USPS

Consolidation Threatens To Rip ‘Service’ Out Of Postal Service

October 31, 2024 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Educate! Louis DeJoy, US Postal Service, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers are battling an overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service that would cost thousands of jobs and slow the mail for half the country. In the name of efficiency, a letter mailed within Cheyenne, Wyoming, would travel to Denver and back. And if you miss a package, your local post office would no longer have it. It might be 45 minutes away. In March, Buffalo became the first place to fend off the closure of its mail processing plant, in a team effort by Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 3 and Postal Workers (APWU) Local 374. The unions turned out 300 people to picket in front of the plant, and 700 to pack a public hearing, said Branch 3 President David Grosskopf. They deluged USPS with feedback in its online survey.

Postal Workers Hold Nationwide ‘Day Of Action’ October 1

October 1, 2024 American Postal Workers Union. Resist! Elections, Postal Workers, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

Washington, DC – On Tues., Oct. 1 postal workers who are members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) will be rallying with the public in front of postal facilities across the country to sound the alarm about the United States Postal Service’s substandard performance and service to communities. Rallies are planned in 90 cities including Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and Honolulu. “The postal service is doing an excellent job ensuring that ballots and election related mail are delivered in a timely manner. But efficient and timely service also should apply all year to the delivery of prescription drugs, Social Security checks, financial documents, personal correspondence, and other mail and packages,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein.

October 1: Nationwide Rallies To Save The Postal Service

September 18, 2024 Miriam Brockman, Labor Notes. Resist! Postal Service, Unions, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Postal Workers (APWU) will hold a national day of action on October 1, with rallies all across the country for better staffing and better service, a better contract that ends the two-tier wage system, and the right to speak to the board that governs the postal service. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s plan to “modernize” the Postal Service consists of condensing it. In the name of saving money, he is pushing to consolidate mail processing plants into fewer, bigger, more automated ones—which means cutting hundreds of jobs each time and slowing down the mail, especially for rural customers. The state of Wyoming will have no mail plants left at all, so if you mail a letter across town in Cheyenne, it will have to travel all the way to Denver and back.

US Postal Service’s Attack On Privacy

June 29, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Constitution, Surveillance, US Postal Service, USPS

I've written in the past about the U.S. Postal Service’s so-called Mail Cover Program. It allows postal employees to photograph and send to federal law enforcement organizations (F.B.I., Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, etc.) the front and back of every piece of mail the Post Office processes. It also retains the information digitally and provides it to any government agency that wants it — without a warrant. I’m not an attorney, of course. But I’m also not an idiot. And that policy strikes me as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties. The Mail Cover Program has been known publicly for quite some time.

Awful Conditions In New Postal Hubs Create Opening For Resistance

May 29, 2024 Jamie Partridge, Labor Notes. Strategize! Postal Workers, Unions, US Postal Service, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

For three years, rank-and-file postal workers and community allies have been fighting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Ten-Year Plan to Amazonify the postal service. DeJoy’s overall goal is eliminating jobs by installing huge new automated parcel sorting machines. For letter carriers, the biggest immediate impact of his multi-pronged plan is relocating many from neighborhood post offices to massive new Sorting and Delivery Centers. Over the next few years 600 of these hubs would be set up, impacting 6,000 post offices and 100,000 routes. Under pressure from Senators, DeJoy announced May 13 that he will pause another part of the plan, the consolidation of mail processing plants, at least until next January—a big win for our side.

DeJoy Agrees To Pause Consolidations At Dozens Of USPS Facilities

May 18, 2024 Eric Katz, Government Executive. Educate! Biden administration, Congress, Louis DeJoy, US Postal Service, USPS, Worker Rights

The U.S. Postal Service is pausing some of the most controversial reforms to its mailing network as its leadership has agreed to the demands of a growing, bipartisan chorus in Congress. The mailing agency has halted its plans to consolidate dozens of processing facilities until at least Jan. 1, 2025, ensuring the network overhaul is paused until after the upcoming presidential election in which millions of Americans will be voting by mail. A large swath of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum have called on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to delay or cease the changes, some of which would shift the bulk of mail processing across state lines.

Modeling The New USPS Delivery Network

October 3, 2022 Steve Hutkins, Save The Post Office. Educate! Privatization, USPS, Worker Rights

This month the Postal Service will begin implementing a massive initiative to change how the mail is delivered. Instead of working out of the back of post offices, letter carriers will be relocated to large, centralized facilities called Sorting & Delivery Centers. These S&DCs will be housed in currently operating processing centers, large post offices, and eventually one of the new multi-functional mega-plants the Postal Service plans to create over the next few years. Spaces are already being prepared in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Charlotte, where the Postal Service has leased a 620,000 square foot facility almost adjacent to a large Amazon warehouse. The effects on postal employees will be significant, as discussed in this previous post.

Groups Team Up To Demand Union-Made, Electric Postal Vehicles

April 22, 2022 Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org. Create! Electric Vehicles, Unions, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

After nearly 30 years in the labor movement, Cindy Estrada is well familiar with the corporate playbook. “As soon as wages and benefits are decent, they want to move that work somewhere else.” That’s what happened, the United Autoworkers Vice President explained at a recent rally, after Oshkosh Defense secured a huge contract to build postal vehicles. “The ink was still drying,” Estrada said, “when they announced they were moving the work to South Carolina.” UAW members had fully expected to build the postal trucks in the existing Oshkosh Defense facility in Wisconsin. After all, the company had won the contract on the basis of their quality work. Instead, Oshkosh Defense plans to convert a vacant former Rite-Aid warehouse in notoriously anti-union South Carolina to fulfill the postal contract, circumventing the unionized workforce in Wisconsin.

On Contact: Corporate Assault On US Postal Service

January 23, 2022 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Capitalism, Corporatism, Privatization, USPS

The corporate seizure of public utilities and privatization of schools is part of a broad assault to turn government assets into assets that will swell corporate profit. The post office has been a coveted target for decades. Corporations such as FedEx and UPS have used their lobbyists and campaign contributions to cripple the government postal service in an effort to destroy it and take it over. These corporations engineered a congressional mandate in 2006 that requires the post office to pre-fund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits in one decade. No other federal government agency is required to carry out a similar pre-payment plan, nor is there any actuarial justification for this measure.

The Post Office At A Crossroads

November 17, 2021 Monique Morrissey, Economic Policy Institute. Create! Governance, Postal Banking, US Postal Service, USPS

USPS has a public service mandate to provide a similar level of service to communities across the country regardless of local economic conditions. In addition to daily mail delivery to far-flung locations, the Postal Service maintains post offices even in low-income urban neighborhoods and small towns that lack other basic services. The Postal Service is able to fulfill its mission while keeping postage rates low due to economies of scale. Once the fixed costs of post offices and delivery are covered, the additional cost of new services is often minimal. If it weren’t prevented from doing so, the Postal Service could take advantage of underused capacity and build on Americans’ trust in the Postal Service to offer new services to the public while bringing needed revenue to the agency.

USPS Begins Postal Banking Pilot Program

October 12, 2021 David Dayen, The American Prospect. Create! APWU, Postal Banking, US Postal Service, USPS

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has taken the most dramatic step in a half-century to re-establish a postal banking system in America. In four pilot cities, customers can now cash payroll or business checks of up to $500 at post office locations, and have the money put onto a single-use gift card. It’s the most far-reaching executive action that the Biden administration has taken since Inauguration Day. The move puts the USPS in direct competition with the multibillion-dollar check-cashing industry, which operates storefronts to allow unbanked or underbanked residents to cash their paychecks. According to USPS spokesperson Tatiana Roy, the pilot launched on September 13 in four locations: Washington, D.C.; Falls Church, Virginia; Baltimore; and the Bronx, New York.

It’s Been A Long Nightmare Before Christmas For UPS And Postal Workers

December 23, 2020 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Educate! Postal Workers, UPS, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

Every year, workers at the Postal Service and UPS expect to work long hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas. “This is like our Super Bowl,” said Kimberly Karol, president of the Iowa Postal Workers (APWU). “Employees really do rally together.” But this year has been like no other. Workers were still catching their breath from last year’s holiday peak when the pandemic struck and online ordering ratcheted up. It was like Christmas all over again—and it never stopped. Package volumes at the Postal Service are up 40 percent compared to this time last year, and understaffing is intensified by Covid—more than 50,000 of the 600,000 postal workers have had to take pandemic-related leave.

The Post Office Belongs To The Public

July 18, 2020 Mark Dimondstein and Richard Koritz, In These Times. Organize! Congress, Privatization, Recession, USPS

On June 15, Louis DeJoy of Greensboro, N.C., began his new job as Postmaster General of the United States. We are postal worker union activists who also hail from Greensboro (and are now American Postal Workers Union president and solidarity representative, respectively). For decades we have defended the interests of the public Postal Service and postal workers, and we bring a much different perspective than that of multi-millionaire businessman DeJoy. We are concerned that DeJoy, a mega-donor to Republican Party causes and to President Trump, has been tapped to carry out the administration’s agenda.

Trump: Postal Workers Don’t Deserve A Financial Lifeline

April 13, 2020 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Amazon, Privatization, Trump, USPS

The financially strapped United States Postal Service wound up with crumbs in the $2.2 trillion stimulus deal, despite playing a vital role in our nation’s public health and economic stability at this time of crisis. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) accused President Trump of personally intervening to strip a Democratic postal rescue proposal from the final bill. Asked on Tuesday for his response, Trump lashed out at the beleaguered Postal Service with a stream of false accusations. “They lose money every time they deliver a package for Amazon or these other internet companies,” Trump said. “If they’d raise the prices by, actually a lot, then you’d find out that the post office could make money or break even. But they don’t do that…Tell your Democrat friend that he should focus on that.”

The Postal Service Is A Public Treasure That Should Not Be Privatized

December 20, 2018 Sarah Holder, Citylab.com Educate! Class Struggle, Postal Service, Privatization, USPS

The United States Postal Service has been fighting for its life since it was born. President Richard Nixon created this vast mail-managing entity in 1970 by turning its old Cabinet-level predecessor, the U.S. Post Office Department, into a government-owned corporation, caving to union demands after hundreds of thousands of postal workers went on strike for better wages and collective bargaining rights. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan tried to change the USPS’s public status and sell it off for cash. He failed, but in 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which mandated that Postal Service retirement health care* be pre-funded, and arguably contributed to a long-term financing crisis that continues today.

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