District One Spring Meeting

Greetings Brothers and Sisters,

I am trying to get hold of everyone I can, but to help cover my bases, would you please let all the WAPWU members in your District One offices know that there will be a District One Meeting on Sunday, April 7, at my home at 314 East Grover Street in Lynden. We will be discussing the contract, answering questions, and electing a fully funded delegate to attend the State Convention with me in Olympia in May.

I realize Lynden is not convenient for many people, but our district is so large and spread out that no location would be convenient, and I'm going to be recuperating from major surgery on my hand, so travel is more difficult for me than normal. 

If you are unable to attend but would like to nominate someone to attend the convention, please let me know. And please RSVP, I'll be serving refreshments and it would be helpful to have a rough idea of how many people will be there. Thanks. Looking forward to getting together with as many of you as are able to attend. 

I apologize if you get this message more than once. 

In Solidarity,

Maria

The Right Man for the Job

Today I had the privilege of again being on the air with Joe Teehan, host of The Joe Show, a local  progressive radio talk show in Bellingham, Washington. Joe understands the plight of the USPS very well and does what he can to educate the public about the real issues that are paving the path to privatization of the USPS.

Joe asked me whether I thought Postmaster General Donohoe was the right man for the job, the right man to be at the helm of this sinking ship.

The PMG is slashing jobs and hours, closing facilities, requiring the general public to pay more and more for less and less service, and disregarding the citizens throughout the US who don't have access to the internet, who are elderly, who are of low or modest income, who live in isolated rural areas. A true leader leads by  example, but PMG Donohoe exempts himself from any kind of sacrifice. In spite of the Congressionally manufactured crisis faced by  the Postal Service, and in spite of unjustifiable cuts to the service, PMG's compensation package in 2011 was just about $400,000.00. He has the audacity to require cuts across the board, but he and his executives, whose compensation ranges around $200,000 annually, show no signs of making any sacrifices themselves. Clearly, this is not the man for the job.

We as employees need a leader who will step up and speak out before Congress, who will rally the troops, so to speak, who will take a strong stand and fight for the Postal Service. If we are to survive this crippling time, we need a leader of strong character and ethics guiding the agency through these rough waters.

Ralph Nader has written an open letter asking PMG Donohoe to resign. It makes for an excellent read, and is signed by Nader and several other leaders. It can be found at

http://nader.org/2012/04/26/letter-to-postmaster-general-patrick-donahoe-it-is-time-to-resign/

I encourage you to read this. It's an informative and accurate narrative on why Mr. Donohoe should resign as PMG. 

In solidarity,

Maria Risener
District 1 Representative, WAPWU

Five reasons to oppose 5-day delivery

Today the PMG announced the implementation of five day delivery by August of this year. This move has been lauded by those legislators who are either too shortsighted to see the big picture, or motivated by the potential profits they could make if the Postal Service were eventually privatized. 

Other legislators and labor leaders have denounced this move by the PMG, realizing that there is a bigger picture, and that five day delivery is a temporary and ineffective stopgap measure.

Why exactly do so many people oppose five day delivery? Sure, it sounds good at first blush, but there are far reaching implications to this action. 

1. It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Saturday delivery is the Postal Service’s key strategic advantage over its private competitors, UPS and FedEx. Giving away our most important comparative advantage in the one area of the postal market that is likely to grow when the economy recovers—e-commerce package delivery—would be very risky. And there has been measurable growth:  USPS package delivery has increased 14% since 2010. Over time, the loss of this growing revenue would outweigh the short-term savings. Dismantling the Postal Service is NOT the way to save it. It will lead to a death spiral that will harm rural Americans while doing very little to improve the condition of the Postal Service. 

2. It will drive customers away. 

Slower service—letters mailed on Friday nights would not be picked up until Monday morning or Monday afternoon—and less frequent delivery is likely to accelerate the shift to electronic invoicing and electronic bill paying. Booming businesses like mail order prescriptions would be threatened. Reduced service would also threaten one of the fastest growing segments of the mail—Parcel Select—as UPS, FedEx and other consolidators would reconsider their use of last-mile delivery services by USPS letter carriers. Consider that 30.4% of FedEx ground shipments are delivered by the Postal Service. Slowing mail service and degrading our unmatchable last mile delivery network are not the answers to the Postal Service's problems. Providing fewer services and less quality will prompt customers to seek other shipping options, dooming the USPS to ultimate failure, and paving the path to privatization. The USPS has already slashed service by reducing hours at post offices, closing hundreds of processing facilities, and closing 13000 post offices nationwide. Services have been downgraded and are being felt everywhere. 

Just yesterday, a friend of mine in South Dakota posted on my Facebook page: This isn't a big deal to me personally (one less day to get bills!) but the lost wages/hours for the employees locally will matter. It's just one more service we won't have on top of our local post office being shut down which STILL bugs me!! Our mail service is spotty, every carrier has their own schedule at the other office so I never know when our carrier is supposed to be here and the new carriers seem to hate coming to our town. You never know what you've got till it's gone...

3. It would prompt the emergence of new competitors. 

If the Postal Service doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, other companies will step in to fill the void. Executives from niche delivery firms welcome the news of five day delivery. Many companies view the Postal Service’s exit from Saturday delivery as a business opportunity. Once established, competitors will demand a “level playing field” and ask Congress to open the nation’s mailboxes to their services, making it impossible to enforce the monopoly and maintain affordable universal service, even in areas where it is not profitable. The move to five day delivery is misguided and counterproductive. Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe needs to come up with an effective business plan to tap the full potential of the Postal Service. The Postal Service is an essential American institution, mandated by the US Constitution. In fact, the PMG has yet to receive congressional approval to implement this change, which is mandated by law. Mr. Donohoe needs to realize that he is not above the law.

4. It would set a bad precedent. 
If the language requiring six-day delivery were repealed, there would be no legal barrier to prevent the Postal Service from reducing delivery days further, from 5-day to 4- or 3-day delivery. Indeed, Business Week magazine called on the Postal Service to shift immediately to 3-day delivery within days of the Postal Service’s announcement of its action plan. That would not only destroy half our jobs, but also likely lead to a death spiral for the Postal Service—less service leading to less mail volume leading to less service, and so on. If the Postmaster General is unwilling or unable to develop a smart growth strategy that serves the nearly 50% of business mailers that want to keep six day service, and if he arrogantly thinks he is above the law or has the right to decide policy matters that should be left to Congress, it is time for him to resign. Benjamin Franklin must be rolling in his grave! The Postal Service needs to pursue avenues of revenue that will enable it to stay  viable and competitive in the digital era, not pave the path to privatization. 

5. It’s not necessary. 
The Postal Service has hidden financial strengths, with fully funded pension plans and, if the accounting is done properly, fully funded retiree health benefits. If we can convince Congress and the administration to fairly allocate pension costs and correct the $75 billion error made by the OPM when it established our retiree health fund, eliminating Saturday delivery would not be necessary. 

The Postmaster General acknowledged as much at a March 18 hearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “If that [recovering the $75 billion and applying it to future retiree health care] were to happen,” he said, “we wouldn’t have to go to six-, to five-day delivery.” Five day delivery is projected to save the postal service about $2 billion a year, far short of what is needed. 

The financial woes of the postal service are a direct result of an unsustainable congressional mandate that was imposed in 2006, the Postal Accountability  and Enhancement Act. This federal law forces the USPS to prefund healthcare benefits for future retirees and to do so in the unrealistic period of ten years. Since the act was implemented in 2007, the USPS has been required to pay about $5.5 billion a year in pre-funding, but the same law prohibits the USPS from raising rates to cover those costs. The USPS is being massively overcharged for these pre-funding requirements, and there are excess postal pension assets in the civil service retirement fund that could be used to cover retiree health costs in the future.  Five day delivery is projected to save the postal service about $2 billion a year, far less than the $5.5 billion that would be saved by Congress repealing this law. Congress manufactured this crisis; Congress must act to save the USPS. 

And, for the record, the USPS receives not one penny of taxpayer money. 

What can you do to help? Visit www.saveourpostoffice.us, the website for a private, grassroots organization founded in August 2012. They began a letter writing campaign, urging Americans to mail postcards to them, which they will then present to President Obama and Congress. They also have an online petition that already has over 14,000 signatures to maintain the postal service in its current form, without cuts to service, whether it be five day delivery, plant closures, or reduction or elimination of local post offices. And contact your legislators and tell them to Save Our Post Office. 

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, The PMG Must Go

The lucky ones, some 26,500 of them, who took the early out have embarked on the next chapter of their lives, apres USPS. Those of us who are still working are left to wonder what's next for us and for the Postal Service.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has repeatedly spoken about the $11 billion surplus in the pension fund.  Yet in the latest video viewed by employees, the PMG said that the surplus is actually closer to $6 billion. Are we supposed to just accept that a $5 billion accounting error simply occured? That's a mighty big "Oops!" if you ask me. And not once in that address to employees did the PMG say anything remotely resembling "I'm sorry for this mistake" or "I apologize for misleading all of you." It seems to me that this man does not have the best interests of the Postal Service at heart.

Donahue came up through the ranks of the USPS yet he consistently has approached saving the Postal Service with proposals to slow service, close and sell post offices, and cut thousands of jobs. In times like these, when the USPS is facing serious problems, we need a leader who is willing to demonstrate creative problem solving skills instead of stumping to close over 3700 post offices and 252 processing centers.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a true champion of the USPS, has offered proposals to expand services at post offices that would create revenue. Donahue speaks about solving the fiscal problems by cutting services, and harps on how the internet is destroying first class mail.  The PMG stated last year: "From a fiscally responsible standpoint, we have to move ahead on this. We've lost too much [mail] volume and we have to address the infrastructure." Restructuring sounds good, but Donahue's ideas of restructuring are very different from those of lawmakers who are friendly toward the USPS.

Ralph Nader has pointed out that the savings from closing rural post offices is so small, $200 million a year, that it isn't worth the havoc it would cause for "millions of rural Americans already strip-mined of other essential services." Closing post offices would force Americans to spend more time and more money  on gas to travel longer distances to get to another post office.

Apparently Mr. Donahue forgets that we all work for the US Postal SERVICE. If SERVICE is part of who we are, then how does it make sense to cut services to the American public, rather than expand them?