Northwest labor press., August 16, 2013, Page 10, Image 10

New USPS reform bill in
Senate met with dismay
A new “bipartisan” proposal to re-
form the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is
being denounced by postal worker
unions.
Introduced Aug. 1 by high-ranking
Senators Tom Carper (D-Del.) and
Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), S.1486 paves
the way to end Saturday and door-to-
door mail delivery, close over half of
the mail processing plants in the coun-
try, and cut workers’ compensation
benefits for injured postal workers.
“Utter dismay” was the reaction of
four national postal unions in a letter to
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-
Nev.).
National Association of Letter Car-
riers (NALC) President Fredric
Rolando, Postal Workers President
Cliff Guffey, Mail Handlers-Laborers
President John Hegarty, and Rural Let-
ter Carriers President Jeanette Dwyer
said the bill — S. 1486 — was unveiled
just before the congressional recess,
without consultation with unions, and
without an adequate solution for the
real source of USPS’ cash flow prob-
lems — that of requiring USPS to pre-
fund 75 years of future retirees’ health
care benefits over a 10-year period (by
2016) — something no other public or
private agency is required to do.
The union officials told Reid the bill
would eliminate at least 80,000 jobs,
mostly within its first year, shred all
workers’ health care plans, cut delivery,
and send USPS on a “death spiral.”
“Ending door-to-door delivery for
tens of millions of Americans would
particularly harm small businesses as
well as the elderly and people who live
in areas with extreme weather,”
NALC’s Rolando said. “And it’s coun-
terproductive financially, because — as
is the case with the proposal to elimi-
nate Saturday delivery — degrading
service would drive mail out of the sys-
tem and reduce revenue. ... Lawmakers
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
should fix the problems they created,
not make counterproductive reductions
in service.”
For their part, both Carper and
Coburn said the bill was a work in
progress. “This bill isn’t perfect and
will certainly change as Dr. Coburn and
I hear from colleagues and stakehold-
ers, including postal employees and
customers,” Carper said in a statement.
“But the time to act is now.”
The bill is more onerous than a
postal reform bill that passed the Sen-
ate last year with 62 votes. According
to The Hill newspaper, Carper played
a lead role in shepherding S. 1789,
written with Sen. Susan Collins (R-
Maine) and then-Sens. Joe Lieberman
(I-Conn) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.)
through the chamber last year.
Most of the postal unions didn’t
support S. 1789.
Union officials acknowledge that
changes need to be made to stem the
flow of red ink at the Postal Service,
which gets no tax dollars to operate.
The USPS lost a record $15.9 billion in
fiscal 2012, driven largely by defaults
on $11.1 billion in prepayments for fu-
ture retiree health care benefits.
According to NALC, USPS’ operat-
ing revenue was actually up 3.6 percent
last quarter, compared to the same pe-
riod last year.
“Although it reported a loss of $740
million, the agency would have re-
ported a profit of $660 million absent
the $1.4 billion payment it was charged
for pre-funding future retiree health
benefits,” Rolando said.
Postal unions continue campaigning
to modernize service, get USPS into
new lines of business, and to abolish
health insurance pre-funding scheme.
Union officials believe lawmakers
are creating a “phony financial crisis”
in order to lay the groundwork to pri-
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AUGUST 16, 2013