...Beaverton Post Office contracts out mail delivery service
(From Page 1)
the Arbor Parc Bethany contract was
advertised on Craigslist, and no quali-
fied contractors stepped forward.
When USPS started getting calls from
several newspapers, management
asked supervisors if they knew anyone
who could deliver the route. On March
9, USPS signed a 120-day emergency
contract with the son of a Beaverton
postal supervisor, who then subcon-
tracted with his girlfriend to do the de-
livery. Service to the development be-
gan March 12.
But the inconvenience to Higgins
and his neighbors calls into question
the postmaster’s assertion — in a Jan.
29 letter to Hansen — that contracting
out wouldn’t harm the public interest.
Under its nationwide labor agreement
with NALC, public interest is one of
several things USPS is supposed to
consider before contracting out —
along with cost, efficiency and qualifi-
cation of employees.
USPS has had the option to con-
tract out delivery since the Postal Re-
organization Act of 1970, and private
contractors already handle 1.9 percent
of deliveries nationwide — mainly on
highway routes in rural areas.
Arbor Parc is a change in scale.
While Hansen was told to expect 374
new residences at that particular devel-
opment, Jeffrey said 12,000 to 15,000
homes are planned for the area. That
would make it the largest private
postal delivery contract in Oregon and
Southwest Washington, and could ac-
count for as many as a dozen letter
carrier jobs.
Jeffrey stressed that Post Office
management isn’t converting existing
routes to private carriers, just new
routes.
But such assurances aren’t much
comfort to letter carriers, who see Ar-
bor Parc as a foot in a door, and worry
that the door will soon be wide open.
Lee, who came to Beaverton after a
two-year stint as postmaster in
Tacoma, Washington, initiated a
smaller privatization there last year
when a newly built 128-unit condo-
minium — a downtown city block sur-
rounded by existing postal routes —
was assigned to a contractor.
That’s the kind of thing that drives
Hansen up the wall. Computerized
route management and automated
sorting have made the U.S. Postal Ser-
vice the most efficient in the world, but
Hansen thinks privatization could
undo that. How could it be efficient to
have letter carriers walking all around
a building, but leaving the building it-
self to a private contractor who would
have to make a special trip?
“Universal delivery is an economic
strength of our postal system,” Hansen
said. “I don’t think it’s possible to lose
economy of scale and not lose eco-
nomic efficiency also.”
Letter carriers are also worried
Willie Higgins is one of a dozen early homebuyers at the new Arbor Parc
Bethany development in Beaverton. For over a month, he and the others had
to drive five miles to pick up their mail because of a USPS decision to privatize
mail delivery.
about erosion of public confidence in
the mails. While the Internet has
emerged as a postal service competi-
tor, the public still views mail as the
safest way to pay bills. But what hap-
pens when the public sees contractors
in street clothes driving up in their own
personal vehicles and opening mail-
boxes? And what will be the impact of
higher turnover, diluted accountability,
diminished professionalism? Union
letter carriers are long-term, career
employees of USPS, starting at $17 an
hour and topping out at $22, whereas
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contract employees who clear $10 an
hour will jump ship when an $11-an-
hour job comes along.
And, Hansen adds, NALC mem-
bers are federal employees who take
an oath to uphold the Constitution.
They have relationships in the commu-
nity, collect food for the needy in an-
nual drives, and serve as neighborhood
eyes and ears. They are trained and
ready to deliver medicine in the event
of a national emergency, and are com-
mitted enough that mail service was
uninterrupted in the days following the
2001 anthrax attacks. Two out of five
USPS letter carriers are armed services
veterans, owing to federal hiring rules
that give preference to veterans. Con-
tractors face no such requirement.
USPS is America’s second largest
employer after Wal-Mart, and as em-
ployers they could hardly be more dif-
ferent.
Jeffrey, the Postal spokesperson,
said USPS has worked hard to answer
concerns the public has had about con-
tract employees. Contract letter carri-
ers will be licensed and bonded, he
said, will wear uniforms and a postal
ID, and go through a criminal back-
ground check.
In the final analysis, USPS deci-
sions to contract out are supposed to be
justified by cost savings. NALC dis-
putes the notion that contracting saves
money, but that’s the rationale offered
by Postmaster Lee, who forecast USPS
will save $33,878 a year by assigning
Arbor Parc to a contractor. Lee didn’t
return calls, and Jeffrey said he didn’t
know how the figure was arrived at.
Hansen has demanded to know what
the figure is based on, but so far hasn’t
been given the information.
Stopping privatization is important
enough to NALC that the union agreed
in recent contract negotiations to ac-
cept a more modest health benefit in
exchange for a pledge not to contract
out existing city carrier work. The
postmaster general seemed to agree,
but the Board of Governors rejected
the deal, and the two sides then de-
clared impasse. Under the rules for
postal employee contract bargaining,
the next phase will be mediation, fol-
lowed by binding arbitration if no
agreement is reached.
Since then, union leaders say,
there’s been a ramp-up in contracting
out around the country, with managers
trained and given manuals that specify
how to contract out.
“We believe there’s pressure being
put on Postal Service management by
the Board of Governors, a Board dom-
inated by Bush appointees,” said
NALC national spokesperson Drew
Von Bergen. “These people are un-
abashedly for privatization of the
postal service, and if they can’t do it in
whole, they’ll do it in parts.”
In a nutshell, Hansen says, politi-
cians are interfering with effective
postal management. “That’s why
we’re going to the court of public
opinion with a picket. We need the
public to know what’s going on.”
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