Burrus: Legislation Good for Major Mailers, Bad for Postal Workers

Burrus Update #18-06, Dec. 11, 2006

In a flurry of activity on the last day of the 109th Congress, the House and Senate passed postal “reform” legislation and sent the bill to the president for his signature. If this were a football game, the score would be recorded as “Large Mailers 42 - Postal Employees zero.” In sports terms, that is a rout. Unfortunately, some postal employee organizations played for the other team.

Despite the lofty public pronouncements, this legislation will not add a single letter to the mail stream, and there are no redeeming features for postal workers. In fact, this bill could more appropriately be referred to as “The 2006 Postal Employee Wage Reduction Act.” Those fools in the postal community who joined with large mailers to champion this legislation did so at the expense of the very members they are sworn to serve.

The American Postal Workers Union fought hard — and successfully — to preserve restrictions on excessive worksharing discounts. These discounts have subsidized the major mailers at the expense of small businesses and individual citizens for more than a decade. We intend to use the provisions of the new law to end these subsidies.

We also supported the transfer of responsibility for military pension payments from the Postal Service to the Treasury (as is the case for all other military veterans), and we advocated the release of the escrow account that was created in 2004 after overpayments to the Civil Service Retirement System fund were discovered. These provisions were included in the legislation, as was the Harkin amendment, which requires public involvement in plant consolidations.

These were all positive achievements, but they will not offset the devastating long-term affect the law will have on employee wages and benefits.

The choice was postal “reform” designed to serve the big mailers on the one hand, or free collective bargaining and equal service with uniform rates for all American citizens. Regrettably, Congress sided with the large mailers.

The legislation gives the Postal Service freedom to increase postage rates without lengthy regulatory proceedings, but the increases must be less than the rate of inflation. This limit on rate increases — without regard to the actual costs the Postal Service incurs — will result in an artificial cap on postal workers’ wages.

The professed mantra of reform was to permit the Postal Service “to operate more like a business,” but can you name a major business that has an artificial annual limit on price increases? UPS and FedEx, General Motors and United Airlines do not operate under such legal restrictions, and they would be bankrupt if they were forced to function under such limitations.

The goal of the large mailers was to limit postage increases and to take control away from postal management. An all-powerful Postal Regulatory Board was created to enforce the restrictions.

An example of the devastating impact would be the recent exceptional increases in energy and housing costs, which were offset by politically-induced reductions timed to coincide with the national elections. In this instance, using the new provisions, the Postal Service would have been required to pay the inflated costs, but would have been unable to adjust rates commensurate with the additional financial burden because of subsequent reductions in the CPI. The Postal Service would have had to absorb the additional costs and would have been forced to shift the burden onto the backs of postal employees.

The final insult in the legislation is the imposition of a three-day waiting period for payment to postal employees who are injured on the job. The waiting period, which does not apply to any other federal workers, is inhumane and wrong. Imagine if this law had been in effect during the anthrax attack: APWU members would have been required to use their sick leave while recovering — or do without — and the families of Brothers Curseen and Morris — who died from anthrax inhalation — would have been denied payment. How cruel.

In years to come, the leaders of the postal unions and management associations that supported this ill-conceived legislation will criticize management when the Postal Service says there is no money for pay raises. They will make militant statements and chastise management for their refusal to reward workers for a job well done. But not one of these leaders will point the finger of blame on the inflexible rate caps they supported

The American Postal Workers Union has never supported this effort to artificially limit rate increases and by extension influence collective bargaining, and we did not engage in collective efforts with the large mailers to work for passage of the legislation.

This bill is not yet law, but effective immediately we pledge our efforts to repeal its onerous provisions. The last chapter of Postal Reform has not yet been written.

William Burrus
President