Today, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced “The Postal Reform Act of 2018,” a bill that incorporates elements of both the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Postal Reform Act of 2017 (H.R. 756) and Sen. Carper’s “Improving Postal Operations, Service and Transparency Act (iPOST),” which was introduced during the last Congress. Following introduction, NALC President Fredric Rolando released the following statement:

“NALC thanks and commends the bipartisan authors of this proposed legislation for working to strengthen the Postal Service. America’s letter carriers appreciate the significant improvements contained in the bill over prior reform efforts. These improvements, which we have long advocated, include:

• Securing our country’s universal delivery system by protecting six-day mail delivery.
• Rejecting unnecessary changes to door delivery service for business and residential customers.
• Calling for a two-year moratorium on changes to service standards, giving the legislation time to work in a way that will relieve the pressure for misguided service cuts.
• Granting the Postal Service the ability to innovate, including the use of its networks to ship beer, wine and liquor to boost revenue.
• Exempting annuitants and their eligible spouses from the proposed mandate to enroll in Medicare Part B at age 65 if they can derive no benefit from enrolling (veterans with full VA care, native Alaskans, etc.) or if enrollment would cause extreme financial hardship.

We thank all four senators for their creativity in developing a variation of the Medicare-based approach to postal reform.  Assuming there is support for this approach from Sen Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and from the Committee’s GOP majority, we support using this bill as the basis for further legislative action.

NALC will monitor this bill and will continue to work with lawmakers and stakeholders through the legislative process to achieve quality postal reform.

As I laid out over a year ago, our objectives in any legislative process will be to protect our jobs, our rights, our networks and the interests of all NALC members.

Letter carriers know that the path ahead in Congress for this bill (or any bill) is uncertain. We look forward to reviewing the Postal Service’s financial analysis of the Postal Reform Act of 2018 and vow to remain engaged to work with both parties in the Senate to help the Postal Service thrive in the 21^st Century.”