger — facility by facility, operation by operation, and job by job.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the Postmaster General for the recognition that he has earned — as an advocate of privatization of postal services.

Like so many postal workers, I am outraged that the PMG submitted legislative proposals to Congress in August that would abrogate our contract — less than four months after he signed it.

The Postal Service’s proposals seek to eliminate our protection against layoffs, and were accompanied by the announcement that the USPS planned to reduce the workforce by 220,000, and would need to lay off approximately 120,000 workers to reach that goal. The PMG also proposed to remove postal workers from the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program and federal retirement programs – which would provide a major pathway toward privatization of the Postal Service.

Yet earlier this year, the Postal Service, postal unions and management associations all recognized that we should focus our efforts on legislation that would allow the Postal Service to apply billions of dollars in pension overpayments to the congressional mandate that requires the USPS to prefund 75 years of healthcare benefits for future retirees in a 10-year period.

So what happened?

Issa’s Bill

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is what happened.

In June 2011, Rep. Issa introduced a bill (H.R 2309) that constitutes an irresponsible attack on postal workers and the Postal Service. The bill was designed to drastically reduce service to the American people by establishing a commission that would order billions of dollars worth of post office closures and facility closures within two years. This bill would enhance further contracting out of mail processing and retail services to the private sector.

The bill also would create a “solvency authority” with the power to unilaterally modify collective bargaining agreements any time the USPS defaults on “any obligation to the federal government for more than 30 days.” In addition, the board would be empowered to cut wages, abolish benefits, and end our protection against layoffs.

Furthermore, at the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreements, it would increase employees’ costs for healthcare coverage and life insurance; eliminate the right to bargain over these benefits, and allow the USPS to end Saturday delivery.
Downhill on Issa’s Bandwagon

So what about the Postmaster General? Somewhere along the road, it appears he made a right turn — downhill on Issa’ bandwagon.

The PMG’s treacherous actions against postal workers and their unions didn’t end with the proposals announced in August.

On Sept. 21, a House subcommittee approved Rep. Issa’s Postal “Destruction” Act, and on Oct. 13, the full Committee on Oversight and Government Reform passed the bill. Before each vote, Rep. Issa amended the bill to include additional provisions that are even more outrageous than those contained in the original legislation.

Unfortunately, the PMG’s fingerprints are all over the bill — which is designed to restrict collective bargaining and dismantle the United States Postal Service so that it will be ripe for privatization.

In addition to establishing a control board to carry out layoffs, the amended bill would prohibit the union and the Postal Service from negotiating protections against layoffs in the future.

The bill also would negatively affect workers who are injured on duty. It includes a provision that would cut the monthly compensation of totally disabled employees from 66.66 percent to 50 percent once they meet the age and service requirements for retirement. It also would force disabled employees to retire as soon as they are eligible.

Our Work

We have our work cut out for us. We must ensure that Congress rejects H.R. 2309.

Despite the PMG’s treachery, we must focus our efforts on saving America’s Postal Service. The first order of business is getting Congress to correct the requirement to pre-fund the healthcare benefits of future retirees, which forces the USPS to fund a 75-year liability in a period of just 10 years. The USPS must be allowed to use the billions of dollars in pension overpayments to meet its financial obligations.

Massive job cuts, reductions in service, extensive closures of post offices and mail processing facilities, and tampering with collective bargaining are unnecessary and unjustified.

Click here for news about the Sept. 27, 2011 Save America’s Postal Service rallies. Watch Fighting For Our Lives on YouTube

Sept. 27 Rallies

I would like to thank everyone who participated in the rallies on Sept. 27 to Save America’s Postal Service, especially those officers, stewards and activists who worked so hard on such short notice to organize the events. There were close to 500 rallies on the same day — at least one in nearly every congressional district in the country.

This is the first time that the four unions, the APWU, the National Association of Letter Carriers, National Postal Mail Handlers Union and National Rural Letter Carriers Association, joined together for a common cause. If we are to be successful, it cannot be the last. Even the National Association of Postal Supervisors went on record in support of the rallies.

Thanks to your efforts, more than 220 U.S. representatives are co-sponsoring H.R. 1351, the bill introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) that would allow the USPS to use pension fund overpayments to offset future retiree health care fund liabilities. Unfortunately, having a majority of representatives co-sponsor a bill is not a guarantee that it will pass – or even come up for a vote.

We are fighting for our lives, against those who would destroy us. It is crucial that APWU members stay active and participate.

Here are his remarks:

Thank you for coming here today.

My name is Fred Rolando. For 20 years, I delivered the-mail in South Florida, and for the last two years, I have had the privilege of leading a union that represents nearly 200,000 men and women who deliver letters and packages all over America.

As a long-time employee of the United States Postal Service, I would like to share with you some thoughts about how my union—the National Association of Letter Carriers—intends to deal with the very real challenges that the Postal Service faces.

There is no doubt that the Postal Service faces big problems. In fact, hearing some of what has been said, one could be forgiven for concluding that the Postal Service—while an important part of America’s past—has no real role in the country’s future.

It is seldom dangerous to steal from Mark Twain, so let me say up front that the reports of the Postal Service’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

We know the Postal Service faces very serious problems. As letter carriers, we know them better than most. But, we also know that the Postal Service, if properly restructured, can be as relevant for the 21st century as it was for the 18th, 19th and 20th. And we are prepared to work with all interested stakeholders to craft a comprehensive plan to take the Post Office from where it is—to where it needs to be.

Today I want to put forward one very large and very specific idea and point the way toward a number of other ideas that, taken together, will do just that.

Now let me be clear: Nothing that we are suggesting today requires Congress to appropriate one dime of taxpayer money to support the Postal Service. The Postal Service has not received taxpayer support since the early 1980s, and we intend to keep it that way.

But what we do ask of Congress is that—in the words of the famous Hippocratic Oath—it does no harm. We need Congress to understand that reducing and degrading our network or the services that the Postal Service provides to the American people—like going to 150 million addresses six days each week—is not the way to save the Postal Service.

Tens of millions of Americans depend on a strong Postal Service. Half the country’s monthly bills are paid through the-mail. The nation’s letter carriers still carry 170 billion pieces of mail a year. They still deliver trillions (with a “T”) of dollars per year in financial transactions. Rural communities, the elderly, and a huge percentage of Americans who do not use their computers still rely on their letter carriers.

Recklessly reducing service will irreparably damage the Postal Service’s most valuable asset—and that’s the Postal Service’s comprehensive delivery network—thus making it harder and less efficient for customers to use the-mail. Ending Saturday service or eliminating door-to-door delivery will put the Postal Service into a death spiral. It would dismantle—NOT save—America’s Postal Service.

And Congress can certainly help the Postal Service survive by undoing the grievous harm that it caused the Postal Service in 2006 when it required it to do something that no other private or public sector enterprise is required to do. In 2006, Congress insisted that each year the Postal Service use $5 billion of its precious cash flow to cover the cost of future retirees’ health care. This money could have been used to re-invest in new technology and other plans to reduce the cost of delivering the-mail, but instead this money was diverted to a fund, that while laudable, is totally unnecessary, especially under today’s conditions.

Here’s a fact: without that one requirement, the Postal Service would have broken even over four of the past five years—despite the recession and despite the decline in First Class Mail and other changes associated with the rise of the Internet.

Letter carriers are in the midst of contract negotiations with the Postal Service. Our current five-year contract was set to expire last night at midnight. For the past week, every day, every night, up to the wee hours of the morning, negotiators for the NALC and the Postal Service were hard at work. And we will be back at the bargaining table very soon – last night we agreed to extend our talks until at least December 7, 2011.

These negotiations, and our bargaining process under federal law, will produce a contract. Everyone will still get their mail, every day, on time, from their friendly letter carrier. And that new contract will recognize and deal with the new realities of postal volume and finances.

We have put forward serious and innovative proposals designed specifically to produce billions of dollars in cost reductions for the Service. We have already started to do the hard work to reinvent this public service to preserve its core function in an efficient and economically responsible way.

For example, we are negotiating a new approach to health benefits that could save the Postal Service up to $20 billion over the next ten years. These savings would derive from the adoption of best practices on disease management and wellness care, improved purchasing power for drugs and other medical services, and the sensible integration of our members’ health insurance plans with Medicare benefits, among other sources.

NALC’s decades of experience in running one of the best rated health plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program have been brought to bear in our negotiations with postal management, and the two sides have engaged broadly on reducing health care costs. We will continue to advance that engagement in the weeks ahead and look forward to successfully negotiating an historic agreement.

We are also looking to deepen the role of letter carriers in the promotion of competitive products with an enhanced commitment to our Customer Connect program that uses letter carriers to find new customers for Priority Mail, Parcel Post and Express Mail. We have also discussed the creation of an innovation task force to directly engage American businesses of all sizes to find new ideas and uses for our networks.

Let me emphasize that we are by no means opposed to creating efficiencies where they make sense for the interests of the Postal Service and its customers. But a responsible strategy under which the Postal Service would adapt to better meet society’s evolving needs is critical—not panic-driven slashing and burning that are akin to killing a patient to save it.

Beyond the bargaining table, the NALC has hired a world-renowned financial advisory firm, Lazard, and Ron Bloom, who has more than 30 years of experience restructuring major industries, and who most recently served as the Obama administration’s lead in restructuring the automobile industry. These experts will help us develop an alternative business model for the Postal Service—one that will build on the Postal Service’s last-mile strengths and grow the organization, instead of following a self-defeating path of endless downsizing.

Meanwhile, there is also now serious congressional attention on cutting the huge burden imposed by Congress in 2006. The numbers are enormous and the actuarial concepts and principles involved are complex and well beyond what we can get into here. But the basic facts are undeniable and easy to grasp.

As I mentioned earlier, the Postal Service is the only company or agency—public or private—that is required to pre-fund its future retiree health benefits. We have to fund retiree health care the way companies fund ordinary pension benefits. The 2006 law, passed at a time when the economy and the Postal Service were strong, mandated $5.5 billion annual prefunding payments for 10 years! This crushing burden, which hit the USPS just as the economy dropped off a cliff, siphoned $21 billion from postal resources, accounting for 100 percent of the Postal Service’s reported losses between 2007 and 2010. Now, as this is literally bankrupting us, we have been trying to convince Congress to reform this burden ever since.

The most practical answer to this pre-funding burden is to let the USPS use the undisputed $11-plus billion surplus in its main pension plan and the $50+ billion surplus in its other pension plan that private sector expert auditors have identified, using methods that even the General Accountability Office have acknowledged are “reasonable.” But if Congress won’t do this, it should at least repeal the pre-funding burden because the Postal Service has already set aside enough money to fund retiree health benefits for decades to come.

As I stand here before you today, this very minute, the nation’s 200,000 letter carriers are doing their daily job of delivering 560 million pieces of mail to 150 million addresses. That’s 170 billion pieces of mail a year. They are driving the Postal Service’s fleet of 200,000 vehicles. They are operating out of 17,000 postal facilities in every village, town and city in America. They are doing it for half the price of the next cheapest postal service in the world.

In other words, we are a crucial part of the nation’s economic infrastructure. The Postal Service and my members lie at the heart of a set of industries — publishing, printing, advertising, commercial distribution and related sectors — that employ 7.5 million workers, generating $1.3 trillion dollars annually. That’s 8 percent of the entire national economy.

Yes, the Internet has changed the world. And yes, e-mail has eaten into postal volume.

But huge areas of American commerce—and American citizens, especially the elderly and rural residents—depend on the last-mile delivery network of letter carriers.

The National Association of Letter Carriers is committed to saving America’s Postal Service. And we will embrace and lead the changes required for the Postal Service to remain a vital institution that will serve our nation for decades to come.

But we need to be given a chance to succeed—Congress must resist poorly thought-out and radical downsizing plans and reform the pre-funding burden.

Let me conclude with three simple messages:

To postal management, we say that the NALC is ready to work with you jointly to develop a plan that both saves on cost and taps the Postal Service’s huge potential for growth. Our proposals our ready and our doors are open.

To our leaders on Capitol Hill: Don’t recklessly eliminate crucial postal services like door-to-door and Saturday mail delivery. It will hurt the American people—especially our elderly and rural citizens, and it will do permanent harm to the Postal Service. Let us use our own funds to cover the cost of retiree health pre-funding, or let us handle these costs as it done in the private sector.

And to the American people, don’t give up on the Postal Service. Give us a chance to reinvent this valuable national treasure. Let us work together with management and the postal industry to restructure the Postal Service for the 21st Century.

In a speech delivered today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe encouraged Congress to step back and take a second look at postal reform legislation as currently drafted in the House and Senate.

Providing his first public commentary on postal reform packages, Donahoe argued for providing the Postal Service with a more flexible business model that would enable the Postal Service to quickly implement cost cutting measures. “Unfortunately, both bills have elements that delay tough decisions and impose greater constraints on our business model. Taken as they are, they do not come close to enabling cost reductions of $20 billion by 2015 – which they must do for the Postal Service to return to profitability.”

“If passed today, either bill would provide at best one year of profitability, and at least a decade of steep losses,” said Donahoe. “However, by taking the best of both the House and Senate approaches, Congress can provide the Postal Service with the legal framework and the business model it needs.”

The Postmaster General expressed his gratitude for the strong leadership and engagement of the Congress and the Administration in advancing reform legislation, and expressed confidence that an effective solution would be enacted. Both HR 2309 and S 1789 were introduced earlier this year to respond to an urgent liquidity crisis and to address long-term structural constraints in the Postal Service business model.

Throughout its recent fiscal crisis the Postal Service has advanced proposals that would allow it to operate more as a business would, with greater flexibility to quickly reduce costs and respond to a dynamic marketplace for mailing and shipping services.

The Postal Service is seeking changes in the law that would provide it with the authority to: determine delivery frequency; develop and price products quickly; control healthcare and retirement costs; rapidly realign mail processing, delivery and retail networks; operate under a streamlined governance model; and leverage its workforce with greater flexibility.

Within the constraints of its current business model, the Postal Service has aggressively cut costs, reducing the size of its workforce by 128,000 career employees and annual operating expenses by $12.5 billion over the past four years.

“America needs a Postal Service that can operate more like a business,” said Donahoe. “I have no doubt the Postal Service will endure as a great American institution. But to do so, we need to operate with a great business model.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently introduced the Postal Service Protection Act (S. 1853 [PDF]), a bill that would go a long way toward resolving the USPS financial crisis, Legislative and Political Director Myke Reid reports.

“Sen. Sanders’ bill gets at the underlying causes of the Postal Service’s dire financial situation, and outlines methods for resolving the crisis,” he said. “It offers solutions that would strengthen service and protect the network of post offices and mail processing centers.

“The network is one of the Postal Service’s greatest assets,” Reid noted. “Unfortunately, several other bills currently pending in Congress would destroy this essential component of the Postal Service and American life.”

The Postal Service Protection Act would:

Fix the Postal Service’s immediate financial crisis by allowing the USPS to recover the overpayments it made to its retiree pension funds — both the $7 billion overpayment to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and the $50 billion to $75 billion overpayment to the Civil Service Retirement System. In addition, the bill would eliminate the unique requirement that the USPS pre-fund 75 years worth of future retiree health benefits in just 10 years. No other agency or company in America is required to pre-fund these benefits.

Establish new ways to generate revenue by ending the prohibition on USPS providing non-postal services, such as providing notary services, new media services and issuance of licenses; contracting with state and local agencies to provide services; shipping wine and beer, and allowing the USPS to provide services that mail systems in many other countries provide, including digital services.

Create a blue-ribbon commission composed of entrepreneurs, representatives of labor and small businesses to provide recommendations on how the Postal Service can generate new revenue to succeed in the 21st century.

Prevent the closing of rural post offices by giving the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) binding authority to prevent closures based on the effect on the community and employees. The bill would also prohibit USPS from considering whether a post office is turning a profit when making the decision to conduct a feasibility study for closure.

Protect six-day delivery.

Protect mail-processing facilities by requiring strict standards for delivering first-class mail.

Joining Sanders as original co-sponsors of the bill were Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Tom Udall (D-NM), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Click here for a more detailed summary [PDF] of the bill.

via Sen. Sanders’ Bill Addresses USPS Crisis.

In the first place, the USPS is not nearing insolvency due to operational or market conditions. The reason it might not have enough cash to pay any of its creditors next year is the PAEA trust fund obligation- plain and simple. The Treasury is sitting on $42.5 billion in USPS profits- that’s an undeniable fact. Congress created that problem, and only Congress can fix it.

The other issue I have with viewing the situation as a bankruptcy is the fact that creditor and debtor are one and the same- the US Government. The USPS has plenty of money to pay its suppliers and employees. The debt it can’t cover is owed to the US Government. The US Postal Service, contrary to what a lot of folks seem to think, is not a “quasi-governmental” entity, nor is it a company “owned” by the US Government. It is an integral part of the US Government. The trust fund “debt”, then, is owed by one agency of the US Government to another agency of the US Government. Both agencies are, in the end, owned by the American people. The concept that one agency can force another agency to “liquidate” assets that belong to the American people to satisfy a debt owed to the American people is bizarre.

The bottom line is that the US Postal Service financial “crisis” is a political construct, not a financial one. Politicians got us where we are today, and they need to come up with a way out.

Don’t Worry About Forever Stamps in Bankruptcy | Courier Express and Postal Observer.

Dead Tree Edition: Could Forever Stamps Become Worthless? What Bankruptcy Might Mean for USPS.

Sen. Lieberman: “This is yet more confirmation of what we already know: the Postal Service is in such deep financial trouble that mail delivery would be disrupted sometime next year unless bold action is taken. Senators Collins, Carper, Brown, and I have proposed bold reforms in our 21st Century Postal Service Act, which was approved by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week. I urge my colleagues to support our bill as a last ditch effort to save this valuable national asset upon which millions of people and businesses rely every day.”

Sen. Collins: “It’s no surprise the red ink continues to flood the U.S. Postal Service. Absent action, it won’t be able to meet its payroll a year from now. The Postal Service is the linchpin of a $1.1 trillion mailing and mail-related industry that employs approximately 8.7 million Americans in fields as diverse as direct mail, printing, catalog companies, and paper manufacturing. It literally won’t survive without legislative and administrative reforms. That’s why the bipartisan bill passed by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee represents a huge step forward toward giving the Postal Service the authority it needs to restructure, modernize, survive, and thrive. I’m hopeful that this bipartisan compromise legislation will move swiftly through the Senate.”

Sen. Carper: “I have been saying for some time now that Congress needs to come together on a plan that can save the Postal Service and protect the more than eight million jobs that rely on it. Last week, we took an important step in our effort to reform the Postal Service by passing the bipartisan 21st Century Postal Service Act (S.1789) out of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Today’s report again underscores the urgency of this situation. But while the situation is dire, it is not hopeless. That is why we need to pass this bipartisan and comprehensive bill – the only bipartisan proposal from Members in either Chamber – as soon as possible. It is my hope that Congress and the Administration can come together on this plan in order to save the Postal Service before it’s too late.”

Sen. Brown: “Combined with losses from previous years, it is clear that the Postal Service faces a significant risk of being insolvent by next year. Congress will need to act soon to address some of the major financial challenges the Postal Service is facing. The 21st Century Postal Service Act is ready to head to the floor and it’s my hope that it will be called up as soon as possible, so that we can begin to put the Postal Service on a path towards financial solvency.”