Post Office

Staples Misled Public On Postal Service Deal

July 17, 2014 Undernews, www.prorevnews.blogspot.com Educate! boycott, Labor, Post Office, Privatization, Staples

American Postal Workers - The announcement by Staples yesterday, indicating it is terminating its no-bid deal with the U.S. Postal Service and replacing it with an “approved shipper” program, “is a ruse,” says American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein. Staples and the USPS are changing the name of the program, without addressing the fundamental concerns of postal workers and postal customers. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Dimondstein says the Staples announcement, along with a July 7 letter from the USPS, “makes it clear. They intend to continue to privatize postal retail operations, replace living-wage Postal Service jobs with low-wage Staples jobs and compromise the safety and security of the mail.” He adds: This attempt at trickery shows that the ‘Don’t Buy Staples’ movement is having an effect. We intend to keep up the pressure until Staples gets out of the mail business. The U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale.

Tent City Is Up At Staples!

July 17, 2014 Occupy Oakland, www.occupyoakland.org Resist! Post Office, Privatization, Protest, Staples

The protest at Staples took on new dimensions today at 5:00 PM in the shape of small, but Occupyable tents between the sidewalk and the Staples parking lot in Berkeley on Durant between Shattuck and Milvia. Peeps from Berkeley Post Office Defenders and Occupy San Francisco are among the participants. As one of the campers said, “We’re here until Staples’ Post Offices aren’t.” The United State Postal Service and Staples began a pilot program back in October of 2013 whereby full-service Post Office stations were installed in some Staples around the country. But instead of being staffed by Postal Workers at living wage salaries they are being staffed by subsistence wage Staples employees. The American Postal Workers Union began protests and a boycott back in January, 2014. The boycott has been adopted nationwide by a large number of unions in recent months and has put serious pressure on Staples. A 24/7 table was set up in front on the Berkeley Staples on Shattuck just about a month ago, handing out literature and Boycott Staples postcards.

‘Stop Staples’ Movement Growing

June 16, 2014 American Postal Workers Union, www.apwu.org Resist! boycott, Labor, Post Office, Privatization, Unions

June 13, 2014 - SEIU 32BJ, representing 145,000 union members in 11 states and the District of Columbia, is boycotting all Staples retail stores in the U.S., Staples.com and Staples Advantage, as well as all Staples branded proprietary products. “We will no longer be using Staples as our union’s office supplier, and we will be actively encouraging our members and allies to refrain from doing business with your company,” SEUI 32BJ President Héctor Figueroa said in a June 11 letter [PDF] to Staples CEO Ronald Sargent. “It is unfortunate that we must take this action, but we strongly oppose your pilot program with the U.S. Postal Service to establish postal retail units in your stores staffed by low-wage, non-union, non-postal employees,” he wrote. “The Postal Service is the largest single civilian employer of union middle-class jobs for African Americans, and Veterans (including disabled veterans), and is the largest single civilian union employer. We need more of these types of jobs to strengthen our economy and the middle class, and we will not accept your efforts to undermine them through low-wage privation.”

Mayors Build Support For Postal Banking

June 11, 2014 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com Create! Mayors, Occupy, Post Office

When Lansing, Michigan Mayor Virg Bernero introduces two resolutions in support of expansion of United States Postal Service services at the 2014 U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas in two weeks, he'll have the support of co-sponsors Mayor Paul Soglin of Madison, Wis., and Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, Calif. Bernero, who chairs the USCM's Advanced Manufacturing Task Force, submitted the resolutions several weeks ago. They represent cutting edge ideas advanced by some of America's most forward-thinking policymakers and analysts. Elizabeth Warren proposed non-banking financial services at the beginning of the year (based on the recommendations of the U.S.P.S. Inspector General), while public banking activists and postal experts have long suggested a postal infrastructure bank that could re-build America's infrastructure at a fraction of the interest costs levied by private financiers. "Our nation's mayors are acutely aware of the impact of predatory lending, 'banking deserts,' and the potential loss of postal services in American cities and towns," said Marc Armstrong, president of BankACT, a nonpartisan group campaigning for postal banking legislation at the federal level and public banks at the state and local level. Many Americans are asking 'what if we had a banking system that is not based on profits?' Credit unions are small step in this direction – postal banking helps to complete the picture."

Loss Of The Post Office Will Create Lots Of Hardship

May 20, 2014 Alex Henderson, www.alternet.org Educate! Post Office, Privatization

On April 24, members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and other unions held 56 “Stop Staples” demonstrations in 27 different states. The postal workers, carrying signs that read, “The U.S. mail is NOT for sale,” were protesting against a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Service and the office supply chain Staples. Launched in October 2013, the deal allows non-unionized employees of 82 Staples stores to help sort mail. If the program is expanded later this year, that number could increase to 1,500 stores. In a press release, APWU said of the program, “Staples employees, who work for low wages and meager benefits—and who have received minimal training—operate these unsecured postal counters.” APWU sees the Staples deal as a step toward much greater privatization of the U.S. Postal Service, and they are right to be concerned, not only because of the interests of postal workers, but also, because the privatization or dismantling of the U.S. Postal Service will be terrible for American consumers and small businesses. It’s no secret that times have been challenging for USPS. The increase in digital communications has resulted in many Americans spending much less on postage than 15 or 20 years ago.

Our Historic Post Offices Should Not Be For Sale, Period!

April 28, 2014 JP Massar, www.indybay.org Educate! Post Office, Privatization

On April 17th, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation issued its Preserving Historic Post Offices report to Congress "on compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act for the closure and disposal of its historic postal facilities." This report was requested by legislation initiated by Berkeley's United States Representative in Congress Barbara Lee. photo polb-dave-welsh_zps80493c78.jpgThe report tells us some that is new, and much that we already know from Berkeley's experience attempting to interact with Postal Service management. We are well aware that they refuse to care about the community's concerns - when they deign to listen at all (public meetings attended by hundreds of Berkeley residents in near-universal opposition to the sale of Berkeley's Post Office whose voices were totally ignored showed us that); we know that Postal Service management ignores the law when it is inconvenient to their purposes; and we know that they are hell-bent on selling Post Office assets in pursuit of immediate revenue, all as the report suggests.

Rallies Across The Country To Save Post Office From Staples Privatization

April 25, 2014 Jodie Gummow, www.alternet.org Resist! Labor, Post Office, Unions

“U.S. mail is not for sale!” This was the hard-hitting message of hundreds of local activists who joined forces across the country in a national day of action protesting a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Services and Staples. The USPS pilot program establishing unsecured postal counters in more than 80 Staples stores in four geographic areas began late last year. In response, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) members and associates rallied outside Staples stores around the country demanding an end to the deal which they say is aimed at replacing good, living-wage postal jobs with low-wage, high-turnover jobs filled with untrained Staples employees. They say it may eventually lead to layoffs and the closing of post offices.

Stop Union Busting And Post Office Privatization By Staples

April 23, 2014 United Public Workers For Action, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Post Office

The national protest on April, 24, 2014 called by the American Postal Workers Union APWU and other postal unions is an important step in fighting the privatization and destruction and looting of our US post office. The privatization is being implemented to benefit capitalists like Mitt Romney who owns Staples and is part and parcel of the destruction of public services from the privatization of the schools through charters and corporate testing to the privatization and outsourcing of public transit by Veolia and other companies. We need to unite the 11 million public workers in the United States to launch a real political education campaign against the privatization of Staples and all other profiteers and union busters. This is not only a US issue but a global struggle and in Canada they have already ended postal delivery to homes harming the seniors and tens of millions of working people.

Oppose Another Step Toward Post Office Privatization

April 17, 2014 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Labor, Post Office, Privatization

On a recent Saturday morning, 500 protesters poured out of a parade of school buses, signs and megaphones in hand, and tried their best to shame a single Staples store just outside Chicago. Among them was Mike Suchomel, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, who traveled all the way from New Jersey for a nearby labor conference. What has infuriated Suchomel and many of his fellow postal union members is a new arrangement struck between USPS and the office supply retailer. Under the premise of a pilot program, a limited number of Staples locations are now offering most of the same services provided at post offices, to be handled by Staples employees rather than postal workers. "It's just a big step toward privatization," said Suchomel, who hopped a bus to the protest from the Labor Notes conference, a biannual gathering of labor activists held in Chicago. "I think it's a terrible thing that the postmaster general would even think about this."

Warren’s Post Office Proposal: Greg Palast Gets It Wrong

March 18, 2014 Ellen Brown, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Post Office, Public Banking

Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren's support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs -- both the underbanked and the U.S. Postal Service itself. In his February 27 article "Liz Warren Goes Postal," Palast attacked her support of the USPS Inspector General's proposal to add "non-bank" financial services to the U.S. Postal Service, calling it "cruel, stupid and frightening" and equating it with the unethical payday lending practices it seeks to eliminate.

Postal Unions Unite to Fight Staples

March 14, 2014 APWU Web News, www.apwu.org Organize! Labor, Organizing, Post Office, Unions

Declaring that “the U.S. Postal Service is under unprecedented attack,” the presidents of the four postal unions have formed a historic alliance to fight back. “A congressionally-manufactured financial crisis drains the USPS of vital resources,” the union presidents write in a proclamation [PDF] signed over the last several days. “Six-day delivery is under constant threat of elimination. The reduction of service standards and the elimination of half of the nation’s mail processing centers has slowed service and wiped out tens of thousands of good jobs. Post offices in cities and small towns are being sold or closed or having their hours cut back.

Seven Postal Protesters Arrested

December 21, 2013 Saul Hubbard, www.registerguard.com Resist! Government, Post Office

Holding signs aloft and using a megaphone, the protesters staged a sit-in on the processing center’s loading dock and refused to leave when asked to do so. Arrested by U.S. Postal Inspection Service police officers, the protesters were cited for blocking the loading dock, a federal misdemeanor charge, and quickly released. Among those arrested were Bart Bolger, a part-time rural letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service; Jamie Partridge, a retired letter carrier from Portland; and Peg Morton, a longtime Eugene peace activist. The sit-in followed a rally outside the adjacent Gateway post office attended by about 40 people — including processing center employees, activists and local elected officials — on what is typically the busiest day of the year for the Postal Service.

VIDEO: Going Postal!

November 27, 2013 Carl Gibson and Asher Platts, www.acronymtv.wordpress.com Resist! Austerity, Post Office, Video

If you had a great job that paid really well, but your health insurance benefits from that job had to be paid in full for 75 years into the future, it wouldn’t matter how much you got paid because you would always be broke and in debt. The same thing is happening to the United States Postal Service. The USPS is NOT in trouble. Despite the doom and gloom trumpeted by the corporate media, the post office actually posted $700 million in operation profits in the last four years. The USPS is certainly in a crisis, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the post office’s facilities, online commerce or employee salaries. It should come as a surprise to nobody that the USPS’s dire financial situation is a direct result of the callousness and shortsightedness of Congress.

“Postal Protectors” Knocked Down, Arrested Protesting Privatization in Portland

November 11, 2013 Jamie Partridge, www.labornotes.org Resist! Corporatism, Post Office

Calling themselves “postal protectors,” 15 activists gathered in the lobby of the main post office in downtown Portland, Oregon, Tuesday, holding signs protesting postal privatization. Seven were arrested while attempting to negotiate a meeting with District Manager Erica Brix. After months of attempts to gain a meeting with senior postal managers, the “protectors” showed up armed with more than a thousand signatures on a petition. Since August senior postal managers have received requests—from postal union local presidents, from Congresspeople, and from community groups—for meetings to discuss an end to privatization of postal jobs. For the sixth time, the activists were refused. “Postal truckers, mail handlers, and mail processing clerks are losing their jobs to profiteering private corporations,” declared Michael Colvin, a retired teacher and one of those arrested. “We are protesting the privatization of the people’s postal service. We oppose the destruction of family-wage, union jobs and the delay of the people’s mail.”

“Grand Alliance” Needed To Save Post Office

November 10, 2013 Staff, www.apwu.org Resist! Corporatism, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Post Office

In an impassioned speech before more than 1,000 union members, the newly-elected national president of the American Postal Workers Union, Mark Dimondstein, issued a call for a “grand alliance” to save the USPS as a public postal service and to protect postal jobs. To succeed, postal workers must build a movement, he said. “When the Flint sit-down strikers occupied a General Motors plant in the 1930s, labor law reform was won. When women took to the streets to demand the right to vote, they won. When courageous civil rights workers fought segregation with sit-ins and boycotts, the 1964 Civil Rights Act followed,” Dimondstein said. “History shows that movements move Congress. Movements create legislative victories, not the other way around,” he said. “We must build a grand alliance between the people of this country and postal workers,” he proclaimed.

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