A group of lawmakers is urging colleagues who are drafting spending bills to prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from moving forward with its plan to close 80 more processing facilities.
The Postal Service announced last month that in January 2015 it would begin the previously delayed second phase of its “network rationalization” plan. Twenty-two senators — nearly all Democrats — called for a one-year moratorium on the consolidations in a letter to their colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee, saying the closures would hurt both postal customers and employees.
The senators said the closures would result in the loss of 15,000 postal jobs. The group included Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has authored a postal reform bill that focuses on growth initiatives rather than cuts; and Republican Appropriations Committee member John Hoeven, N.D.
“At a time when our middle class is disappearing, the loss of . . . good-paying Postal Service jobs will harm our local communities and economies,” the senators wrote.
Senators Seek to Protect 15,000 Postal Jobs – Oversight – GovExec.com
The senators who have signed on so far include: (source: APWU
Tester (D-MT), Sanders (I-VT), Baldwin (D-WI), Blumenthal (D-CT), Murphy (D-CT), Schatz (D-HI), Harkin (D-IA), Landrieu (D-LA), Markey (D-MA), Warren (D-MA), Cardin (D-MD), Stabenow (D-MI), Blunt (R-MO), McCaskill (D-MO), Franken (D-MN), Klobuchar (D-MN), Walsh (D-MT), Hagan (D-NC), Heitkamp (D-ND), Hoeven (R-ND), Shaheen (D-NH), Gillibrand (D-NY), Schumer (D-NY), Brown (D-OH), Wyden (D-OR), Johnson (D-SD), Thune (R-SD), and Leahy (D-VT).
APWU: Senate Can Help Stop Service Cuts & Plant Closures | USPS Network Rationalization, Phase II webinar Overview scheduled for August 15th –
To the person who asked who will loose their job:Me, My job will be lost. All pse clerks mail handler assistants. We do not get transfered we are terminated. Thats real smart. Terminate all the hard workers. The future of the postoffice.
This is merely grandstanding ahead of the elections. Crews are moving equipment around as we speak, getting ready for consolidation.
LESS % OF PEOPLE MAKING A “LIVING”!!!!
This is not good people and it’s gonna bite this country in it’s ass!
Use to get milk delivered at my door. Gas station’s had FULL service! At 25 cents a gallon. Paper Boys had paper routes. There was pride in the community’s an the Country. The Postal Service was a part of that.
I don’t see it any more.
So America, every step you take I’ll be watching you.
So what your saying Paton? Is Hey Ho we gotta go!
But the needs of the service still needs to maintain a 500K employee work force to do the labor, reducing pay rates & benefits as much as possible along the way so profits are up? Middle class down, what else is new in that bag of tricks.
These postal unions are weak, lip service with no bite.
Oh! Hey Ho!
Jobs should not be retained for political purposes. Finally someone saw through the lies. Jobs are a response to demand for a service since postal demand for first class mail is declining every year, associated jobs will disappear. Not to mention that personnel are the only controllable costs in any business regardless of being government or private.
Postal Headquarters announced that the delivery standards will be changing in anticipation of the 82 facilities being closed. That means there will be 1-2 days extra for delivery of your mail. Some of the new standards have already taken place as of July 1st. Many more are coming. The plants that have already been closed were near gaining facilities or were so small that their mail could be handled at the plant that receives the mail. The next phase will be fore medium sized plants that are over an hour away from the gaining plants. During the busiest parts of the year mail was already 2-3 days later than normal. The closing of these next plants will create serious delays to delivery of the mail.
To Joe Says: There are already articles in many papers that point out that the postal service is undercharging companies such as UPS, FedEx, Amazon and others for last mile delivery of parcels. The largest mailers of Standard Mail or Junk Mail also receive huge discounts that are below cost. As 1st class mail has declined there is not enough profit to subsidize large mailers any more. Standard mail is 51% of total volume of mail but only brings in 26% of revenue according to the postal services 2013 Annual Report.
PMG needs to go. Has done very little for the workers and to stop the %5.5 million advanced payments on Health Benefits.
If transfers are offered along with early outs, that’s the painless way to accomplish reducing ranks as the USPS has been doing. Would the Service pay people to stay home? Sounds nice but that’ll never happen. We never seem to have enough clerks and carriers in my office, so there probably is room for excessing all over the country. It would be a bitch to relocate for lots of people, with roots in their home towns, kids in school, etc. If relocation within a reasonable perimeter isn’t acceptable then the option to quit would fall on the worker, and if they’re still quite young, may be a more attractive choice if they don’t want to move.
I never got into supervision because I didn’t want to be shuttled all over hell and be away from my disabled wife. Plus, I have enough to concern myself with to have to put up with the stresses management puts on lower level supervisors and smaller offices.
We are a fortunate bunch to have good paying blue collar jobs. If Republicans like Darryl Issa have their way, there will be no middle class, only poor and extremely rich. They don’t want to acknowledge that the spending power of the middle class is the engine that keeps this decrepit train running, and if people aren’t paid decent wages, they can’t spend money on manufactured goods, have retirement plans, buy stock or get bank loans. That means the rich 1% goes belly up, too. But they are so greedy they can’t see it. Free enterprise and less government interference means letting them do what they want with no safeguards or regulations that force them to stay in a bit of line now. Politicians must understand that wiping out the middle class, which was built by unions, is wiping out the economy and becoming a subsidiary of China, which we already are as far as borrowing is concerned.
dear joe you just are not to bright, just play the long game, next the post office management will tell you to go down to the end of your street and get your mail out of the collect box they installed, then you will see what it’s like for a carrier to walk in rain, snow, cold, heat. the point is if you give into their unreasonable demands they won’t stop there they will keep going and going.
This isn’t about jobs.. It’s about the PMG slashing service and driving away customers instead of coming up with new ways for the postal service to create revenue. Something needs to be done.
If facilities closed, employees are transferring to other facilities, no jobs are being lost.
These positions are in mail processing and how the elimination of these positions (locations where mail is sorted) hurts the P.O. is that the service standard (how many days from A to B) is lengthed and customers have another reason (it takes too long) not to use the service.
By reducing the number of processing plants the mail is hauled further distances and the schedules to transport the mails must then change, this affects the cut off times for sorting which now would be shortened to “make the truck” and so on & so forth.
This is how the Postmaster General is harming the post office.
Hurry up an make a postal reform, you all been sitting on the issue for several years now you can’t make everyone happy. The ones in office lost my vote I’m voting for new people for congress
Don’t these senators understand that there are mgmt bonuses and a private gym to pay for ?
All being done while they scream about how broke the usps is……….
What loss of jobs are they talking about? This is mis-information designed to create smoke & mirrors. If facilities close, postal employees do not lose their jobs. They go elsewhere, quit or retire.
If the 15,000 jobs and the targeted facilities are needed for efficent mail service, they should be kept. If the jobs and facilities are no longer needed for efficient mail service, they should go away.
As cruel as it sounds, unnecessary “good paying jobs” should not be retained just for the sake of retaining unnecessary jobs for political purposes.
It would be better to pay the 15,000 people to sit at home than to maintain make work jobs for them – if and only if, that is the case.
hey senators wake the hell up, the only way to stop these closures is to fire the post master and his staff, that’s the only way.
yup