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APWU Local Shows Support
For H.R. 22 at New York City Rally

APWU Web News Article #044-09, April 17, 2009

The APWU is supporting H.R. 22 — legislation that is critically needed to preserve the nation’s postal system — not only by reaching out to lawmakers but by rallying at the heart of the issue, in front of facilities threatened by the Postal Service’s precarious fiscal situation.

“H.R. 22 will provide necessary financial relief for the USPS,” said New York Metro APWU President Clarice Torrence during a rally in front of a Manhattan Post Office slated for closure this summer. “The bill will enable the Postal Service to survive without making such drastic cuts and it won’t cost the taxpayers one cent.”

H.R. 22 would modify a provision of the 2006 postal “reform” law that drains the Postal Service of billions of dollars. The bill, introduced on Jan. 6 by Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) and Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), has 252 co-sponsors.

The measure would allow the USPS to pay for healthcare benefits for current retirees from its Retiree Health Benefit Fund instead of its operating budget, and would save the Postal Service an average of $3.5 billion per year over the next eight years.

Among the pending fiscal casualties are operations at the James A. Farley Main Post Office near Penn Station in New York City. The USPS plans to eliminate window service from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and to offer shorter weekend hours. (It is currently staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.)

In another recent announcement, the Postal Service served notice that because of its fiscal woes it would be closing neighborhood stations on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (the Sgt. Riayan Tejeda Post Office) and on Prince Street, in Soho.

About 75 Soho residents joined APWU activists and elected officials on April 15 to protest the shuttering of that neighborhood’s post office. State Sen. Daniel Squadron, and City Council members Alan Gerson and Tony Avella stood with sign-waving Soho Alliance members as citizens flooded the station with their tax-return mailings.

“The fact is, if we can’t afford post offices and we can’t afford local services, we don’t have neighborhoods in the city of New York anymore,” Sen. Squadron told a community newspaper. “And that is not OK.”

Councilman Avella told the newspaper that not enough was being done to preserve neighborhood “mom-and-pop businesses” as well. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that you need to be able to determine what services you have in your own neighborhood, and we’re here to say the post office must stay.”

[more H.R. 22 news]

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