When
the 113th Congress returns to action, the re-jiggering the Postal
Service will be front and center, to the advantage of big business.…
There’s a really dirty war going on behind the scenes between the Postal
Service and the right-wing. In the land of despicable repugican
political practices I don’t think I find anything more despicable than
what the repugican cabal is already doing to the nation’s postal employees. Taking
full advantage of an errant legislative move nearly 7 years ago before
things collapsed completely, Congress brought us the Postal
Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) by unidentifiable
voice vote. That precipitated the current crisis.
This act
called for the pre-funding in the course of a mere decade of some 75
years of retiree health care benefits, decimating the USPS budget.
Without that ridiculous politicized mandate the Postal Service would be
running a surplus today. Some 4 out of every 5 dollars of postal debt
can be tracked to PAEA.
The wording of the bill also urged
“streamlining efforts” and a long-term vision of the Postal Service for
rationalizing (politispeak for downsizing) its infrastructure and
WORKFORCE. And there’s more rationalization in a policy to remove excess
processing and sorting capacity (the real prize for privatizers) and
space from the network More downsizing. And of course comes the
inevitable discussion of “what impact any facility changes may have on
the postal workforce and whether the Postal Service has sufficient
flexibility to make needed workforce changes.”
Thus was born a military boxing strategy to attack the entirety of the postal system on all sides.
But
when the 113th Congress returns from its August recess, postal workers
will possibly get shafted by their health care insurance (or imminent
lack thereof) beyond imagination. Currently, thanks in large measure to
union influence; workers have a smorgasbord of plans, deductibles and
coverage. There are wide ranges of options to cover just about every
individual and family contingency. If one plan turns out to be a dud,
you can opt for another from a broad menu and most of the big names in
the industry are included. You can also add dental and eye care at a
nominal cost. Postal workers are quite attached to their coverage.
That
may all go by the wayside as legislators bow once more to their
corporate keepers. Here’s the plan. No more membership in the Federal
Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and they’re going to start
effing around with Medicare. All supposedly in service to saving and/or
increasing that money plundered from the nonsensical bill described
above. And it would save money. Lots of it. So would repealing PAEA.
That would save money; lots of it. But that would benefit the average
working stiff and no right-winger wants that to happen under any
circumstances.
The Government Accounting Office released a report recently assessing
the impact of such a move.
While conceding that postal coffers would suddenly be fattened up, the
caveats are potentially hugely anti-productive for postal workers who
are already suffering like dogs. At the current time monies from
health-plan assets are invested in super-safe U.S. Treasury notes and
bills. Try this one on for size; one of the proposed options for
investing is to take Treasury funds and buy risky shit like stocks,
commodities, foreign currencies and god knows what else. I’m sure
derivatives are in the mix. Market slump or crash? The GAO emphasizes
the consequences would accrue directly to health care.
The idea
of changing the health care coverage system is being credited to
Postmaster General Patrick Donahue, who is constantly trying to slice
and dice the Postal Service (remember his attempt to can Saturday
deliveries?) But, while he can talk, he is still subservient to an
omnipotent board. Since the Postal Service became an “independent”
agency in 1970, the PG is second fiddle to the politically powerful USPS
Board of Governors. This body ultimately has to answer to Congress, but
its recent actions seems right down the extremist alley.
While
all this goes on, workers continue to get fired, lose seniority, are
forced great distances if they want to stay with the Postal Service,
receive little to no help in doing so, have their full-time and flexible
hours messed with and any number of other slights and insults.
USPS
is on life support and until American voters wise up to the irreparable
harm being done to postal employees daily lives, families, wages and
futures by a radical lunatic fringe of political haters and corporate
sycophants, things are going to get worse, not better.
There’s
both mischief and hope coming down the pipeline. A Senate bill that will
find the floor in September is S1486, the Postal Reform Act of 2013.
Co-sponsors are (amazingly) the Democratic Chairman of the Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Delaware Senator, Tom
Carper and the ranking repugican on the committee, Oklahoma Junior
Senator Tom Coburn. You’re going to have to adjust your thinking a bit
here. There are sections of the bill that call for 5 or FEWER days of
delivery, co-locations among the Postal Service, retail and commercial
establishments and something that is really going to take some getting
used to: no more door deliveries for the most part. It’ll be curbside or
converted to what’s termed a more “cost-effective” method. New
customers may see cluster boxes. Centralized delivery is also in the
mix, whatever that means.
There are some real cuts in postal
worker disability and partial disability payments and plans to reduce
area and district offices. You can look at
the bill’s totality
for yourself here. On the plus side, old faithful Bernie Sanders, that
wonderfully consistent constituent-friendly Independent from Vermont is
going to try to ride to the rescue with S316. The common sense
centerpiece of Bernie’s bill is to trash PAEA and get the Post Office
back on an even footing. Saturday mail delivery would continue to be
protected and postal services would be considerably expanded. A
commission would be appointed to pursue new profit-making avenues and
shutdowns of mail sorting centers would be averted.
As I
indicated the mail sorting centers are huge targets in this battle.
Poised to take the lucrative scraps of a postal failure are UPS with
their giant distribution network and surprisingly, Pitney Bowes, the
postage meter company that also operates 41 mail processing centers
according to a spokesperson from the American Postal Workers Union.
Would those be union jobs in the private sector?
It’s a
modern-day Maginot line with the Postal Service as France and the greedy
corporations and their congressional lackeys as Germany. For the sake
of postal workers, let’s hope the outcome is reversed.
You've
probably heard of "Stockholm Syndrome," in which a hostage begins to
sympathize with his or her captor, such as in stories about the Patty
Hearst case. But where did the syndrome get its name? From a case of
bank robbery in Sweden a year before Hearst was kidnapped.
