TAMPA, Florida — Some mail carriers in the Bay Area say they are increasingly worried about their safety after yesterday’s smash and grab burglary of a mail truck in Seminole Heights.

Customers say the crime may have exposed them to identity theft, but it also may have exposed a problem for the postal service: protecting their own, as well as the mail itself.

Postal carrier Tracey Hollis says he’s far more concerned about delivering the mail these days.

via Postal workers concerned by brash truck burglary | wtsp.com.

Today, the Senate continued to debate S. 1789, the Lieberman-Collins-Carper-Brown postal relief bill. There was considerable discussion underscoring the importance of post offices to communities they serve. However, the Senate could not take up the so-called managers’ amendment to the bill, because Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) raised an objection. He wanted to offer a “non-relevant” amendment to S. 1789 to suspend foreign aid to Egypt. Paul was denied the opportunity to offer the amendment, so he objected to the “motion to proceed” to the managers’ amendment. This means that tomorrow the Senate needs to muster a 60-vote super-majority to “end debate” (i.e., cloture) on the motion to proceed. (NAPUS supports a YES vote on cloture.)

In response to the Paul objection, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filled-up the “amendment tree”, which severely limits the number of amendments that can be considered on the Senate floor. Inasmuch as Senators have filed 74 amendments, such a limitation may be problematic. Consequently, the managers of the bill may need to request “unanimous consent” to proceed with any amendment. A number of amendments that were filed after 1:00 PM would definitely need unanimous to be considered.

Besides the Paul Amendment on foreign aid, amendments were offered relating to postal employee benefit cuts (McCain), accelerating the movement to 5-day delivery (McCain), the creation of a post office closing commission (McCain), imposing a moratorium on postal facility closures until enactment of the bill (Pryor), providing the USPS with temporary authority to raise first class postage (Carper), curtailing nuisance political campaign phone calls (Feinstein), enrolling senior citizens in the FEHBP (Paul), etc. NAPUS is reviewing all 74 amendments and will be sharing our views with the Senators.

A number of amendments are noteworthy. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) has filed Amendment 2049, which would clarify that the USPS cannot unilaterally change or eliminate the product of Postmaster and supervisor pay and benefit consultations, without mutual agreement. Notwithstanding a mutual agreement, proposed changes should only take place during the times prescribed in law. NAPUS has requested that the managers of S. 1789 accept the Akaka Amendment. In addition, there are a number of amendments that seek to strengthen rural post office safeguards, including Amendment 2031 filed by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), with the co-sponsorship of Senators Baucus, Merkley and Tester.

NAPUS has been holding a series of telecons with NAPUS Legislative Chairs relating to legislative activities that they will be conducting. In fact, a number of NAPUS chapters have been asked by their Senators to participate in Senator-sponsored telecons on the postal legislation. Moreover, all NAPUS members have been invited to participate in a nationwide Tele-Town Hall Meeting with the Senate Leadership tomorrow. For more information about this unique Tele-Town Hall Meeting, please contact your Chapter Legislative Chair, Chapter President, National Vice President, or the NAPUS Government Relations Department.

via NAPUS.

APWU Web News Article 039-2012, April 18, 2012

(4/18/2012) Members of the APWU and Mail Handlers Union rallied in front of post offices around the country Tuesday to alert the public to looming service cuts if Congress doesn’t act to fix the Postal Service’s finances by May 15. That is the day a moratorium on post office and plant closures expires. The moratorium is intended to give Congress time to come up with an alternative to the Postal Service’s plans to shutter more than 200 mail processing facilities and close over 3600 post offices to save money.

At the main post office in Royal Oak, MI, Local 480-481 President Roscoe Woods said he and his members have a simple message they are trying to get across. “Congress created this mess,” he said, “and Congress must fix it.”

Woods was referring to the 2006 congressional mandate that the Postal Service pre-fund future retirement health benefits for the next 75 years, and do it in a 10-year window.  No other government agency or private business bears a similar burden, which drains $5.5 billion in postal revenue each year.

“We’re reminding folks that we run on zero tax dollars,” said Woods “We’re making money, but we’re saddled with this huge debt.”

The picket in Royal Oak was just one of eight rallies in Michigan and several hundred around the nation on Tuesday.

In Vermont, protesters held rallies at the White River Junction mail processing center, which is slated for closure, as well as in Manchester and Montpelier.

“There are about 245 employees at the [White River Junction] facility,” said local President Wayne Martin Jr.

“We need to put pressure on Congress to act,” said Lorraine Clough, an employee at the White River Junction facility. “They just keep putting it off, and if they keep doing that they’re going to continue to keep closing plants,” said Clough.

As APWU and Mail Handlers began leafleting on Tuesday, the Senate voted 74-22 to begin debate on the 21st Century Postal Service Act (S. 1789). The APWU and the Mail Handlers Union are opposed to the bill in its current form and have been working with supportive senators to amend the bill to better protect current levels of service and to keep plants and post offices open. (See Senate Expected to Resume Consideration of Postal Bill.)

In Buffalo, NY, postal workers and supporters gathered outside the William Street post office protesting the pending closure of that facility.

“It’s a very stressful period for our people right now,” said Frank Resetarits, president of the Buffalo Local and the New York State Postal Workers Union. “Our hope is that Congress will step in, and not allow the service standard changes to take place.”

USPS managers admit that the massive number of closures they are planning would force the Postal Service to drastically reduce service.  The APWU says it urging Congress to adopt legislation that would retain existing service standards.

In Bloomington, IL, members of APWU Local 228 pitched a tent and gave out leaflets outside the Bloomington Processing & Distribution Center. Local President J.R. Haslett said closing the plant is a bad idea.  “We’re right in the middle of the state.  It’s just not a very good idea,” he said.

In Portland, OR, over 200 postal workers and supporters carried picket signs protesting closures and service cuts along a blocks-long demonstration at the Main Post Office.  Leaflets proclaiming “NO TAXES NEEDED to Save America’s Postal Service” were handed out to passersby.

In Oregon, four distribution centers and over 20 rural post offices are marked for closure. “These closures will cause huge disruptions to mail service, eliminating the overnight first-class delivery standard, delaying delivery two or three days, and forcing hundreds of thousands of postal patrons to travel many miles to nearest post office.” said Cara Shufelt of the Rural Organizing Project (ROP).

In Charlotte, NC, postal workers spent hours on the side of the road by the mail processing center handing out flyers to passersby calling on North Carolina’s senators to fix S. 1789.

“If customers no longer can rely on us to get their stuff overnight, they’re going to use other options.  And when they do, we’re going to lose more revenue,” said LeRoy Moyer, president of the Charlotte Local APWU.

Senator Susan Collins just wrapped up the first installment of the Senate debate on postal reform with some interesting revisionist history. She was apparently somewhat miffed by remarks Joe Lieberman had just delivered, noting that the USPS’s trust fund obligations, imposed by Collins’ 2006 PAEA law, were unique and responsible for much of the agency’s current financial situation.

Collins made two points- first, that the USPS had supported her legislation, because it knew that it would eventually need the money in the trust fund. Secondly, she said that the prefunding requirement was not responsible for the USPS deficit, since the USPS had run in the red for the last two years despite not having made the payments.

The first claim is cynical, to say the least. The US Postal Service is not a giant corporation that has the luxury of being able to give politicians millions in campaign contributions to influence their votes. The USPS is a giant business, but it is a creature of the Congress, which created it, and which can dismantle it, with the stroke of a pen. Jack Potter and the USPS leadership smiled and said nice things about PAEA in 2006, not because they thought Collins was a genius, but because the bill was going to pass, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Collins’s analysis of the causes of the USPS financial problems is simply bad math. Yes, the USPS has run in the red recently- but the operating deficits have been small given the economy and the structural problems the USPS faces in responding to the decline in mail volume. But the simple, indisputable fact is that before the USPS stopped paying into it, the trust fund already contained $46 billion! That’s $46 billion that would have offset all of the USPS’s current debt, and left $30 billion in profits.

You can certainly make an argument that the USPS needs to put aside money for future obligations, but to claim that the PAEA trust fund is not responsible for the postal service’s financial “crisis” ignores reality.

From MSNBC’s Ed Schultz:

Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake in the GOP assault on the post office. The Senate took up a bill to postpone the agony of cuts, but it’s not a long-term solution. Ed Schultz thinks Democrats should take a page out of the Michele Bachmann playbook on this fight.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Ed Show.

Statement of NALC President Fredric Rolando
on the new version of S. 1789, The 21st Century Postal Service Act

April 17, 2012 — Today, the four co-sponsors of S. 1789 introduced a new version of their bill to reform the Postal Service and the Senate has voted to debate this legislation in the days ahead.

Although the National Association of Letter Carriers deeply appreciates the hard work of Sens. Lieberman, Collins, Carper and Brown in bringing this legislation to the floor, we cannot in good conscience support S. 1789 as currently drafted. We believe it will drive the Postal Service into a death spiral.

The legislation unwisely continues a policy adopted in 2006 that requires the Postal Service —and only the Postal Service—to massively pre-fund future retiree health insurance premiums decades in advance. No other company, agency or branch of government—including UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Congress—is required to pre-fund such benefits. The USPS has already set aside nearly $45 billion for future retiree health benefits, enough for nearly 30 years’ of premiums. Although S. 1789 would reduce the burden of pre-funding somewhat, the revised legislation retains a mandate on the Postal Service to plow $3.5 billion to $5 billion per year into its massive retiree health fund.

Despite this pre-funding burden, the bill maintains the current law’s rigidly inflexible price controls and strictly limits the range of services that can be provided.

To cover this unaffordable burden, the bill essentially endorses the gradual dismantling of one of America’s oldest and most beloved institutions, including eliminating the jobs of 18 percent of the nation’s postal workers—nearly 100,000 jobs—over the next three years.

Rather than using its limited resources to adapt and restructure its services to take advantage of an explosion in e-commerce deliveries and finding new uses for the Postal Service’s unmatchable networks, the bill opens the door to further downsizing. This would not only damage the nation’s No. 1 employer of veterans, but also threaten the entire mailing industry that employs nearly 7.5 million private-sector workers—particularly those employed by millions of small businesses and rural-based enterprises.

The bill would all but guarantee the elimination of Saturday delivery in two years, degrading the Postal Service’s most unique quality—a last-mile delivery network that gives America’s businesses (banks, utilities, magazines, shippers, prescription drug distributors and advertisers) access to 150 million addresses six days a week. This would weaken a crucial part of the nation’s economic infrastructure and undermine the USPS’ ability to continue to continue its recent growth in the booming e-commerce sector.

S. 1789 also would mandate the phase-out of door-to-door service for the 35 to 40 million households and businesses that enjoy such delivery in favor of curb or centralized (remote) service, and would open delivery to household mailboxes to unaccountable third parties on days the USPS does not deliver.

Lower quality, less frequent and slower service will simply drive more business away and do more harm than good. A recent internal USPS study predicted a 10 percent loss in mail volume if all these service cuts are implemented—the study was withheld from the Postal Regulatory Commission’s proceedings on the Postal Service’s network realignment plan.

Beyond the central “business strategy” flaw in the legislation, the bill includes a punitive workers’ compensation reform that could impoverish injured workers suffering from long-term injuries when they reach retirement age.

NALC is committed to working with senators from both parties to fix the worst flaws in this legislation. But as today’s white paper drafted by our consultants from the Lazard investment bank concluded, what really is needed is a new business model for the Postal Service. As drafted, S. 1789 will simply accelerate a failing business strategy. Our message to the policy makers is simple: We don’t have to dismantle the Postal Service to save it.

Congress and the Obama administration should commit themselves to developing a sensible restructuring plan for the USPS. Such a plan should embrace an ethic of shared sacrifice so that a more innovative, albeit somewhat smaller, Postal Service can emerge to meet the changing needs of the American economy. NALC members are willing to do their part to make this happen. We hope policy makers at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue will do so as well.

Portland, OR – Over two hundred Portland-area letter carriers, other postal workers, family members and allies held a picket and rally Tuesday (tax day), calling attention to tax-free solutions to fix postal service. As last minute tax filers drove up to the blue postal collection boxes, picket signs calling for no closures, no cuts, saving 6-day delivery, door-to-door and curbside delivery, community post offices and family wage jobs dotted the blocks long demonstration at Portland’s Main Post Office. Leaflets proclaiming “NO TAXES NEEDED to Save America’s Postal Service” were handed out to passersby.

“After May 15th, the Postmaster General begins closing hundreds of distribution plants and thousands of post offices. These closures will cause huge disruptions to mail service, eliminating the overnight first class delivery standard, delaying delivery two or three days, and forcing hundreds of thousands of postal patrons to travel many miles to nearest post office.” said Cara Shufelt of the Rural Organizing Project (ROP).

“Here in Oregon 4 distribution centers and over 20 rural post offices are marked for closure. Not only will mail service be disrupted but these communities will lose a valuable community hub and resource.” ROP staged “Occupy the Post Office,” a day of protest in rural Oregon on December 19th, when 41 post offices were slated for closure.

“Congress took the postal service money. Now the USPS needs it back,” said Jim Cook, president of the Portland area letter carriers union, calling the USPS financial crisis “manufactured”. Since 2006 the postal service has been forced to spend nearly 10% of its budget pre-funding retiree health benefits 75 years in advance. “No other U.S. agency or private business faces such a crushing financial burden. Without this unjust Congressional requirement, the USPS would have been profitable,” Cook asserted.

Rally speakers included representatives from the National Association of Letter Carriers, Alliance of Retired Americans, American Postal Workers Union, Rural Organizing Project, Oregon AFL-CIO, Occupy Portland, Jobs with Justice, and Municipal Employees local 483.

Communities and Postal Workers United (CPWU) is a national network for the preservation of ‘our national treasure, the US Postal Service’, which serves over 150 million households and businesses six days a week and provides equal universal mail services for all the people, at reasonable uniform rates. Good postal jobs help build strong communities.

The CPWU calls on the Postmaster General to stop the closures and cuts. We call on Congress to fix the finances by passing S 1853 and HR 3591, allowing the USPS access to its own surplus health benefit and pension funds.

CPWU’s rally was part of a “Portland Rising” day of action on TAX DAY, calling for Good Jobs for All – No Cuts! Actions began at noon in Terry Shrunk Plaza (Tax Dodgerball, 1% vs 99%), moved to City Hall at 4pm (no cutbacks, no layoffs), 5pm on the Max (no fare hikes, no service cuts) and 5:30pm at the Main Post Office (no closures, no cuts).

Section by section explanation of provisions in the amended version of S. 1789:

S 1789 Substitute – Section by Section Analysis