In spite of this obvious success, there
is currently an alleged financial “crisis” threatening this long
esteemed institution and Congress’s “solution” is to dismantle
the Postal Service in order to cut costs. As a result, the
Postal Service is in the process of implementing a
“transformation” plan to: close or reduce the hours at small and
rural post offices, delay the mail by closing or consolidating
mail processing centers, eliminate living wage jobs and/or
reduce the wages and benefits of postal workers, eliminate
Saturday delivery, and require cluster boxes instead of home
delivery. These are dramatic and damaging service changes that
are simply unfounded, unnecessary, and against the law.
The damaging changes underway at the Post Office are a direct
result of the lobbying efforts of large corporate mailers who do
not want to lose their deep discounts and pay their fair share
of postage. To avoid higher postage rates for advertising, the
large mailers have relentlessly pushed the Postal Service to cut
costs by reducing postal services to the American people.
The companies lobbying for the reduction in service to the
public are the major banks and financial institutions (Bank of
America, JP Morgan, American Express, etc.,) large media
corporations (Time Warner, McClatchy, etc.,) and other
corporations who stand to directly benefit from the dismantling
of the Post Office (UPS, FedEx, RR Donnelly, Pitney Bowes, etc.)
The owners of these powerful corporations have used their money
and power to elect, lobby and otherwise direct important
government officials to make the service cuts that benefit the
large corporations at the expense of the American people. This
lobbying has also successfully protected the foolishly generous
rates given to bulk mailers. In fact a case can easily be made
that rates are so low for bulk corporate mail that this rate
structure is essentially a subsidy for large businesses, which
is unwittingly being paid for by higher postage rates for the
American public.
For many years now, the large mailers, Congress, the President
of the United States, and the Postal Board of Governors have
cooperated in the systematic dismantling of the Post Office.
This is evidenced by the transfer of work to the private sector
through “worksharing” discounts, the purposeful short staffing
of employees at the counters in post offices, the removal of
collection boxes, and the substitution of cluster boxes for home
or curbside delivery, etc. The reduction of service to the
public increases the profit for the large advertisers and also
undermines the good will of the public towards the Postal
Service. The transfer of postal work to the private sector
results in living wage union jobs turned into low wage non-union
jobs. The private owner pockets the difference in wages. |
