Labor & Employment Law

NALC Says 5-Day Delivery Is the Wrong Way To Go

By James Parks

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS’s) plan to end Saturday mail delivery would do more harm than good and it distracts from the real solution, which is eliminating the “crushing burden of a deeply flawed health benefits pre-funding policy,” according to the Letter Carriers (NALC).

The real key to saving the Postal Service, says NALC President Fredric Rolando, is to overhaul the health care funding system, which could save the agency at least $8 billion a year?far more than the speculative $3 billion annual savings the USPS claims it can get from reducing service. He adds:

The arrogance of the Postal Service in this campaign to lobby the public to embrace five-day delivery as the answer to the Postal Service’s problem is astounding. Given that Congress has shown very little interest in eliminating Saturday service and must approve any change, the Postal Service should focus its energies on real solutions, not risky and counterproductive service cuts.

“What makes matters worse is that the Postal Service is sending a very confusing message to Congress,” Rolando says.

Just a week ago, Postmaster General John Potter told a Senate hearing that “we wouldn’t have to go to five-day delivery” if Congress corrected the deeply flawed retiree health pre-funding policy.

To make sure the public hears the truth about the five-day delivery scheme, the NALC launched a website.

The NALC site includes fact sheets showing why switching to five-day delivery will not solve the USPS’s financial problems and, in fact, would mean between 50,000 and 80,000 workers would lose their jobs.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 01, 2010 (boomark / email).