It’s déjà vu all over again
March 5, 2014—As it has for the past four years, the Obama administration’s budget proposal for 2015 defers to the misguided wishes of Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe by calling for the end of Saturday mail delivery and for allowing the Postal Service to “begin shifting to centralized and curbside delivery where appropriate.” Rather than eliminate or repeal the pre-funding burden, the budget would simply restructure and re-amortize the liability for future retiree health benefits, pushing the problem off into the future.
The 2015 budget proposal also would make permanent the 4.3 percent exigent postal rate increase enacted in January, an increase that the Postal Regulatory Commission had set to expire in two years.
These budget proposals not only fail to address the main source of the Postal Service’s problems, they also directly threaten nearly 100,000 good postal jobs at a time when the Postal Service’s finances have rebounded strongly.
These proposals, cooked up in the panic of 2009 and 2010 when the Great Recession was in full swing, never made sense: Cutting service is a prescription for driving even more business away. The proposals make even less sense now that the Postal Service is earning operating profits (before one accounts for a pre-funding expense that no other agency or company faces), while an e-commerce boom is pushing the Postal Service to provide service seven days a week.
“The Office of Management and Budget remains under the spell of a misguided postmaster general, a leader who seems committed to sticking to an obsolete austerity plan devised in very different circumstances,” NALC President Fredric Rolando said. “OMB has lazily produced a weak, job-killing postal reform plan that Congress should soundly reject.”
Republican leaders denounced President Obama’s plan as “dead on arrival”—albeit for much different reasons. “Still, ‘dead on arrival’ seems about right to me,” Rolando said. “NALC and other postal stakeholders must come together with our allies in Congress on a plan to help the Postal Service innovate and grow.
“It’s time to maximize the value of our incredible universal networks, not to dismantle them,” Rolando said.
NALC has communicated our views to the Obama administration. White House officials have indicated their willingness to discuss alternative postal reform proposals, and the NALC will pursue those discussions expeditiously.
Meanwhile, the four postal unions will work together to mobilize our members as well as the general public to support a strong and innovative Postal Service.
No volume, 5 day here we come….All you union lovers keep paying your dues for nothing. hahahahahahaha
I am with you BKizzle…..no volume! Let’s do it…5 day all the way!
Hey City Carrier…hahahahahahahahahahah
Bet the unions are all up in arms about this. Serves to show that ya better watch who you go to bed with lest you catch fleas! Keep paying dem dues…lots more infomercials and air time to be paid for. Oh…and jobs? What jobs? Only $ in budget is for photo ops, Staples pickets and commercials. Kind of reminds me of all that $ that was donated by NALC & APWU to Issa’s reelection campaign back in the 90s. Guess Hussein Obama stuck it to ya…didn’t he? Maybe Hillary can help!
There’s no volume people …. Wake up!!! 5 day all da way!!!!!!
It seems to me that all the fuss is really about losing “good paying jobs”. Lets face it there aren’t many postal job skills that are transferable to private industry. Delivery and production jobs do not pay that well in the private sector. Of course there is the option for those people that do not view the postal service as an entitlement to improve their knowledge and skills for good paying jobs in today’s job market and yes the private sector is very competitive and people have to prove them selves each and every day.
The private sector is fundamentally different from government in that earnings are more closely related to actual performance and there is no guaranty that you can grow old and secure in your job. Those who are willing to do their best each and every day do far better in the private sector than government.
What ever happened to the Democrats standing with the working man and unions?!?! If the Dems lose the Senate it will be because THEY disenfranchised themselves from their base. Bad move for the USPS and bad move for the Democrats. Wake up Barack the party will not follow you if you’re walking away from your constituents+ lame duck presidency for 2 years.
Thank You ‘Obamanomics”!! Get this Community Organizer out of office before we are ALL DOOMED!!
Hey, I have a great idea that will revolutionize the USPS. First, halt ALL Saturday delivery. Second, institute a new program which requires the USPS to pay additional non-career employees to deliver mail on Sundays. To make it more USPS-ish, ONLY deliver parcels from Amazon on Sundays. Leave all the other mail going to the same delivery points for Monday. That way the USPS will have an excuse to “load level” mail, meaning deliver Mondays mail on Wednesday or Thursday. Postal patrons will LOVE walking to the curbside on Sundays! Carriers will LOVE picking up all those mishandled parcels that were delivered to the wrong address, knowing THEY will be redelivering them again on Thursday, Friday or perhaps even the following Monday! Seriously though, does ANYONE in charge of the USPS actually know how the USPS works?!? Wanna change the style of play? GET A NEW HEAD COACH!!! How can the current PMG not accept the blame for the current state of the USPS? NO FORESIGHT!
most of us union members will be getting out if the union as u have never had our best interest in mind…we want to close on saturday and make all mail service the same…on the curb…
When are they going to remove Donahoe and his corrupt staff. The eastern area and the WPA district is full of legal corruption.