Milwaukee, WI – The United States Postal Service (USPS) is in a state of crisis. Nearly 15 years ago, Congress forced the Postal Service into financial ruin through a mandate to pre-fund retiree benefits for 80 years in advance. Since 2013, this pre-funding mandate has accounted for 100% of losses. The mandate has been kept alive in spite of an independent audit which proved that for decades, the federal government had been using a flawed accounting method which caused USPS to overpay into federal pension systems by roughly $86 billion. No other company or government entity is forced to do this and the impulse behind it is clear- break the postal service, weaken postal unions, and sell off profitable parts of USPS.

While USPS was able self-fund through postage revenue up until now, the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic is proving to be more than a weakened USPS can handle. While parcel volume has risen considerably, the volume in letter mail has plummeted. Current estimates are that letter mail volume is down 30% and it’s expected to drop as low as 50% by summer.

Costs are expected to skyrocket as an increasing number of workers have to enter quarantine periods or worse. This creates a situation where if there is no immediate intervention, there will be no funds to put gasoline in the vehicles, pay utility bills, or send out pay checks. Trump is taking advantage of this crisis by intervening to deny USPS any stimulus funds in order to push an anti-worker privatization agenda. In fact, Trump has placed extreme reforms as a demand for USPS to even get a loan! Meanwhile, private industries are receiving untold sums of money with absolutely no strings attached and no obligation to repay.

Postal union activists are now in a position where they have to both fight for the survival of a public service, but also for the survival of their membership. So far, over 9000 postal workers have been under quarantine and over 40 postal workers have died from COVID-19. While the union leaders at the national level have been negotiating new procedures, leave categories, and protective measures to be implemented nation-wide, the rank-and-file membership has been organizing to fight back both to win victories against postal management and to put pressure on lawmakers to provide the necessary relief to keep postal employees working and safe.

A coworker.org petition calling for appropriate safety equipment, hazard pay and special leave provisions quickly got over 88,000 signatures. Using existing networks, as well as contacts from the petition who wanted to get involved, a COVID-19 response Facebook page for postal workers formed and grew to 20,000 members. Union members have used the platform to share information about how to report unsafe conditions and how to file winning grievances. Additionally, workers have discussed tactics such as getting everyone at their shop to agree to let their coworkers know if they are diagnosed. With this knowledge, other workers can then choose to enter into a self-quarantine without having to wait to be informed weeks after the fact that they had been exposed.

Beyond the day-to-day union work, organizers also used the page as a means to promote small actions around Workers Memorial Day. In Seattle, a socially-distanced rally took place in front of a postal facility along a busy road. In Portland, a small gathering of postal workers, clergy and community members came together to memorialize the postal employees who have died from the virus. In Des Moines, postal workers put up crosses to memorialize their brothers and sisters who have died from the virus. There was a gathering of workers, and the local news media gave time to these workers to promote their case. In Milwaukee, a statue honoring the founding of the letter carrier’s union was turned into a temporary display to raise awareness of both the health crisis and the financial crisis facing the postal service. The statues of carriers were given masks and yard signs were placed along a busy road reading “At USPS 40+ dead. 9000 quarantined,” “Protect our essential Postal Workers,” and “Stimulus now! Save lives! Save USPS!”

We know that the working class in this country rarely gets anything without a fight. For postal workers to win, these local protests will have to go national in scale. The fightback will have to be a significant display of power and preparedness to do whatever it takes to preserve their lives and their livelihoods. To achieve this, postal workers will have to get the national union leaders to prepare for coordinated, nationwide actions in unity and coordination with the other postal unions.

#MilwaukeeWI #PeoplesStruggles #postalService #USPS #laborStruggle #SaveUSPS

The story asserted that “decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers” had brought the Postal Service to the point of defaulting on a $5.5 billion payment due Sept. 30, and possibly shutting down entirely this winter.

The Times detailed the drastic cuts proposed by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe: No more Saturday delivery, closure of 3700 post offices and 300 sorting facilities nationwide, elimination of 220,000 jobs. Most of these moves require Congressional approval and the threatened shutdown was clearly supposed to help Congress make up its mind.

What wasn’t mentioned in the article: The $5.5 billion payment in question is part of a bizarre requirement imposed upon the USPS by Congress five years ago to prefund its retiree health benefits 75 years in advance over a ten-year period. In effect, the Postal Service is paying for the retirement of workers who haven’t even been born yet, let alone hired. Imagine the outcry if the feds made similar demands on private businesses!

Also unmentioned by the Times: Donahoe’s announcement came just as the post office was scheduled to enter contract negotiations with the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Forking over those annual $5.5 billion payments has cost the USPS $20 billion in operating losses over the past four years. Without them, the Postal Service would still be in the black, despite a big falloff in mail volume when the economy went south three years ago.

If Congress was serious about preventing the drastic service cutbacks Donahoe has proposed, there’s an obvious solution: End the prefunding requirement.

For those who hope to strip postal workers of their union rights, however, the prospect of a default presents a golden opportunity.

Representative Darrell Issa is the chair of the House Committee on Government Operations. Strictly speaking, the USPS is not a government operation and it receives no federal funds. Still, Issa’s committee is charged with overseeing it.

As a young man, according to a January profile in the New Yorker, Issa was busted twice for auto theft . Both times he managed to escape prosecution. Today he is the richest member of the House, having made a fortune in the car alarm business.

Issa has proposed a bill that would require the Postal Service to cut its expenses by $3 billion a year. If it failed to do so, its affairs would be put in the hands of a politically appointed commission with the power to scrap its collective bargaining agreements and slash wages and benefits.

I don’t know that the Postmaster General wants Issa’s bill to pass. I do know that he’s employing the same strategy. He’s using an essentially manufactured crisis to apply the screws to his work force.

To an alarming extent, the media is buying the story. The New York Times makes an issue of the fact that labor costs account for 80% of USPS expenses, “compared with 53% at United Parcel Service and 32% at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors.”

It’s a meaningless comparison. Neither FedEx nor UPS is charged with maintaining a universal service network, a task that requires human labor. When its customers need to ship to a location it doesn’t handle, UPS typically contracts with the Postal Service for “last mile” delivery. Unlike FedEx, the Postal Service does not sink a big chunk of its revenues into maintaining its own fleet of planes. It does not spend millions lobbying Congress, investing in other businesses or paying off stockholders. Whatever money it makes is ploughed back into operations.

And, for what it’s worth, there’s no significant difference in pay and benefits between the Postal Service and UPS, whose drivers are under Teamster contract. Despite a 30-year-old no-layoff clause in its union contracts, the USPS has managed to reduce its work force by nearly 30% in the past ten years. In my district, there’s a hiring freeze which has left some offices so understaffed that veteran carriers are routinely required to work 60-hour weeks.

Retiring workers are not replaced – or if they are, it’s with ‘transitional employees’ who enjoy rudimentary union protection but have no benefits, job security, seniority or bidding rights. Supposedly hired as a temporary expedient when the post office was introducing new mail sorting machinery, the “TEs” have emerged as a permanent feature of the postal work force and spend years vainly waiting for promotion to career status. They can be laid off at any time.

In the private sector, ‘downsizing’ is considered good business strategy, and ‘leaner, meaner’ companies are the ones that attract investors. Typically, what’s involved is the shift of capital from productive parts of the economy to the financial sector, where few workers are employed but the profit margins are enormous – or used to be, before the Wall Street meltdown of fall 2008.

The social costs of business downsizing are enormous, but there’s a certain crazy logic to it: under capitalism, businesses exist to make money. But downsizing the Postal Service makes no sense at all. For all the politicians’ prattle about the USPS needing a new “business model,” the post office isn’t really a business. It’s a public service, mandated by the U.S. Constitution. It reaches every household and business address in the country; its universal service network, built up over two centuries, is as much a part of the nation’s infrastructure as our interstate highways or public schools.

But its workers are unionized, so it’s fair game. Just as our public schools are being crippled as scarce tax dollars are diverted into corporate-run, non-union charter schools, reactionary forces in Congress are hell-bent on compromising the nation’s mail service beyond repair as the necessary price of busting the postal unions. In the process, the public is being robbed of a vital public service, and the right of all workers to union protection is further undermined.

Sept. 30 is the deadline for the USPS to make the $5.5 billion payment Congress demands. On Sept. 27, the four postal unions will be demonstrating at local Congressional offices across the country in an effort to get the truth out. Go to saveamericaspostalservice.org to find out where the demonstration in your area will be happening. Then come out and join it – to keep the mail moving and to stand with the brothers and sisters who move it.

Peter Shapiro is a retired member of National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82 and is active in Jobs with Justice.

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