The Republicans have issued their party platform in Tampa, where they plan to nominate Mitt Romney for president and Paul Ryan for vice president this week. The platform spells out a radically anti-letter carrier and anti-worker agenda for the next four years. The platform:
- Misleads the public on the crisis facing the Postal Service and calls for its downsizing and partial privatization (code words for contracting out and deregulation)—steps that would destroy our employer and threaten our jobs.
- Targets the Affordable Care Act for repeal, which would raise Medicare costs and cut Medicare benefits (drugs and preventative care) for current seniors and raise letter carrier premiums by leaving 50 million Americans uninsured—shifting their medical costs to us through rising premiums for uncompensated care.
- Calls for ending Medicare as we know it, converting it from a defined-benefit plan to a defined-contribution plan for workers under the age of 55, who will be given inadequate vouchers to buy overpriced private insurance on their own.
- Promises a national “Right to Work” law aimed at destroying private-sector unions and weakening the labor movement—the nation’s only counterweight to Wall Street and Big Business.
Click here to read the platform’s postal “plank,” which can be found on page 25 of the document. It bogusly claims our massively over-funded pensions are “seriously under-funded” and insults all postal employees by suggesting we are a relic of the “Pony Express past” instead of a key component of the nation’s infrastructure and economy that companies such as Time Warner, eBay, Amazon and FedEx depend on.
Take action today:
- Share this information with your fellow letter carriers (when you are off duty) as well as with your family and friends.
- Urge your fellow NALC members—active and retired—to sign up as e-Activists.
- Encourage everyone to make sure they are registered to vote and have the proper identification to vote in November (many states have new requirements).
As the election approaches, I will be writing to you, convening tele-town hall meetings and using this network to tell you how you can take action to help elect pro-worker and pro-Postal Service candidates this fall. Our jobs and our standard of living depend on it.
In Solidarity,
Fredric Rolando, President
National Association of Letter Carriers