(This article appears in the July/August 2014 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.) John L. Marcotte, Legislative & Political Director The Postmaster General and the USPS are lobbying Congress. What are they asking legislators to do? Reduce letter delivery to five days per week; Deny new hires a âdefined benefitâ retirement (pension) plan; Force injured…
June 25, 2014âLanguage mandating six-day mail deliveryâintentionally left out of the draft version of the House Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Governmentâs Fiscal Year 2015 spending billâwas successfully reinserted into the measure that was approved on Wednesday by a voice vote of the full House Appropriations committee. âThis is a clear victory for letter…
Saturday delivery is on the chopping block this week in Congress, and we need you to take action today to save it and the future of the Postal Service, which must provide service six days a week to prevent competitors from entering our business to replace us. Last week, the House Financial Services and General…
âThe situation now, as you can see, is fairly precarious. When you have roughly $4 billion of cash, and over $100 billion in liabilities, it doesnât take a genius to figure out weâre in a financial crisis.â âUSPS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett, Wall Street Journal online edition, June 18, 2014 June 18, 2014âPoor Joe…
Commentary By Rafe Morrissey June 16, 2014, 5 a.m. There is a shell game currently underway on Capitol Hill. The House Republican Leadership are trying to use the elimination of essential postal services as a means to pay for temporarily extending the exhausted Highway Trust Fund. Unfortunately for taxpayers and postal customers, the game is…
June 14, 2014âEarlier this week, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe recklessly endorsed the House of Representativeâ leadershipâs outrageous ploy to use massive job and service cuts in the Postal Service to âpay forâ a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund, which will run out of money in August if Congress fails to raise the gas…
The editorial below from âan anonymous PostCom board memberâ appeared in this weekâs issue of PostCom Bulletin, the organizationâs newsletter. I thought the insights about how to get postal reform moving and about the U.S. Postal Service’s governing body were worth sharing with a wider audience, so Iâm republishing it with the permission of PostCom. A…
from Kori Blalock Keller, NALC Director of Legislative & Political Affairs Once again, Congress is dropping the ball on postal reform. Rather than working on legislation that fixes the crisis it created with the 2006 mandate to pre-fund future retiree health benefits, and rather than formulating smart reforms that will allow the Postal Service to…
