e-Team Report, April 5, 2012

Tax Day Leafleting/Contact Your Senators

On April 17 (Tax Day), the APWU is asking locals across the country to conduct informational leafleting at as many post offices as possible, with an emphasis on those facilities that draw media coverage on Tax Day. The purpose of this event is to bring to the attention of postal customers and the public at-large to the drastic cuts that management is planning if Congress doesn’t act. To read more information about the nationwide Tax Day leafleting and to download the APWU’s Tax Day leaflet, click here . 

Members of Congress are home in their states and districts for the Easter Recess. The APWU is urging members to reach out to their Senators and let them know that amendments to S. 1789 are needed. The APWU is endorsing amendments to:

• Provide adequate relief from the retiree healthcare prefunding requirement.
• Set strict service standards. (The Postal Service is planning to degrade delivery standards in order to eliminate more than half of all mail processing facilities.)
• Allow the USPS to recover overpayments the Postal Service made to its retiree pension funds.
• Establish new ways to generate revenue, such as providing notary services, issuing licenses, contracting with state and local agencies to provide services, and allowing the USPS to offer services that mail systems in many other countries provide, such as digital services.
•  Prevent the closing of small post offices by giving the Postal Regulatory Commission binding authority to prevent closures based on the effect on the community and employees.
• Protect six-day delivery.
• Eliminate the provision that would drastically reduce the compensation of workers who are injured on duty once they reach retirement age.   
• Repeal the provision that would require arbitrators in postal contract negotiations to consider the financial health of the USPS. (Arbitrators routinely do so. The requirement is an attempt to skew contract negotiations in favor of management.)

Please call both of your senator’s district offices today.

Click here, to find the phone number for both of your senator’s district offices. After you call both of your senators, also make sure you take a minute to send them a quick message. To send them a message please, click here.

Senator Sanders on The Ed Show

This week, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on The Ed Show. In the segment, Ed Schultz and Senator Sanders discuss the unfair burden that has been placed on the USPS, which receives no tax dollars. 

Montana’s Senator Calls for Delay in Shuttering of Processing Facilities

One of Montana’s Senators, John Tester, has asked Postmaster General Donahoe to delay the closing of processing facilities until 2013. The senator is worried that the closing of these facilities will have an adverse impact on those voting by mail this election.

To read more about the Senator’s request, click here.

More Movement Restricting Ability to Vote

More and more states continue to take up restrictive voter ID legislation while other states start feeling the chilling effects of implementing new stringent voter registration laws.  Just last week, Floridians began to realize the negative impacts some of its recently enacted laws will have on communities. To read about the effects these restrictive laws are having on organizations such as the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, which traditionally participate in nonpartisan voter registration drives in Florida, click here.

To read about Minnesota’s efforts to have voter ID legislation placed on this November’s ballot, click here.

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