e-Team Report, June 10, 2011

Headlines Predict Demise of USPS Legislative Action Needed/H.R. 1351 Update

Recent headlines that predict the Postal Service will collapse within one year demonstrate the importance of APWU members getting involved in legislative affairs, President Cliff Guffey said. “To ensure the survival of the Postal Service — and our jobs — I urge each and every member to make a commitment to legislative action,” he said.

“The USPS is under attack by anti-labor politicians and some sectors of the business community,” Guffey continued. “It is crucial that APWU members get involved.

“When your local calls on you to visit your Congressional representatives, you must act as if your job depends on it, because it does,” he said.

Recent news stories suggest that the Postal Service’s financial problems will lead to the downfall of the USPS. Bloomberg Businessweek published an article on May 27 titled “The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse,” which blamed the Postal Service’s financial crisis on labor costs. “The Postal Service’s business model [is] so badly broken that collapse [is] imminent,” the article concluded.

Other news sources blamed e-mail for the Postal Service’s decline. A report on National Public Radio (NPR) said, “The U.S. Postal Service can’t shrink fast enough. Its revenues are falling and its losses are rising as mail migrates to the Internet.”

“The true cause of the Postal Service’s financial woes is the congressionally-imposed mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund future retiree health benefits,” Guffey said, “but you wouldn’t know it from reading many of the recent articles about the USPS.

“Absent this pre-funding burden, the Postal Service would have experienced a cumulative surplus, despite falling mail volume and the worst recession in recent history,” he added.

“We must support measures that will enable the USPS to remain viable in the future, such as H.R. 1351,” Guffey said. The bill, introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), would correct postal pre-funding inequities.

We also support some provisions of S. 1010, introduced by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE). The “POST Act” would address the pre-funding requirement by allowing the USPS to use overpayments to its pension accounts to meet the pre-funding obligations. It also would give the Postal Service authority to close post offices solely for financial reasons, and would require arbitrators to consider the financial health of the USPS when contract negotiations end in arbitration. APWU supports the overpayment provisions, but does not support the bill entirely, as written. We will continue to work with Senators and staff to address the issues of concern to our members.

The union president urged members to get involved. “It is imperative that we contact our legislators to win support for bills that will provide immediate relief to the USPS,” he said. “It is essential to our future.”

If you have not already taken a minute to send a quick note to your member of Congress asking them to please support and co-sponsor H.R. 1351, please click here to do so today:

Bill Targets Union Dues Deduction

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has introduced legislation S. 1143 that specifically does not allow any federal agency to "deduct any amount from the pay of an employee for the dues of a labor organization." This legislation includes all of the Federal Workforce, specifically including Postal Workers. It needs to be mentioned that all federal union members are in a union because they choose to be and are doing so on a voluntary basis.

Republican Presidential Hopeful Calls for the End of Postal Service

On Tuesday, Republican Presidential hopeful / former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty laid out what he hopes will become the nation’s economic plan if he is elected President in 2012. One of the first services to go if Gov. Pawlenty is elected president in 2012 you guessed it, the Postal Service along with many other government run programs. The Governor stated that government programs should be passed through his litmus test he labeled “The Google Test”. Simply stated, if you can search for a specific service and find it online the government should not provide it to the public.

Recently the Republican controlled House passed Paul Ryan’s budget proposal that would end Medicare as it currently exists and pose a serious threat to Social Security benefits. One can easily see the ideological alignment of Republican leaders; privatize, privatize and privatize. This includes the Postal Service, Social Security and Medicare.

Please click here to read the entire story.

You Decide - State Legislation, REAL OR NOT?

No question about it: state legislators and governors elected in 2010 have been bringing the crazy. 

We're not just talking about governors refusing to accept job-creating funds from the federal government while 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed. And we're not just talking about multiple instances of attacks on workers' collective bargaining rights. We're talking about proposals that are, as one governor eloquently put it, "bat-crap crazy."

Take the quiz from the AFL-CIO: See if you can guess which loony legislation is real and which are made up.