Looking Behind the Curtain

(This article first appeared in the July-August issue of The American Postal Worker Magazine)

Three recent events highlight attempts by powerful, private interests to influence the direction of the public Postal Service.

• First, during arbitration over our new contract, management utilized attorneys associated with an anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate law firm.
• Second, the latest nominee for the USPS Board of Governors, Jeffrey A. Rosen, has a history of representing subcontractors and competitors of the Postal Service, such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL.
• Third, advocates of postal privatization have launched a new website that attacks the Postal Service and postal workers.

Who Speaks for the Postal Service?

During Interest Arbitration, the Postal Service selected attorney Robert Dufek to serve as management’s representative on the three-member arbitration panel. Dufek previously represented the USPS when he was affiliated with Morgan Lewis, a large, anti-worker company. In 2010, the Postal Service hired him as one of its full-time in-house lawyers.

The main witness for the Postal Service on the subject of wages for Clerk Craft employees was Morgan Lewis attorney Tom Reinert, who testified that Clerk Craft employees are overpaid compared to airline workers. Reinert represents airline companies against their workers and their unions.

Morgan Lewis brags that the firm is, “effective both at the table and in a ‘behind the scenes’ role,” in addressing labor-management disputes. The company represented the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1981, when it busted PATCO, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. The firm also represented Major League Baseball in disputes with the players during the 1990 spring lockout and the 1994-1995 baseball strike.

Morgan Lewis also represents groups that were set up to advance the interest of corporations while pretending they were something else. For example, Morgan Lewis represented the so-called Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which works against democracy – and unions – in the workplace. The company also represented the falsely-named Coalition for Workplace Safety, which sought to evade and rescind OSHA rules; it was led by corporate associations such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (Walmart, Staples, etc.).

Apprentice: Workers are Overpaid

The Postal Service also employed Evgeny “Eugene” Vorotnikov, who was previously associated with the Koch brothers, two of the wealthiest people on the planet. The Koch brothers are vehemently anti-union and known for bankrolling a vast political operation that seeks to lower corporate taxes, reduce social services, and limit oversight of industry.

The former Koch brothers’ apprentice testified during the arbitration that postal workers’ benefits are too generous.

Ties to USPS Competitors, Contractors

In March, President Barack Obama nominated Jeffrey A. Rosen to serve on the USPS Board of Governors. Rosen is an attorney with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which has a department that assists clients in preventing workers from organizing unions (union avoidance), getting rid of unions (decertification), and setting up employer-controlled “unions” (employee participation committees).

While he was with the Department of Transportation, Rosen advocated privatization of Amtrak.

Rosen has represented competitors of the Postal Service, including UPS, FedEx, and DHL, as well as USPS suppliers, such as Siemens. Clients of Kirkland & Ellis also include Time Warner, which claims to be the Postal Service’s biggest customer, RR Donnelley, IBM, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Amazon, Facebook, Walt Disney, Accenture, and Deloitte, to name just a few.

Rosen represented the Chamber of Commerce, who along with Koch Industries and other energy companies fought EPA rules intended to reduce greenhouse gases that harm the environment. In addition, Rosen provided testimony and has been pushing for the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would reduce and slow the implementation of regulations on business. In April 2015, Rosen was a panelist for the “Regulatory Boot Camp” at the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Website: Degrade the Postal Service

A website, PostalReformForUs.org, was launched in late March by right-wing activists.

They claim the Postal Service is broken and therefore wholesale change is needed. They advocate closing mail processing centers, eliminating Saturday mail delivery, and ending attempts to offer new services. They want to stop the Postal Service from expanding financial services and enhancing service in other ways that would serve the public interest and bring in much-needed additional revenue.

The website lists the Taxpayers Protection Alliance as its primary sponsor. (Maybe they didn’t get the memo: The Postal Service hasn’t received taxpayers’ money since the early 1980s.) Three other groups are listed as “partners” – Americans for Tax Reform, National Taxpayers Union, and R Street Institute. All are associate members of the State Policy Network (SPN), which works with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They all receive money from the Koch brothers and other owners of large corporations, and they frequently work with other Koch-funded groups on other issues as well. For example, all three argued in favor of fast tracking “free trade” legislation. Republican consultant Karl Rove is also connected with some of the groups and individuals involved.

The organizers of the website frequently push their ideas through the new media outlet, Inside Sources, which offers “advertorials,” advertisements written in the style of an editorial or objective news article. The term “advertorial” is a blend of the words “advertisement” and “editorial.”

Pull Back the Curtain

The attacks on the Postal Service and postal workers are coming from a relatively small number of individuals who have obscene amounts of wealth and create groups designed to make them appear larger than they really are. These wealthy individuals use the corporate-owned media to further exaggerate their size.

However, APWU members and our friends can expose these individuals and their intent to undermine the Postal Service and the greater public good. We have the moral high ground in our fight for a vibrant, sustainable public Postal Service and increasing good union jobs for our country.